Close
Developing and digitising skilled touch: Ethnographic observations on garment designers
12 January 2023, 12:30 pm–1:30 pm
Join this event to hear Douglas Atkinson draw on his recent research to talk about developing and digitising skilled touch.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Ned Barker
Fashion design education is experiencing rapid digitisation, reducing the historic focus on physical making derived from trade school and apprenticeship-based training.
This has led to circulating narratives of skills loss which are largely unsupported, as little prior research has focussed on the development and use of skilled touch in this context.
This seminar presents the outcomes of an ethnographic study of student and professional garment designers’ touch practices and their in-situ engagement with touch-sensing textile ‘probes’ as prompts to explore touch digitisation.
The novel diffractive attention to touch employed by the study will be discussed, along with the resulting insights into designers’ touch and its communication, leading to the proposal of a theoretical Framework of Garment Designers’ Felt Enskillment.
Finally, possibilities for digitally capturing and sharing the observed forms of touch will be highlighted, as a means to support or develop physical skills and understandings in digital design spaces.
This event will be particularly useful for designers, researchers and education policy makers.
Related links
About the Speaker
Dr Douglas Atkinson
He conducts research into our bodily and sensory experience of digital garment design practices and virtual textiles. He has often worked in interdisciplinary teams of designers, computer scientists, social scientists and psychologists.
More about Dr Douglas Atkinson