About the Author
This website represents the culmination of my time at the University of Texas at Austin receiving my Masters in Media Studies.
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I first began to take an interest in machine-human interactions and relationships in Dr. Sharon Strover's "Communication, Technology, and Culture" class, where I was first introduced to the digital influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela was the start of my thinking about the ways that we integrate machines and technology into our daily lives. In following this line of enquiry, I found myself contemplating the way that in taking a recuperative stance toward technology, and in looking at our images of machines and tech through a queer lens, can reveal new modes of being in the world. I found myself transfixed by the ways that these creations are frequently the backdrop that allow humans a way to imagine a different world and a different self. More often than not, these imaginings take on a distinctly counter-hegemonic sensibility.
Halfway through “Communication, Technology, and Culture” (Spring 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into remote online courses. I’m writing this section on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic. Since then, I’ve completed the majority of my Masters remotely.
Carlings, Limited but Affordable
Carlings released their first collection of digital clothing in November 2018, with pieces ranging from €10 to €30. With 19 different options, customers bought the piece and supplied Carlings with a photo of themselves. Carlings would then edit and size the article of clothing onto the photo. They manipulated it so that it looked like customers were wearing the clothing. After hiring influencers to promote it, the collection sold out in a week. While the collection was a limited run, Carlings now offers the “Last Statement T-shirt," a real t-shirt that allows the wearer to digitally change it’s design with custom filters.
Synthetic Fashion
We waste nothing but data and exploit nothing but our imagination.
-The Fabricant
While Brud remains tight-lipped on exactly how they construct Lil Miquela, digital fashion is on the rise with a number of companies jumping into the game. Most notable are the Scandinavian retailer, Carlings and Amsterdam-based design house, The Fabricant.
The Fabricant, Digital and Couture Fashion
The Fabricant is not for the average consumer. It boasts a number of higher profile collaborations from Tommy Hilfiger to Japanese streetwear brand AAPE+.* The Fabricant’s website is bold, focusing on what they call the “Phygital Experience.” Phygital being the “merging of physical and digital capabilities to create interactive brand experience” (“The Fabricant”). Aside from building “end-to-end 3D narratives” they also heavily focus on digital couture, stating that “this digital-only fashion can be used and traded in virtual realities."
*I highly suggest looking at all of the projects on The Fabricant's site as they go through the entire construction process with each project.
While digital fashion might seem like a hoax, people are spending real money on it. Carlings’ first collection sold out in a week. The Fabricant’s “Iridescence” dress sold for over $9000. Amber Jae Slooten, the Creative Director at Fabricant said the following about the rise of the digital fashion industry:
"A new cult is rising. The digital world is coming and we are no longer bound to physical space.
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Our bodies are becoming fluid, our money decentralized, new powers are being formed. Slowly, we are moving into a non-dual operating system. Intrinsic new patterns are being formed by systems that are closer to our nature by evolving rather than being controlled by a central power. This outfit provides a look into the future.
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What can a body be when it is freed from physical restraints? What does identity mean when there are endless bits and bytes to express it? Connection is what we yearn for, and connection is what will rise now.
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Our frequency is our energy in motion. It provides fluidity of movement, which is what forms this new line. We look for connection in technology. It is our new religion."
-Amber Jae Slooten
Slooten brings up very real interests concerning the merging of humans and machines. In Slooten’s eyes digital fashion seems to be the first step to the eradication of “essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism…” (Hayles 3). These articles of clothing, like Lil Miquela, are “produced by market relations and [do] not in fact predate them” (3). In continuing, N. Katherine Hayles explains this posthuman subject is “a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction.” Miquela is already pushing boundaries in the way that social media is utilized. Miquela is already replicating this sense of constant construction and reconstruction with every Instagram photo/video she takes. The only way she can exist is to be built, every time.
To read more of my posthumanist queer theoretical analysis of Lil Miquela click here.
Deepfakes are also being considered as synthetic media. To read more on deepfakes, click here.