Anouk Wipprecht

Visit my blog
Modelmayhem

fashion design | fashion communication | fashiontech

BACKGROUND
Anouk started her fashion education at the age of 14. Her interest in fashion lies in exploring the extent to which we experience fashion (emotional, intellectual and sensual aspects) and how we might be able to accomplish a higher state of connectivity between the body and our clothing. By specialising herself in fashion & technology she started to create little stories about a world where people are looking for both a physical as a psychological connection with their garments, and to design towards this feeling by combining different platforms that can trigger our behavior.

“Fashionable technology refers to the intersection of design, fashion, science, and technology, combined”
[Sabine Seymour]

Through this fascination she started experimenting with combining fashion and technology 3 years ago by attending workshops, and moved for a year to Sweden for the study ‘body, fashion & technology’ at the Malmo university where she worked on Arduino-based application possibilities and smart fabric concepting. Later on she gained deeper knowledge of the fashiontech field by assisting Sabine Seymour in Vienna, Austria. In 2010, she graduated at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, where she collaborates with Aduen Darriba (interaction designer) on the project "Technosensual" by using the narrative of accessories as adaptive organisms, small instalation-like settings that each react in their own way when sensing presence.

In collaboration with studio Roosegaarde and V2_Lab, Anouk will work on Intimacy Black.
She will show on the MQ Vienna Fashion week at the end of September 2010 as part of a 2-month artist in residency in Austria.

"Interesting to see Dutch wearables designers getting dresses to do more of what dresses do — (be provocative)
as opposed to getting dresses to do more of what computers do (blink and beep a lot)."

- Bruce Sterling on Intimacy Black,
at http://www.wired.com

[Biography written by Piem Wirtz | V2 as part of the Summer Session residency]

DESIGN [approach]
“My approach towards design is often based on construction, some people might even call it ‘architectural’. I tend to be fascinated by the architecture of the body, and although I love to work with fabrics and materials I mostly prefer shapes and structures. When designing towards my future mindspins, I abandon my abstract idea’s and focus on a more fragile approach. I like to argue the future fashion of today which is mostly based on massive and protective structures where there is no allowance for fragility. While fabrics get thinner but stronger, the urge for ‘wearable shelters’ (how I would like to call them) will disappear. We will start to design towards the ‘second skin’ notion and ‘making technology fragile’.”

FASHIONTECH [fashion & technology] approach
During 2007 I started to specialize myself in the field of fashion & technology by moving to Sweden to learn about building circuits, electrical engineering, and smart textiles. During this year I had lessons in interaction design and electrical engineering (Arduino platform, conductive materials, and tactile sensory based) and learned about to prototype towards wearable electronics. And while participating in MEDIAMATIC workshops (Amsterdam) gave me a insight into the possibilities of soft circuits, V2 (institute for the unstable media, Rotterdam) now gives me a platform in which I can develop my idea’s with a team of electrical engineers.

My interest floats between reactive and responsive projects, in where reacting would mean sensoring and reacting to human presence by some kind of movement/light/sound, responsive would be a real interaction happening while wearing, approaching or using the design/installation. Most of my narratives are based on topics regarding personal space, embodied experience, hypersensitivity, modern nomad issues and mimicking nature’s capabilities through the notion; we shaped technology, through which technology shapes our world, and by this, technology became an extension of our skin, and as fashion is a system that relies on dramatic changes, future fashion will become more adaptive and transformative within its own stability.

You can see some of the prototypes in my ‘portfolio’ area on the main page, at the moment an working on visuals/movies so I can communicate the actual interaction of the pieces. Since some of the projects that I have been involved in contain concepts for businesses I am unfortunately not allowed to show them on my website. Through this you will find my side-projects featured, and the things that I create for museums and during artist in residency's.

Graduation Thesis
Through my experience and contacts I managed to succeed my thesis in 2010 in the subject of sensitive technology. My aim has been to bring a better understanding to the field of 'senseware' and sensitive electronic garments, through my personal research on the bond that humans already established towards technology and [emotional] design. The study is based on data collected from case studies about interactive design, interviews with artists and designers, observing people exposed to reacting and responsive projects, and literature about cognitive science, psychology and human-tech relations. My curiosity is directed towards finding other ways of experiencing design through touch, smell, taste and sound, but also ‘tactile’ possibilities to create a narrative in the interaction between human and garment, instead of using the aspect of ‘light’ and reacting instead of responsive applications.

