Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology: April 2016

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Circuit Design Vs Fashion Design (With Some Notes on Cognitive Systems)

Today's Google Doodle is dedicated to American mathematician, engineer and information theorist Claude Shannon who would have turned 100th today had he been alive. In the doodle his profession is mixed with his passion for juggling, unicycling, and chess (in his life he even built a unicycle with an off-center wheel to keep the rider steady while juggling...).

Shannon is better known for founding both the digital computer and digital circuit design theory in 1937. As a master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he wrote "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (Download ClaudeShannon_ASymbolicAnalysis) a thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of George Boole's logical algebra could construct any logical, numerical relationship.

Boolean values 1 and 0 (1 means "on" when the switch is closed and the power is on; 0 means "off" when the switch is open and power is off) are binary digits, a phrase that can be shortened to "bits." The unit of information is therefore the bit; a more complicated information can be viewed as built up out of combinations of bits. In the last chapter of the thesis Shannon diagrammed several circuits, including a 4-bit full adder, that became the central circuit in all digital computers.

Even though Shannon's fascinating studies may be entering in our lives via today's Google Doodle, some of us may still be considering circuits as geeky and incomprehensible things. Fear not, though, as there are simple ways to understand how circuits work. Engineer Star Simpson recently launched Circuit Classics, a crowdfunding project revolving around producing a series of highly detailed boards inspired by the hand-drawn circuit diagrams of Forrest M. Mims III. These pieces - the Dual-LED Flasher, the Stepped Tone Generator, and the Bargraph Voltage Indicator - are easy to assemble and ideal for first-time learners, expert tinkerers, or even just as fun conversation pieces.

Designing circuits is just another way of being creative and therefore it is not so different from fashion design (a circuit only works after you have made all the correct connections, but you could say the same thing about a garment...). Besides, in the last few years we have seen quite a few experiments integrating circuits or sensors in garments and accessories (that turned into highly responsive devices) or less complicated projects made by recycling bits and pieces of circuits to create pieces of jewellery.

Alexander McQueen sent out on the Givenchy's Autumn 1999 runway models clad in rigidly cut suits that made them look a bit like Rachael out of Blade Runner or wearing sharply tailored jackets and bodysuits covered in circuit board patterns.

In some cases the prints and embrodieries glowed in the dark, though the final bodices - the result of a collaboration with Studio van der Graaf - were made of molded clear plastic with integrated battery-powered programmed flashing LEDs, and they were matched with glowing leggings patterned like computer chips.

The models looked as if Thierry Mugler's gynoids had shed their mechanical skins to reveal their electronic veins, but this radically different interpretation of Givenchy's style was McQueen's answer to the fears and anxieties of Y2K, though we could now read these designs as McQueen's attempt at cracking the code of the future of fashion anticipating the "wearables" trend that has currently inspired multiple exhibitions about fashion and technology..

The fashion and technology link is indeed developing in unexpected ways: IBM has just announced that its Watson cognitive system has "worked" with Marchesa designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig to create a dress that a yet unnamed celebrity will wear at Monday's Met Gala, that will officially launch the new Costume Institute exhibition, "Manus x Machina". The dress will be revealed only on Monday, but there are plenty of information regarding it on the IBM site.

The Marchesa duo actually worked on the dress silhouette, but quite a few details depended on Watson. The IBM Watson Personality Insights API analysed indeed Marchesa's social channels (Twitter and Instagram), determining fan sentiment towards the brand and what it stands for.

In return Marchesa selected five key human emotions - joy, passion, excitement, encouragement, curiosity - that they wanted the dress to convey. IBM Research then fed this data into the cognitive colour design tool that understands the psychological effects of colours, the interrelationships between emotions, and image aesthetics.

Watson was fed hundreds of images associated with Marchesa dresses in order to understand and learn the brand's palette, and eventually the system came up with a set of colours in line with Marchesa's brand and the identified emotions.

Once the colours were finalised, Marchesa turned to IBM partner Inno360 to source a fabric for their creation: over 40,000 sources were analysed for fabric information, narrowing down to 150 sources of the most useful options to consider for the dress.

From this selection, Inno360 worked in partnership with IBM Research-Almaden to identify printed and woven textiles that would respond well to the LED technology needed to execute the final part of the collaboration. Inno360 then delivered 35 fabric recommendations based on a variety of criteria important to Marchesa, including weight, luminosity, and flexibility.

