Flora Miranda has made it her duty to research the internet and come up with astonishing collections, discussing developments in technology, while developing new technologies herself.
Lalaland Collection
The Lalaland collection is part of a process of teaching computers how garments work: in this specific work, Flora Miranda teaches machines what erotic clothing is, covering different niches of human sexuality.
The collection presents her work-in-progress, the status quo of her research on erotics, machine-learning and the internet. The designer is using a technique based on a tulle-method which allows her to draw cyber-romantic silhouettes.
Unlike in her last collection, not the dresses themselves are computer-generated, but some of the textile patterns.
Contemporary fashion designed and made in Austria is the focus of the first comprehensive major exhibition on Austrian fashion design.
A time travel through fashion design in all its facets from the 1980s until today shows the wide spectrum of designers who are from Austria, work here, or were educated here in fashion.
Embedded into a spectacular, spatial installation by architect Gregor Eichinger, SHOW OFF: Austrian Fashion Design makes the artistic work of creative disciplines tangible on multiple levels in the context of fashion.
Fashion as an object in the form of an item of clothing is presented by significant fashion statements by approximately 60 designers from the past four decades.
Flora Miranda designed a system whereby the computer can itself design items of clothing. the designer created a database of fifty 3D scanned silhouettes that the software can use.
The computer can thus design new items of clothing based on various elements from archived pieces. Miranda chose the theme of eroticism because fashion is primarily about sexual attractiveness – either directly or indirectly.
Using elements from fifty items of clothing, the number of possible combinations is relatively extensive. Nevertheless, there is always a chance that digitally designed clothing is very ugly, but this is a risk that Miranda is willing to take.
After all, it is all about experimentation. The intention is to create databases of millions of items of clothing so that the computer can combine almost every possible form, colour or material.
Flora Miranda Lalaland collection portrays the possibility of fashion created completely independently by artificial intelligence creating. what Miranda Calls “computer generated fashion“.
According to Miranda, these kinds of automated systems in no way threaten human creativity. The human interventions and contributions are simply shifted from designing to programming.
Miranda is convinced that both disciplines ultimately have a great deal in common. Designing is likewise a process that requires concerted and systematic planning. Just like in programming, every creative process is characterized by fixed stages.
Moreover, writing code can be very creative work. After all, it is writing in order to create. Although the computer calculates and constructs, humans continue to determine the contours within which the computer can do so.
Humans direct the computer. This method is in fact very similar to the modus operandi of the contemporary ‘creative director’ — the coordinator of a design department.
He or she determines the direction but does not develop anything personally; that is what the employees do. The director then checks the assistants’ output and corrects it where necessary.
The director separates the wheat from the chaff and determines the definitive result. Miranda aims to shape the future. But it will most probably be digital. Each new project and each new collection bring us one step closer to the complete automation of fashion.
On the other hand, she is very conscious of the fact that many people fear these kinds of systems, which lack any human spontaneity. What about artistic freedom? That too shifts to the domain of programming, where it is completely retained.
