Kategorie: Ausgaben

Von Lars C. Grabbe / Manuel van der Veen | Die Augmented Reality ist bildtheoretisch gesprochen ein Modus der Erweiterung von digitalen Bildern, wobei hier entweder das Digitale als ein Super­additum des Wirklichen gilt oder aber das Virtuelle selbst durch Hinzufügen von physikalischen Interfaces und Interpositionen als augmentiert erscheint (vgl. Milgram et al. 1994). Bildtheoretisch notwendig erscheint die Frage, im Spannungsfeld von Augmented Reality und Augmented Virtuality, wie sich die Erweiterung als eine Frage des Bildes oder des Bildverstehens analytisch fassen und bestimmen lässt. Die Augmentation stellt neben den Begriffen der Extension und der Expansion eine Erweiterung, Ausdehnung, eine Fortsetzung, Verlängerung oder sensorische Kontagierung (vgl. Grabbe 2024) des Bildlichen in Aussicht. Eine Ausweitung der Realitätszone wird somit auf die Übertragung bestimmter Wirklichkeitseigenschaften in einen anderen Bereich hindeuten. Die unidirektionale Erweiterungsmetaphorik der Realität verunsichert gleichzeitig das Geschehen und fordert zu einer genaueren Bestimmung einer Augmented Virtuality heraus. Welche Bereiche treffen aufeinander? In welche Richtung, wo und wie finden die Übergänge statt? Zusammen mit der Augmentation erscheint somit das große X der Crossed Realities (Dresscher/Verhoeff 2020) an deren Schnittmengen, die Frage nach dem Bild zu stellen ist. Der Sammelband rückt daher explizit verschiedene Art und Weisen des Übergangs in den Fokus.

By Andreas Osterroth | Digital fashions, especially ›skins‹, have developed into a central means of communication within virtual environments, especially in video games. In games, users not only design their avatars, but also convey their identities, status, and belonging via their selections. Based on examples extracted from video games, the historical development and significance of skins as a digital clothing practice will be analyzed. Additionally, economic aspects will be examined, such as the role of microtransactions, that lastingly shape the market for digital fashion. The paper further discusses theoretical concepts such as speech act theory, which are necessary to adequately analyze digital fashion as an extended semiotic resource.

By Eva Balayan and Lutz Hengst | The outside is chaos. The inside is order. Both chaos and order are systems. Order is a system where a third party is able to detect a structure; while chaos is a system that cannot be comprehended. Chaos and order can be described as inside and outside: While the inside is the known area one is able to keep under control; the outside is the unknown as well as the unexpected. Relating this idea to the human body, the latter serves as a shield that protects us from the outside, and which we are convinced to control.

This idea is taken up in the work of Eva Balayan, who engages with the body as a shield or an armour that protects us while being soft, fluid, and unstable. The vulnerability behind the hard rigid shell shows the softness behind the brute defence. The internal substance that the conscious mind is so eager to understand is like a plexus—it grows on its own, spirals out of control, and breaks down the boundaries between systems. These armor-like pieces turn the body that wears them into armor itself. The content starts to grow on the surface in order to hide, to protect and to assimilate. The protection becomes no longer the aim to save what is on the inside, but takes over the main purpose. Defending is existing.

By Petja Ivanova and Stefanie Mallon | In her artistic practice, Petja Ivanova explores sensual and intimate casts of the human body, working at the intersection of material alchemy and digital speculation. Her ›emo/exo-bodies‹, textile sculptures made from bandages soaked in fermented chitosan, are both externalized emotional skins (exo) and embodied emotional states (emo). These porous exoskeletons function as somatic archives, holding the imprint of affective experience. Instrumentalizing the chitosan’s healing of the skin surface, Ivanova turns toward internal, emotional wounds, which are often neglected, feminized, or privatized, and treats them through what she frames as poetic futures and speculative ecologies on the spectrum of data healing.

In this interview with cultural anthropologist Stefanie Mallon, Ivanova reflects on the transfer of her emo/exo-bodies into digital space, the affective implications of this transition, and her search for a ›somatic literacy‹ attuned to the scars we are still in the process of making. Through 3D scanning, the textile forms are digitized, gaining a new kind of presence, which Ivanova calls ›digital flesh‹. In this process, the material reopens and becomes manipulable: stretched, reshaped, and written on. The wound is not closed but kept wide open, visible, evolving, and re-coded. This interview situates Ivanova’s practice within broader discussions of textile-based image practices in the digital age, and considers how her artistic work can act as a method of emotional processing, knowledge production, and structural critique.

By Gwyneth Holland | This paper considers how theories of the posthuman can help to understand the connection between physically and virtually dressed bodies. Virtual fashion is a layered image: pixels of a 3D garment are placed over pixels of a photographed or digitally rendered body. Within those layers are experiences of body image, identity and experimentation, interleaved with technical restrictions and exclusionary fashion practices. The paper underlines the need for representation and expression across worlds, which can create challenges for existing body norms. Situated within fashion and fat studies, I particularly focus on the nascent areas of fat and fashion futures, which enable a greater consideration of the impacts of current practices on aspiration and opportunity. Virtual worlds can represent different identities and representations, but they are not free from the structures that affect bodies in physical realms (Ma 2024), meaning that the exclusion of fat bodies in physical fashion is replicated in virtual fashion. However, Braidotti’s (2013) and Haraway’s (2016) discussions of technical-human hybridity suggest potential for this sector to destabilise body hierarchies by blurring the lines between physical, digital, real and fantasy.

For the present analysis, it is useful to distinguish between ›digital‹ and ›virtual‹ fashion, though the terms are often used interchangeably (Boughlala and Smelik 2024). Digital fashion (DF) combines a wide range of technologies which enable the visualisation, experience and commerce of physical garments. Virtual fashion (VF), on the other hand, refers to three-dimensional graphic renderings of garments which may be superimposed on photos or videos of bodies, or as cosmetic effects for online avatars, such as gaming and metaverse characters (ibid.). This paper focuses on the latter phenomenon as it is applied especially to fashion images and digital avatars.

By Esmay Wagemans | In the late 20th century, Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1985) introduced the »cyborg« as a hybrid figure of disruption, blurring boundaries between human and machine, nature and culture, body and code. Today, ›cyborg fashion‹, characterized by prosthetics, coded materials, and speculative aes­the­­tics, is more visible than ever, largely due to its circulation within digital media ecosystems and the rise of AI-driven design. Yet this visibility is shaped by a new kind of control: the technological gaze of algorithmic moderation, platform standards, and commercial optimization.

This paper explores how this platform culture has affected the identity and creation of the cyborg. Drawing from my own artistic practice and theoretical frameworks rooted in feminist and posthumanist thought, I examine how digital infrastructures reshape not only the aesthetics of cyborg fashion, but also the very conditions under which it is conceived, made, and shared.

Rather than offering a single definition or solution, this text explores alternative spaces of creation and thinking. It proposes that cyborg fashion’s relevance today lies in reimagining how we make, relate, and remain critically attuned to the systems in which we work. By expanding its possibilities through interrogating the conditions of its creation and circulation, the cy­borg identity becomes not a static icon, but a living methodology.