Resonanzräume

Could something natural be created with synthetic materials? Is it possible to produce an intangible material, which behaves as if it is alive? MA Fashion Design student Dafna Stoilkova poses such questions in her design project ‘Resonanzräume’ (German: Resonance Spaces). The resulting work is no conventional fashion collection, but rather a series of fine, fragile nets, which evoke an echo of clothing. The delicate, expanding structures are barely there, almost floating over the body like an aura, instead of covering it.

The search for an enhanced perception led Stoilkova to the idea of materials which could independently interact with their environment. In order to focus her field of research, Stoilkova decided to examine how inelastic materials might transform into elastic materials. Lasercut played a significant role in her design work. The precision of the digital process led Stoilkova to design regular geometric patterns, which when cut into inelastic materials, can enable them to stretch and change shape.

The patterns are beautifully regular: the precise, geometric ornamentation standing in contrast, but still somehow in harmony, with the human figure.

The elastic behaviour of stiff materials enables movements, which synchronise on many levels with their context – optically, haptically and kinaesthetically. Produced in polypropylene, polyester and acrylic, the resulting collection of materials merge the terms ‚artificial‘ and ‚natural‘, as synthetic materials, when cut accordingly, take on an undeniably organic character. A basic principle of this unusual, knowingly contradictory, aesthetic is that the ‘natural’ is defined by precise prototyping.

In the context of the human body, the materials synchronise with its movements. In this manner, a new resonance between body and material may arise, thus determining a new sensory function.