Dr Jessica Bugg
Embodied Design and Communication: Drawing with the Body and Cloth
This paper focuses on the development of a new practice led
research project that extends my ongoing exploration of design methods for
costume and performance at the intersection of fashion, art and performance
practices. This work is part of a collaborative project between a
small group of researchers at London College of Fashion with the National
Gallery in London. My research and
practice within this project focuses on the idea of symbiotic development of clothing
design and choreography in response to interpreted narratives in a particular
painting ‘A detail from The Tempest’ by Peder Balke, about 1862.
The project focuses on embodied
understanding and reading and develops my recent research and writing where I
proposed that it ‘is the
shared understanding of the body and clothing that can connect designer, wearer
and viewer on an experiential level’ (Bugg 2012) The design methodology
explores the idea of drawing and sketching physically with the body and cloth
in response to both the designer and performers reactions to the painting. This
development will then be used to inform the design and production of clothing
centered physical performance.
This paper responds to the fact that costume design and
specifically costume design for contemporary dance is often applied to a
specific choreography as opposed to being central to the development of the
performance and communication itself. The project seeks to expose how clothing can be implicit in
the conceptualisation, development and communication process. The design
process within this project simultaneously develops design and movement in a
responsive dialogue within the Gallery and in response to the paintings
inherent themes, emotional and visual narratives. The work addresses the role of narrative in
design and performance and seeks to extend a sensory and experiential narrative
as opposed to a particular story or linear narrative.
Design
and movement are developed through the embodied reading of both designer and
dancer from their different disciplines and through a physical drawing process
with the body and cloth not on paper but on the body in the space. The
work seeks to highlight the potential to develop costume design and performance
as a simultaneous and fully integrated practice by focusing on this particular
approach as a type of 3D drawing or sketching.
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