АЙРИС ВАН ЭРПЕН
イリス ヴァン ヘルペン
Autumn/Winter 2019
This season van Herpen collaborated with American kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe, whose pieces are powered by the wind. His spherical Omniverse sculpture had pride of place in the Élysée Montmartre venue. The designer said she was compelled by the way its arching vertebrae, spinning on a curving axis, simultaneously expand and contract. Her finale dress was made in the image of Omniverse, with rotating wings constructed of aluminum, stainless steel, and feathers.

Caress of the Gaze
For Caress of the Gaze, Farahi worked with AutoDesk, PIER9 (where she is currently an Artist in Residence) and MADWORKSHOP to create a kind chest-covering cape covered with a beautiful layer of feather-like quills. While they appear soft to the touch, the quills can actually detect the gaze of another (a man, as shown in the video below) and expand and contract as his eyes move around the body. A microcontroller connected to the cape’s camera can also detect the age and gender of the onlooker, perhaps helping the wearer to discern their motives.

Destructive observation field
The installation behaves like a living organism, it creates expanding and contracting forms that have a semi-organic appearance. During the course of the exhibition the deformations of the plate add up resulting in a more and more complex surface structure. The visible shapes will get more detailed and fragmented. The density of the stored information on the black plate increases. The characteristic visual appearance of the installation is the result of interference patterns, waves amplifying and canceling each other out in space, leaving complex traces of light and darkness.