The final cognitive thread? Met Gala enthusiasts will be able to join the cognitive conversation on the red carpet: using Watson Tone Analyzer, the dress will tap into social sentiment from Twitter users on the cognitive dress, extracting context around the tone of their messages. The dress, embedded with LED lights, will change colours in real-time as the public conversations around the Met Gala unfold online.

At this stage we don't know yet if, despite all the technology employed to make it, the IBM Watson/Marchesa dress will suffer from the dreaded curse of the LED dress, but we will soon discover it.

In the meantime, reading about visionary pioneers such as Claude Shannon (who is also the co-inventor of the first "wearable" computer along with Edward O. Thorp - the device was used to improve the odds when playing roulette...) may be inspiring not just for tech heads but for all the creative minds out there.

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An Arty Way to Fashionable Unity: Polka Dots To Infinity and Beyond

Polka dots have rarely been out of fashion: leaf through an old and battered vintage magazine from many decades ago or a fashion publication that came out yesterday and you will end up spotting mesmerising motifs of polka dots scattered on dresses or accessories. Some examples?

The FIDM Museum, in Los Angeles, recently received a donation of magazines and posted on its Instagram page this graphically powerful cover of a Harper's Bazaar issue (February 1952).

Yet polka dots will be fashionable also for the next winter, as seen in a previous post about MSGM's A/W 2016 collection in which we juxtaposed the polka dot texture of an Antonio Lopez's illustration from 1967 to a padded coat designed by the label's Creative Director, Massimo Giorgetti.

Quite often the use of polka dots in fashion derives indeed from arty inspirations, such as the graphically alluring Pop Art works by Roy Lichtenstein.

Influenced by comics, adverts and popular images, Lichtenstein's paintings and sculptures were characterised by primary colours, black outlines and hundreds of his signature Ben-Day dots.

Check out for example his mural-like artwork "Peace Through Chemistry I" (1970), a horizontal work divided in three yellow, red, blue, and black panels, featuring a microscope, gears, pulleys and test tubes. The artist came up on the panel on the right with a geometric profile of a man (rendered in superhero fashion...) holding a test tube.

Another figure in profile in the centre panel is examining instead the details of the leafy branch in the left panel through the eyepiece of a microscope (it is not clear if this was an ironical take since at the time the United States military used Agent Orange in Southeast Asia as part of a program to defeat the Vietcong or if the work was referencing the advertising slogan of DuPont, "Better Things for Better Living…Through Chemistry" or if the scientist examining a branch under his microscope is a reference to an olive branch of peace...).

A less intricate and more colourful example of Lichtenstein's work is the sculpture "Head with Blue Shadow" (1965), that a while back became the inspiration for an outstanding Pop Art make up tutorial by Illamasqua.

The incontestable queen of polka dots remains Yayoi Kusama: the Moderna Museet in Stockholm will be dedicating her an exhibition this summer (10th June - 11th September 2016).

Curated by Jo Widoff, "In Infinity" will be the first major retrospective dedicated to Kusama's ouvre in Scandinavia and will span her entire body of work from the early 1950s to today.

The event will feature paintings, drawings, sculptures and large spatial installations, highlighting her connection with fashion.

As you may remember, Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton created a capsule collection inspired by Kusama in 2012, that was celebrated at the time by window installations that featured artworks by Kusama, but also mini dolls and a life-size wax figure of the artist, obviously lost in a sea of dots.

In Kusama's world, polka dots are linked with obsessions and hallucinations, but she also tried to give them positive meanings, stating they are an allegory of the human condition.

"The polka dot has the form of the sun representing masculine energy, the source of life. The polka dot has the form of the moon representing the feminine principle of reproduction and growth. Polka dots must always multiply to infinity. Our earth is only one polka dot among millions of others," the artist once stated, flattening out differences and uniting diverse bodies, objects and surfaces through her visually striking motifs.

In a way, Kusama's words reveal us what makes polka dots a trend that stands the test of times: polka dots do have the power of destabilising the establishment in an obsessively playful way, while representing at the same time togetherness and unity.

