Digital Disturbances, London College of Fashion

Digital Disturbances, a new exhibition held in the Fashion Space Gallery at the London College of Fashion, University of Arts, is all about the influence of advancing digital technology on the world of fashion.

Everyone knows that fashion has changed a lot over the past two decades in line with the rise of the internet. Huge advances in digital capabilities to produce, distribute, analyse, share sell and blog about online has changed the way we consume fashion for ever, and the controversy of the manipulation of fashion images have filled many column inches.

In this exhibition, Digital Disturbances not only looks back to a time pre-twitter, but also forward, considering new ideas about how the physical world could be represented in cyber space in time to come. Expect to find yourself asking questions on how real men, women and clothes are going to be seen online in time to come.

Seven designers and their creative teams have documented these interactions and effects, curated by Leanne Wierzba, guest curator at the V&A's recent exhibition What is Luxury, research fellow at Winchester School of Art and Assistant Curator/Gallery Manager at Fashion Space Gallery.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an events programme of talks, workshops and masterclasses and is coinciding with a forum exploring now, near and future fashion technology on the 16 October, asking the question: 'Where are our digital selves heading" called #RE_IMAGINE. This will launch The Digital Anthropology Lab at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts which is a research studio bringing industry and academia together to develop a new way of making smarter technology.

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Digital Disturbances: who is exhibiting?

Designer POSTmatter is exhibiting Ripple (2014), an interactive film installation simulating the virtual experience of touch, in which visitors run their hands across a motion sensor fabric control panel, causing digital ripples to reveal layers of materials and images on screen.

Bart Hess' film Echo (2011), exposes the creation of shape through the repetition of pictures of the human body and physical materials through time-lapse.

A selection of garments from designer Anrealage’s Autumn/Winter 2010 wideshortslimlong collection uses design software to manipulate objects, presenting four dramatically different silhouettes.

Shirts from designer Simone C. Niquille’s REALFACE Glamouflage (2013) collection raise questions about the impact of facial recognition technology and surveillance on personal privacy. They employ dazzle, a camouflage which uses optic illusions to conceal and confuse onlookers. Patterns on the shirts incorporate pirated faces and celebrity impersonators in multiples, providing an additional layer of ‘identity’ which enables wearers to evade verification.