Designing cyborgs: Weaving bodies and meanings through virtual costume

Virtual reality technology affords new potential for artistic research in costume design. This doctoral research project investigates how meaning is made between virtual costume materials and the physical bodies that "wear" them. I hypothesize that designing hypermediated, soma-aesthetic costumes can invite meaningful intra-actions between costume and participants within real-time, location-based virtual encounters. As a practice-based study, my method of inquiry is through remediating my own costume practice in virtual reality. I design virtual costumes in studio sessions and then invite participants to play and interact with them in exploratory workshops. Material is collected for thematic analysis through a research journal, external video recordings, screen recordings, and audio recorded interviews. The practice is theorized through Cyberfeminist and New Materialist lenses to explore how “intra-actions” (Barad, 2007) between virtual costume materials and physical bodies can weave together “meanings and bodies that have a chance for a future” (Haraway, 1991, p. 187). This research advances costume studies, HCI, and artistic research by practicing and critically examining new possibilities for costume in virtual encounters. When we know how virtual materials can shape meanings and bodies, practitioners can be intentional and ethical with the agencies they create through extended reality technologies.

PHASE I: EXPLORATION

PHASE II: INVESTIGATION

PHASE III: IMPLEMENTATION