Image credits for this post

7. Yayoi Kusama, Installation view of Kusama in Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli's Field, at her solo exhibition "Floor Show" at R. Castellane Gallery, New York, 1965 © Yayoi Kusama. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, David Zwirner, New York

8. Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama with one of her Infinity Net paintings in New York, ca. 1961 © Yayoi Kusama. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, David Zwirner, New York

9. Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room - Hymn of Life, 2015 ©Yayoi Kusama. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and David Zwirner, New York. Photo: Vegard Kleven/HOK

10. Yayoi Kusama, Kusama with Pumpkin, 2010 © Yayoi Kusama. Installation View: Aichi Triennale 2010. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/ Singapore; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; David Zwirner, New York; and KUSAMA Enterprise

11. Yayoi Kusama, Louis Vuitton shop window display with Tentacles, 2012/2015 ©Yayoi Kusama/Louis Vuitton. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and David Zwirner, New York. Photo: Vegard Kleven/HOK

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In a Multi-Art World: "Moment - Moki Cherry" @ Moderna Museet, Stockholm

It is not rare to see nowadays collaborations between artists and musicians, but it is maybe still unusual to find a creative mind that freely moves between various disciplines such as art, design, theatre and music. Swedish Monica Karlsson saw no boundaries between any of these practices and reunited them all in her life.

Born in 1943, Karlsson became better known as Moki Cherry after she married American jazz musician Don Cherry, who became the stepfather of (singer-songwriter and rapper) Neneh (daughter of Moki and percussionist Ahmadu Jah).

Moki had an unusual approach to life: in the '70s, while many artists challenged the establishment rebelling against in, she focused on more experimental projects and seemed more interested in promoting values she deemed worth protecting and fighting for. A feminist, Moki took up a socially critical stance in her later collages, but was not as argumentative as her friends Marie Louise Ekman or Niki de Saint Phalle.

Throughout her life she tried to present other ways of living, coming up with projects about counterurbanisation and subsistence-farming, and organising art projects for kids or interdisciplinary creative practices. She once explained in an interview: "I don't think of my art as similar to, or belonging to, any particular culture".

Moki, who was a percussionist, encouraged Don Cherry to study ethnic music, and among other instruments he took up the doussn'gouni, a hunter's guitar from Mali.

Moki and Don lived in a utopian and alternative world: the musician would play his flute to the birds in the woods outside Stockholm and wander in town still playing while children followed behind. Together Moki and Don played festivals and exhibitions, organising happenings, creating music, art, posters and album covers.

They also came up with the concept for Movement Incorporated (later Organic Music) and founded the Octopussteatern project for kids and teenagers. In 1970, the family moved to an old school house in Tågarp, Skåne, where they lived according to the motto "the stage as a home, and the home as a stage".

In the early '70s Don and Moki Cherry held a children's jazz workshop at Stockholm's Moderna Museet; Pontus Hultén involved them in 1971 in the museum's "Utopias & Visions 1871-1981", an exhibition inspired by the revolutionary government that ruled Paris in spring 1871, the Paris Commune. For the occasion the Cherrys ran an open stage as part of this exhibition. This collaboration was successful to the extent that, when Pontus Hultén was asked to start up Centre Pompidou in Paris, he invited them to set up a temporary "Atelier des enfants" (children's studio) until the institution was completed.

The connection Don and Moki Cherry had with the Moderna Museet is being renewed and relaunched through an exhibition celebrating Moki's world. On display on the fourth floor of the museum, "Moment - Moki Cherry" includes a rich variety of her works and documentary material from her long partnership with Don.

Among the highlights there are large textile application pieces that Moki was famous for but there are also drawings, collages and stage photos from 1967 to 2007. The main point of the curator Fredrik Liew was indeed telling Moki and Don Cherry's story through a series of objects, that become testament to the multi-art world they lived in.

"Throughout her artistic career, Moki Cherry lived without making any clear distinction between life and art. Most of her works have no frame, both in the literal and figurative sense. What we see is not paintings. Each object is intimately linked to a context, ideologically and practically. Touring were integral to the music, dance and situations in which people met, but their travels were also one of the reasons why Moki made so many textile appliqué pieces. These works were portable, and easy to pack and hang," explains curator Fredrik Liew.

In one of her drawings Moki tells the story of a king who goes to see a wise man to learn the secret of creating pictures. The wise man begins by saying that you first have to understand painting. But he goes on to explain that, in order to understand painting, you have to understand dance, and to understand dance you need a knowledge of instrumental music, and to achieve that, you first have to learn to sing.

This argument in the form of a myth helps to illustrate Moki Cherry's approach to art: her multifaceted oeuvre will undoubtedly be inspiring to many Moderna Museet visitors and you can bet that, at some point, we will see her colourful tapestries and collages reappearing on the runways (our bets are on Gucci by Alessandro Michele or Valentino by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli...).

