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DAN CORSON

Empyrean Passage

Empyrean Passage is reminiscent of both a theoretical black hole and portal into the celestial worlds. Empyrean (notice the pyre in the word) is the final and fiery level of heaven as depicted by Dante- or aether in Aristotle’s cosmology. The form is constructed like a giant hoopskirt and gracefully moves in the wind creating a gossamer lighting effect overhead. While this project is an oculus to the heavens, more focus is usually paid to more terrestrial stars in this neighborhood.The interior of the spiral is designed with aqua and black dashes. The dashed interior creates optical effects with the eyes and at certain times of the day shifts your perception of the sky’s color.This project utilizes extremely “green” electroluminescent lighting. The entire sculpture consumes less electricity than a household nightlight and operates on a photo cell. Special thanks to the City of West Hollywood, Andrew Campbell, Maria Lusia de Herrera, Greg Coons, Glen Bundrick / Luminous Film.

Neri Oxman

MAN-NAHĀTA
Computational growth across material and urban scales offers a framework for design through self-organization, enabling the generation of vast, diverse forms exhibiting characteristics like those that emerge through the biological growth processes found in Nature. In this project, we construct an oriented volume spanned by surface normals of the shape at every point. The value of the oriented volume drives the iterative deformation of the shape. Depending on the parameterization of this process, we can obtain distinctly different growing forms. Importantly, the emergence of these forms is driven only by the time evolution of a geometric operator acting on the shapes iteratively, thereby connecting geometry and growth through an algorithm. To form the Man-Nahata landscape, the buildings of the urban landscape are transformed through repeated morphological closing operations, where the field of influence follows a gradient from the center to the outskirts of a circular region.

Alex Ekman

COW

Ekman talents extend to the lighting and stage design and his eye for structuring an environment is unerring. There is no set as such, excepting the plaster cow which dangles overhead, but the stage surface has its share of movement as little island-blocks rise up and pits sink down. The extreme tilting of the stage at one point causes unfortunate Bauch to roll, cow-like, almost into the pit. COW has its iconic Ekman moment in the scene that opens on a stage full of swirling dancers in white skirts set in a magical silvery mist. Mikael Karlsson, whose music partners the piece provides a subtle and evocative soundscape. He offers a hint of percussive rhythm picked up by the dancers who launch into an ecstatic dance: a stage full of whirling dervishes, until they collapse exhausted.

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Ekmans Talente erstrecken sich auf die Beleuchtung und das Bühnenbild, und sein Auge für die Strukturierung einer Umgebung ist unfehlbar. Es gibt kein Set als solches, außer der Gipskuh, die über ihnen baumelt, aber die Bühnenoberfläche hat ihren Anteil an Bewegung, wenn kleine Inselblöcke aufsteigen und Gruben sinken. Das extreme Kippen der Bühne an einer Stelle führt dazu, dass der unglückliche Bauch kuhartig fast in die Grube rollt. COW hat seinen legendären Ekman-Moment in der Szene, die auf einer Bühne voller wirbelnder Tänzer in weißen Röcken in einem magischen silbernen Nebel beginnt. Mikael Karlsson, dessen Musikpartner das Stück ist, bietet eine subtile und eindrucksvolle Klanglandschaft. Er bietet einen Hauch von perkussivem Rhythmus, der von den Tänzern aufgenommen wurde, die einen ekstatischen Tanz beginnen: eine Bühne voller wirbelnder Derwische, bis sie erschöpft zusammenbrechen.

 

Thom Browne

Mens SS 2020
“After the scene shifted from a selection of 2D garments, removed to reveal Browne’s brilliant designs below, the show began in earnest. The looks, as gleefully playful as ever, took on elements of Browne’s typical offerings and elevated them to the level of supreme costume design. Several imposing silhouettes recalled dresses worn by Antoinette-era aristocracy, with gargantuan trousers and shapely sportcoats crafted to resemble distorted Ivy League staples. Elsewhere, pleated skirts emerged as a prime trouser replacement, with cropped jackets and seersucker jockstraps to introduce a sporty motif.” Jake Silbert

Richard Quinn

Fall 2018
Even though he was only given a few days’ notice of the royal’s attendance, Quinn lived up to the expectations. He maintained his focused vision, shining the spotlight on his impressive printwork and flair for standout, dramatic silhouettes. An array of abstracted floral prints — all created in-house at the designer’s print studio in Peckham — were mashed up on loose halterneck dresses, delicately pleated chiffon skirts and oversize bomber jackets, to create a visual feast of color and pattern.

Pierpaolo Piccioli

Moncler Genius collection
Moncler has unveiled a collection of padded full-length evening dresses by Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli at Milan Fashion Week. The collection of twelve colourful floor-length dresses with full skirts was created by Piccioli – one of nine designers invited to reinterpret the outdoor clothing company’s down jackets as part of this year’s Moncler Genius collections[…]

WILMA HURSKAINEN

waves
“The latter image, Waves, was taken in Benin, West Africa last winter where I spent a lot of time on the beach, just looking at the ocean and thinking. I had the skirt made for it after I once realized my shirt was the same color as the ocean. Although the two images share the same idea, for me the’re very different: In Invisible the woman looks hollow whereas in Waves it’s as if the landscape grew through her.”

ROSEA LAKE

Judgements
Rosea Lake of Vancouver, posted on her Tumblr a photo of a woman with her skirt raised and on her leg written what the length of the skirt “means”. The post was entitled ‘Judgments’, since that’s exactly what happens when a woman puts on a very short or very long skirt. The photo went viral, with more than 200,000 shares on social networks. Even the organization Unite Women posted on its Facebook page, to show that feminism has not yet achieved all of its goals. And what do you think of that? Should a woman be careful with the image that is passed on depending on how she dresses or does every woman have the right to dress as she likes and shouldn’t be worrying about what others might think of her?

Ursula Neugebauer

tour en l’air
With “tour en l’air”, the Berlin artist Ursula Neugebauer returns to an unforgettable childhood experience: Donned with the first long skirt in the fast turn around your own axis, to experience a previously unknown body feeling – and to get to know a new form of stability in the rotation.
Tour en l’air is an impressive installation at the intersection of fashion, art and architecture. Decorative busts slip into several floor-length red taffeta dresses and come to life thanks to computer-controlled electric motors. Although the individual components are of purely mechanical and material origin, the overall composition appears as a poetic expression of the human: namely a magical dance.

HELMUT SMITS

Гельмут Смитс
هيلموت سميتس
赫尔穆特·史密茨
ヘルムート·スミッツ
Skirting Board Sunset