Breaking (and Cracking) the Digital and Physical Boundaries

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One of the main interests of Japanese artist, musician and fashion designer Nukeme is to transfer digital data into our physical world. He perfectly managed to do so by adding glitches to his knitwear experiments and to his lab coat, but his most recent project is an object that could be filed under the "interior design" category.

The "Internet Bank" is indeed a 3D printed coin box (dimensions before cracking it open: H19.5 x W9.6 x D5 cm) shaped like the PayPal logo. There is no extracting hole in the bank, so to access to the money inside it you have to break it or "crack" it open, mingling in this way the act of physically breaking something and of digitally cracking a code, while referencing also Japanese traditions and the process of cursing somebody by pounding a nail into a straw doll.

"The saving bank is a criticism to the Digital Vs Physical dichotomy; digital data are after all based on physical things - hardware, magnetic tapes, rare metals, and human operations," Nukeme told Irenebrination. "Yet it's also a way to tackle the theme of fragility."

At the end of September Nukeme took part in the "Internet Yami-ichi (Internet Black Market)" by iMal at Ateliers des Tanneurs in Brussels and at the moment he is planning to produce further objects along these lines. "I'm planning to do other logos in 3D and I'd also like to try other materials," he explains.

Nukeme was also part of a collaborative fashion project that also bridges the gap between digital and physical and that can be viewed as a conceptual critique of copied fashion.

Entitled "Computed Copy", the collaborative project - developed under the moniker "gokinjo-monozukuri.org" (Nukeme, So KANNO, yang02) - is divided in different phases.

First the artists scanned and captured 3D images of a garment; a flat pattern was then produced on the computer. This was actually a key stage since computers recognise a 3D shape as a polygon and therefore add distortion in a pattern and print. Once this phase was completed, the pattern was printed on fabric and the parts were assembled together.

The resulting garments are deconstructed and distorted versions of the original one, they are alternative copies of the first one. With "Computed Copy" Nukeme, So KANNO and yang02 are suggesting us that one day we may be able to copy a design using only the flat image we download from the Internet thanks to the rapid development of 3D technology (scanning, modelling, and printing).

Will this be the fastest automated way of copying a fashion design that will be used by High Street retailers, or will this method be used to create conceptually deconstructed garments? Time will tell, but the end of the fashion industry as we know it could be significantly closer than we think...