"Moment - Moki Cherry", Moderna Museet, Exercisplan 2, Stockholm, Sweden, until 8th January 2017.

Image credits for this post

Moki Cherry, Brown Rice, 1975 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

Moki Cherry in her home in Gamla Stan, Stockholm. Photo: Private

Moki Cherry during a performance with Organic Music 1970s. Photo: Private

Moki Cherry, Untitled, 2005 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

Moki Cherry, Untitled, 2005 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

Moki Cherry by her sewing machine in the Dome during the exhibition "Utopias and Visions" at Moderna Museet, 1971. Photo: Private

Moki Cherry, Untitled, 1980 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

Moki Cherry, Organic Music, 1967 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

Moki Cherry, Första scenen ögonblicket (First Scene the Moment), 1970 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

Moki Cherry, Untitled, 1967 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet

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Two Approches to Costume Designs: From André Derain to Adeline André

Two different articles posted yesterday looked at ballet costumes. Let's continue the thread today starting from two costumes, or rather masks, by French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism (with Henri Matisse) André Derain, preserved at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

The costumes - a Genie mask and Lupercalian priest mask - were employed for the ballet "Fastes" performed by avant-garde dance company Les Ballets in 1933.

Evolving from the Russian ballet tradition, the short lived company (it premiered six new ballets in June 1933, but was disbanded by September of the same year...) broke new ground thanks to choreographer George Balanchine, artistic director Boris Kochno, and art patron Edward James who funded the performances.

Crowds in Paris were astonished by the diversity of the choreographies presented, but in London reviews were mixed. Dancer Tamara Toumanova stated "It came at the right time...It erupted like a volcano of art. Derain, Berard, Milhaud, Tchelitchew, Kochno, Weill, Lotte Lenya. It was not to be believed. It was musically, theatrically, the most superb production."

Derain started creating for the theatre in 1919, when he was commissioned by Diaghilev to design the costumes, sets and stage curtains for the ballet "La boutique fantastique". He continued creating sets and costumes for opera and ballet productions, throughout his life, working for the Ballets Russes, the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, Balanchine's Les Ballets and the Sadler's Wells Ballet.

Performed in June 1933 and featuring music by Henri Sauguet, "Fastes" was inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture. The ballet was set in Etruscan Italy during a feast and revolved around two genii attending pagan rites performed by matrons, buffoons, acrobats.

Balanchine choreographed an animated frieze for the ballet, sculpting movements and shapes through the strength of the dancers' bodies. Derain designed the set and costumes taking inspiration from books about mythology and rites, and moving from the details of an Etruscan tomb decoration and from his passion for collecting ancient terracotta pieces. This derivation is clear in both Derain's masks: the mask for the Genii covered the entire body of dancers Serge Ismailoff and Ludovic Matlinsky, while the Lupercalian priest mask had three faces and gave the wearer (dancer Roman Jasinsky) the chance to come up with three different roles and dancing styles, the three-faced mask represented indeed the parable of youth, maturity, and old age (you can clearly see two faces from the Brighton Museum display, the third is unfortunately partially hidden behind a screen...).

For something completely different, yet linked with art and with costumes inspired by art, check out "Pictures at an Exhibition" by the New York City Ballet, returning (on 29th and 30th April 2016) after kicking off the 2014 Fall season.

Choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, "Pictures at an Exhibition" is set to Modest Mussorgsky's eponymous suite inspired by the paintings of Viktor Hartmann. The curtain rises on a group of figures gazing at colourful projections as if they were walking around a museum and looking at paintings.

In a way the dancers are a bit like visitors in a museum: the projections - designed by Wendall K. Harrington - are indeed inspired by Kandinsky's "Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles" and show swirls, squares and lines, abstract shapes that mutate, morph, and transform as the music and the movements change.

In this performance the NYC Ballet dancers wear costumes by fashion designer Adeline André, who translated the projections onto multicoloured outfits - short tunics for the women and loose trousers and tops for the men. The abstract modern art shapes featured in the projections are therefore evoked by the light costumes dipped and dyed in the same colours of the artworks.

The ballet is linked with Kandinsky's synaesthesia and will definitely call to mind in his fans the artist's life-changing experience that occurred to him during a performance of Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Bolshoi Theatre when he proclaimed "I saw all my colors in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me".

Though triggered by different art practices (sculpture/painting), the visual response provoked by André Derain and Adeline André's costumes is equally intense and introduces costume and ballet fans to two diverse approaches to design, materials and choreographies.