INTERNSHIPS
2009 Sabine Seymour | fashiontech - Moondial, assisting, Vienna, Austria
2009 Pitour by Maria Oberfrank | fashion designer, prototype collection, Vienna, Austria
2006 de Theaterschool | dance and costume atelier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2006 Xarina | latex & rubber atelier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2004 Gerritsen | theatre costume department, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

COLLABORATIONS / projects

2010 PSEUDOMORPHS fashiontech, tranformative pieces in collaboration with V2labs [institute for the unstable media] Rotterdam, the Netherlands
2010 INTIMACY Black, smart foil, in collaboration with studio Roosegaarde, Waddinxveen, the Netherlands
2010 TECHNOSENSUAL fashiontech/reactive graduation project in collaboration with Aduen Darriba, Hilversum, the Netherlands
2009 _WOMB short movie (1.22 min) as a critic on the fashion industry | in collaboration with Robert Lunak (visual artist) Vienna, Austria
2008 INFITTABLES final course project (inflatable designs) at K3 / Malmo university on the subject of 'body, fashion & technology', Malmo, Sweden
2008 FRAGILIS fashiontech project in collaboration with Eelke Feenstra | studio zesbaans, Utrecht, the Netherlands
2008 Philips, LUMALIVE, prototyping with flexible displays provided by Philips, the Netherlands
2007 dance CARMINA BURANA | head designer of this performance touring through Holland
2007 PROJECT CATWALK (project runway) designer in the Dutch television show broadcast on RTL5 (episode 1 – 5), Amsterdam, NL
2006 stage outfit designs and backdrops for performance of the band 'TCE' during 2006, Amsterdam, the netherlands

COLLECTIONS
2010 TECHNOSENSUAL collection | 12 piece, release on the 26th of September 2010 during the official Vienna Fashion Week 2010
2008 SIMPLE GIRL VS ROBOT GIRL 8-piece collection based on construction
2008 FRAGILIS 2 piece collection that reacts to each other when in presence of one another.

EXHIBITIONS
2010 INTIMACY Black at the Centraal museum Utrecht during the National Fim Festival, the Netherlands
2010 'BIRDS' designed installation piece for Re:visie | Centraal museum Utrecht during the National Film Festival, the netherlands
2010 TECHNOSENSUAL on HKU expo 'Exposure', Utrecht, the Netherlands
2010 PRETTY SMART TEXTILES expo opening (Fragilis 2.0 prototype) Den Hague, Netherlands
2009 INFITTABLES touring through Scandinavia (Malmo, Stockholm & Copenhagen)
- Form & Design center, Malmö, Sweden (January-March 2009)
- Edviks Konsthall, Sollentuna, Sweden (March-April 2009)
- Dals Langhed, Sundsvall, Sweden (June/Juli 2009)

PUBLICATIONS

2010 BOOK Interactive Landscapes by Daan Roosegaarde [Intimacy] hardcover, October 2010
2010 BOOK Functional Esthetics by Sabine Seymour [Intimacy] hardcover, September 2010
2010 Fashion United magazine, September issue [intimacy + interview]
2009 BOOK '100 jaar mode in Amsterdam' interview on fashiontech, hardcover
2008 BLEND magazine [Fragilis]
2008 BRIGHT magazine [Fragilis]

ARTIST IN RESIDENCY's

2010 MQ Vienna Fashion Week Vienna with TECHNOSENSUAL (artist fee, studio, selling points, show 26th of September)
2010 V2 institute for the unstable media during Summer Sessions for PSEUDOMORPHS, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (artist fee)
2010 studio Roosegaarde on the INTIMACY Black project, Waddinxveen, the Netherlands (artist fee & equipment)

PROJECT CATWALK contestant, 2007
Competition between twelve designers on the show Project Catwalk,
the Dutch version of Project Runway, broadcast on television in 2007.

Project catwalk challenges
Watch the show online