Kat Thiel
MA Fashion Futures, London College of Fashion, UAL
Kat is an artist and designer whose body centric work looks at how digital (dis)embodiment is perceived and created. Her post-solution and anti-disciplinary fashion practice spans various media and has been shown internationally. Her practice takes a critical perspective on fashion’s effects on behaviour, social life and mental health in increasingly monopolistic and market driven systems. She has been involved with the Goethe Institute, the Environmental Justice Foundation and recently co-led a workshop at the Design Museum. Currently she is associate artist as part of CoLAB at Space Studios.
For DeL 2015 Kat will present how her work carries out responses to the tense space between ownership and bodily (digital) material, comfort and branding. How does behaviour around bodies emerge through the use of technology and networked culture? Read more.
As an artist and designer who works at the intersection of the virtual and the real body, my work methods span the fields of performance, digital 3d technologies, fashion, film and installation. I have addressed notions of the post digital throughout my MA in Fashion Futures and have explored how the dressed body can appear in the digital space beyond a mere likeness of its physical origin.
This body-centric research looks at how human futures possibly take on a very different look in the digital, along more subversive lines that nod to the inexhaustible possibilities of the digital realm. A central aspect is how technology can be used to unpack how bodies potentially manifest in the digital, with a focus on enhancing privacy and counteracting the effects of surveillance. In this presentation I will dsicuss how my work carries out responses to the tense space between ownership and bodily (digital) material, comfort and branding. Coming from a background in fashion, I now exploit tools and 3D technologies to challenge how digital (dis)embodiment is perceived and created. But also to creatively disrupt the underlying algorithms in technology to bring out unpredictable responses in those 'seeing machines'.
I am particularly interested in the behaviour around bodies that emerge through the use of technology and networked culture and how this can be translated into prototypes for discussion in a critical, explorative way. My practice is very much ‘thinking through experimentation’ and particularly looks at fashion from a non-product/no-prettiness angle, which is carried out through quick artistic responses to critique commercial culture.