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Quick Note for Textile Researchers

Are you around the Venice area this afternoon and you want to know more about the local textile history? Head to the Centro Candiani in Mestre (at 5.00 pm) where researcher and historian Doretta Davanzo Poli will present a lecture about the library, the collection of fashion prints, etchings and sketches and the textile archives of the Centro internazionale delle Arti e del Costume (International Arts and Costume Centre; CIAC).

The centre was originally founded in 1951 and was located in Palazzo Grassi, Venice: in the '60s its textile library preserved around one thousand textile samples; it was enriched up until the '70s with rare fabrics, garments and accessories from the 1500s to the 1900s.

The institution became known for organising exhibitions, lectures and debates about textiles, costumes and fashion.

The CIAC was also famous for its thematic fashion shows quite often revolving around specific fibres, from natural materials such as silk to synthetic fibres including nylon, rayon, acetate, lurex and many more.

Many fashion houses - among them Balenciaga, Marucelli, Balmain, Schuberth, Biki, Carosa, Fontana, Cardin, Pucci and Capucci - presented their collections at Palazzo Grassi.

The last event took place there in the early '70s and, when the centre closed, its library, specialised in historical textiles and laces, moved to Palazzo Mocenigo, the Museum and Study Centre of the History of Fabrics and Costumes, and that's where you should be heading if you ever decide to carry out an intense research about rare pieces such as a cope (a liturgical vestment ) in soprarizzo (literally "over-the-curls") velvet from the 1600s. .

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From Ballerina Inspirations to Ballerina Costumes

Throughout the history of fashion, dancers and ethereal ballerinas clad in delicate tutus turned into recurrent motifs and inspirations for many designers. This connection keeps on returning decade after decade for pretty obvious reasons: ballerinas mainly represent grace and elegance, but also strength and dynamic energy, allowing designers to come up with wonderful links in their creations and collections. So let's have a look at some garments dating from different times and selected from museum archives that move from ballerinas.

The first garment in this post, on display at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, was part of a trousseau made for Lady Holmon's second marriage in Spring 1940: these peach silk georgette camiknickers by Hermine were characterised by a series of appliquéd purple lace ballet dancers that seemed to be delicately moving all over the garment.

Based at 164 Bond Street in the heart of London's elite fashion industry, Hermine supplied the most luxurious made-to-measure and intricately hand-worked lingerie. There is actually another pair of Hermine camiknickers in the same museum collection and they feature appliquéd ballroom dancers.

The second garment is instead a Schiaparelli evening gown from 1936, inspired by Impressionist painter Edgar Degas' ballerinas. The photograph doesn't make justice to it, but the print on this dress is a testament to Schiap's passion for art and fashion. Originally from Schiaparelli's London branch it was donated by Viscountess Gage to the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

Moving on to London, you will be able to see in the fashion galleries at the Victoria &Albert Museum this fretwork silk and cotton mini-dress by Meadham Kirchhoff. The dress features a series of childish broderie anglaise ballerinas, a motif that contrasts with the sexy and provocative silk and sequins brassiere and knickers that can be seen through the gaps in the dress.

The Theatre and Performance Galleries at the V&A will instead provide glimpses of real ballerina costumes, such as the black tutu with gold lamé and braid decorations designed by Nicholas Georgiadis and worn by Margot Fonteyn as Odile in "Swan Lake", performed at the Vienna Ballet at the State Opera House in 1964.

While in more traditional tutus the classical "plate" shape was designed to show off the dancer's technique without inhibiting movements, this tutu is an example of the style of the 1960s and early 1970s, and features a skirt that softens into a gentle droop. This line suited Fonteyn at that late stage of her career.

At the centre front the tutu features a decoration of stylised foliage, made of beige net stiffened at the edges with gold braid and studded with pearl drops, but the costume designer respected the traditions when it came to the decorative elements around the waist area: since the ballerina's partner usually has to support her and too many appliqued elements may end up cutting or hurting his hands, decorations were reduced around the hips. Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev (who choreographed the ballet) were a huge success in the performance, receiving 49 curtain calls on the first night.

On the background in the same picture you can instead see the costumes for Michael Clark's "Because We Must", first staged at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1987. Featuring music ranging from Chopin to Bruce Gilbert, the performance included outrageously irreverent costumes by Leigh Bowery that were also displayed during the 2011 "Postmodernism" exhibition at the V&A.

Based on a clubbing outfit that Bowery wore, the costumes (used in a performance on the notes of "Venus in Furs" by the Velvet Underground) were made by Paris-based corsetier Mr Pearl (Mark Erskine-Pullin), who made sure the corseted look still allowed the dancers freedom of movement.

The male costume was worn by Leslie Bryant while Lisa Philips wore the femal version: both the costumes featured crewel work of flowers, with pink, orange, gold and green sequins and fetishistic masked cloaks. Pink satin fabric lined the costumes and the male costume included a padded codpiece covered with pink sequins, while the female costume featured a short cape and the bodice included exaggerated puffed out sleeves.

The last example is instead a pink tutu (1966) for Suzanne Farrell in George Balanchine's ballet "Bugaku", designed and made by Barbara Karinska. The costume - given to the V&A by Cecil Beaton - featured kimono sleeves and a skirt made with petals inspired by the overall Japanese theme of the ballet.

The costume was worn in the wedding scene of the ballet with a long, diaphanous cloak and also included a Japanese style female wig of heavily lacquered black woven horsehair cloth trimmed with various small ornaments and two hairpins.

In the background in same display case you can see a poster from 1897 showing the acrobatic act The Flying Zedoras with Pansy Chinery as "Alar the Human Arrow". Pansy (note the little arrow on her head), who travelled with Barnum and Bailey's Circus in those years, is pictured as she flies through the air piercing a paper target. Looks like there's more than just one inspiration behind ballerina costumes then!

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Of Bards, Dancers and...Costumes

Quite a few events in the last few months and weeks celebrated the 400th year since William Shakespeare's death. Most events were actually new performances of Shakespeare's plays. Yet there are other ways to rediscover the bard and maybe keep on celebrating him also today (he was born, or rather baptised, on 26th April 1564 and died on 23rd April 1616), for example via ballet costumes, like this one on display in the Theatre and Performance Galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Designed in 1977 by Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino and made by Mathilde Sandberg, this waist-length doublet was worn by Romeo in Rudolf Nureyev' Romeo and Juliet for the London Festival Ballet. The production won at the time the inaugural Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement of the Year in the "Ballet" category.

Inspired by paintings from the 14th and 15th century, the light-green silk velvet doublet was decorated with silver braids, painted motifs and appliquéd fabrics and sequins and matched with an apparent undershirt (the white silk sleeves and gathered collar are indeed attached to the main garment giving the illusion the dancer was wearing a slashed brocade doublet).

As with many ballet productions of Romeo and Juliet the costumes for the opposing factions were colour-coded with the Montegues appearing in green and white and the Capulets in shades of red and pink with white. The doublet looks as if it were abruptly cut around the waist but there's a reason for that: Nureyev always liked to keep costumes as brief as possible to allow complete freedom of movement.

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Book Alert: Cruising Through the Louvre by David Prudhomme (NBM Publishing)

If you have recently visited a museum where there are no special restrictions and visitors are allowed to take as many pictures of the works on display as they want, you have probably also witnessed funny moments of complete silliness. It is indeed not uncommon seeing visitors interacting with the works, using them as backgrounds for a selfie or maybe trying to camouflage themselves in a life-size bas relief. But while you may have just seen them, author David Prudhomme actually turned them into the main protagonists of a lovely graphic novel.

Cruising Through the Louvre (NBM Publishing) is actually not a conventional graphic novel, it could indeed be defined as a poetic postcard the author wrote to the Louvre and its visitors.

At the beginning of the story, Prudhomme is looking for his lost girlfriend Jeanne, or maybe that's just an excuse to walk through the museum at a quick pace in his baggy clothes and massive fur cap. First the author seems interested in admiring a Rembrandt self-portrait, but then he switches his attention onto visitors and starts recombining the art and the people together in his mind and on the paper. Paintings and statues soon become amazing props for a giant comic book in which Prudhomme is living, while his visit turns into a voyeuristic exercise in watching people.

The author – taking the role of museum flâneur – sees a man behind the Seated Scribe, as if attempting to read over his shoulder; a tourist snaps a photo of an old warrior's genitals; in the hall of antiquities, several visitors place their heads in a lion's mouth or stand behind a beheaded statue to create funny optical illusions and randomly hybrid combinations of animate/inanimate figures. In the meantime, the Mona Lisa smiles her eternal smile and gets photographed by hundreds of camera phones.

Quite often the gestures, look or positions of the visitors mirror the actions portrayed in a specific artwork: a group of visitors sitting on a bench in front of Théodore Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa" uncannily looks as if they were part of the painting; a guide lifts a finger in imitation of St. John the Baptist in Leonardo da Vinci's painting; a Spanish speaking guide carrying in her hand what looks like a red feather duster calls to mind Marianne raising the French flag in Eugène Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People", a painting commemorating the July Revolution of 1830; couples kiss or sit next to bride and groom sarcophagi, while a teacher reading to a group of kids stands in front of a picture of the Virgin Mary surrounded by angels.

Prudhomme doesn't make fun of these visitors, because he knows that they are snapping pictures since they have finally found not something they like but something to lose themselves in. Besides, every now and then he portrays people from the point of view of the artworks, wondering for example what Mona Lisa would see if she bothered to look back at all her admirers.

The volume can therefore be considered as an irreverent storytelling experience told through a visual stream of consciousness style that turns the immense Louvre into a wonderful set for great human interaction.

The drawings of the chaotic Louvre are delicate and beautiful, quite often undefined and random, but always surrounded by a dreamy and soft aura, a clever use of lights, planes and perspectives to which the author adds a trademark comical twist.

David Prudhomme has won multiple awards at the Angoulême International Comics Festival and published over two dozen graphic novels in France. This is a special volume since it is actually part of a series of graphic novels commissioned by the Louvre to prominent artists - including The Museum Vaults by Marc-Antoine Mathieu; On the Odd Hours by Eric Liberge; The Sky Over the Louvre by Jean-Claude Carrière and Bernar Yslaire; An Enchantment by Christian Durieux; Glacial Period by Nicolas De Crécy; Rohan at the Louvre by Hirohiko Araki; Phantoms of the Louvre by Enki Bilal, and the soon-to-be released Guardians of the Louvre, by prominent mangaka Jirô Taniguchi - and published by NBM's ComicsLit imprint.

Though Cruising features many famous artworks preserved at the Louvre (and includes a long list at the back, with dates, number of rooms, galleries and even miles of toilet papers used every month at the museum, in case readers want to know more about these details...), it is a light and fun experiment.

Museums looking for new visitors should take example from the Louvre: commissioning exclusive graphic novels set among the works of art on display in a specific institution (imagine also an intriguing story developing among the dummies, garments and accessories of a fashion exhibition...) is indeed a clever way to win the hearts of large numbers of readers and visitors.

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Wataru Tominaga Wins Grand Jury Prize Première Vision at Hyères Festival

The winners of the 31st edition of the International Festival of Fashion and Photography at Hyères were just announced, revealing that the Grand Jury Prize Première Vision went to Japanese designer Wataru Tominaga.

A Central Saint Martins graduate, Tominaga switched studies, moving from Print to Fashion Design, producing last year a series of multi-coloured menswear designs for his graduate collection.

In his designs that charmed the Hyères Jury he mixed shapes, patterns and colours, coming up with oversized and distorted garments in mismatching shades such as plissé sleeveless jackets and shirts quite often decorated with white, blue, red, yellow and green flocked stripes.

Fashion-wise not all the pieces in the collection actually looked too convincing, especially when you analysed their unconventional volumes, but Tominaga seems to have an eye for bright patterns and quite often proceeds with the modus operandi of a painter or a graphic artist's rather than a designer's.

Layering was one of the main techniques employed in this collection, but the main inspiration came from a mix of images from the '60s, '70s and '80s showing multi-coloured skiwear, garments in fluorescent colours and patterned knits.

The most interesting thing about the collection was indeed the fact that the designer created his textiles using elastic tapes to gather and manipulate his fabrics, reuniting a machine-made aspect (printed patterns) with a handmade techique (the surface texture).

For what regards the other fashion awards, the Chloé Prize and the Honourable Mention from the Jury went to Hanne Jurmu & Anton Vartiainen, while Amanda Svart won the Public Award City of Hyères; for the photography section, the Grand Jury Prize went to Vendula Knopovà, Anaïs Boileau won instead the Public Award City of Hyères.

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Between Utopia and Dystopia, a Glimpse of Tomorrow: MA Material Futures' "Provocating Futures", CSM, London

Quite often while examining detailed reports about the luxury industry, you find yourself reading about expensive materials such as soft leathers and rare animal skins employed to make extremely beautiful products. But what would happen if in (a not so) distant future these products were made with a very special material, entirely cultivated from an individual's skin cells?

Could we actually tattoo a biker jacket or wear a rucksack scattered with freckles and moles? This is the disturbing and slightly dystopian key question behind "Pure Human" a project by Tina Gorjanc, part of the MA Material Futures programme at Central Saint Martins, London. The project was showcased during Milan Design Week at the independent Ventura Lambrate event.

This two year masters course has gone from strength to strength, pushing students to take materials (and materiality...) as the starting points of their design projects, explore craft, science and technology and actively re-think the future.

This year the students worked around one theme – "Provocating Futures" – but the projects analysed a wide range of topics, from climate change and renewable resources to the future of medical care, migration, digital citizenship and the potential of synthetic biology.

Quite a few students looked at innovative ways of recycling materials and preserving our planet, coming up with excellent results. Collaborating with a professional rope maker and a spinner, Sanne Visser created extremely resistant nets made of a very unusual material, hair; Audrey Speyer's "Purifungi" kit is designed instead to clear and decontaminate industrial waste polluting the earth.

Dew Apilada Vorachart suggested reusing corn-husk fibres to manufacture panels for construction, reducing in this way air pollution caused by burning corn waste in Northern Thailand, while Mi Zhang moved from the amounts of dust produced in quarries and stone working industries in China to generate a new biodegradable material, a mix of marble dust, pine resin and natural local pigments that can be used for a wide range of applications in the construction industry (but it would be amazing to see if this material could be used for accessories such as avant-garde jewellery as well...).

Some students were fascinated by issues linked with sustainability and food/food cycles: Bonnie Pierre-Davis wondered through a collection of yellow accessories what would happen if farmers in Afghanistan harvested saffron rather than poppies and if the textile industry would start employing this spice a lot as a dye.

Hanan Alkouh went as far as creating an alternative narrative around the concept of a new type of meat made from Dulse, a type of seaweed growing along the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines that, when it gets fried, tastes like bacon; Inês Marques developed a plan to encourage Portuguese fishermen to grow and nurture phytoplankton to support the sardine industry.

The huge-pasta shapes made using debris and rubble from terrible disasters such as the earthquake in L'Aquila, are instead conceived as a provocation by Valentina Coraglia who bitterly comments in this way about waste management in Italy and the corruption behind it.

Creating objects that can actively help us in our lives is the theme at the core of some of the projects exploring the possibilities of medical care and introducing solutions to specific health issues.

Wondering what kind of impacts the NHS privatisation will have on childbirth, Anne Vaandrager, put together a special Birth Box that allows to have all the necessary instruments and instructions you need to conduct a birth at home, while Zannah Cooper worked on creating an art installation that can improve a cancer patients' experience of the waiting room.

"Phantom Sensations" by Niloufar Esfandiary is instead a post-amputation rehabilitation tool and system divided in three phases ('Healing', 'Movement' and 'Stimulation') that helps preventing the occurrence of phantom limb pain.

Students inspired by biotechnology tried to push the boundaries of their design practice: as seen above, Tina Gorjanc questioned issues such as production, manufacturing and ethics by suggesting that engineered human tissue could inform a new luxury market and, to this purpose, she displayed sample-like products alongside samples of elephant and reptile skins.

Giulia Tomasello speculated about the possibilities of microencapsulating targeted bacteria in a non-woven fabric and wear the probiotics that keep our body healthy in clothes and accessories that support our skin flora.

Inspired by human modification technologies, Lesley-Anna Daly wondered if we can enhance each of the five senses and integrated sensory augmentation devices in organs to hear the sounds and noises generated by them and understand better our health and wellness, tracking physiological health data.

The most striking thing about this year's MA Material Futures students is that they mainly move from real social, medical, political (Katy Shand designed a sort of floating tent representing a speculative independent sea state - Solas - where displaced people may form new financial opportunities) and economical issues and, while some of the projects start with a rather bizarre hypothesis and may end up remaining at the conceptual level or in the theoretical realm, others could be improved and put into practice to generate a better future. All the projects push anyway the boundaries in many different disciplines.

In the last two weeks we have looked at events and showcases revolving around the development of new materials: maybe the next exhibition about fashion, materials, manufacturing processes, and technology, should have a section integrating some of these intriguing design projects. In the meantime, don't be sad if you missed the MA Material Futures display at Ventura Lambrate: you will still have a chance to admire them at the CSM Degree Show in London from 13th to 26th June.