About the Exhibition

Textiles have over centuries been repositories of narrative, histories, and the creative encoding of cultural identities. With digital media, the creative possibilities have been dramatically extended as textiles are renewed and reinvented as sites of communication, knowledge, innovation, and creativity in and among cultures. Not only are global networks providing entry for ethnic communities who have long been marginalized if not excluded from the monolithic narrative of “globalization”, it is the textiles themselves that are playing dynamic new roles in contemporary society. As globalization is increasingly a collection of locals, the textiles of the world’s diverse cultural communities and their associated histories, heritage (including historical textiles), cosmologies, and memories are serving as a form of physical-digital metadata for the intensely creative and quickly growing field of wearable technologies, and emerging genres of the creative arts that comprise material-digital culture worldwide.

Clothing is often regarded as an outer skin that has social, psychological and physical functions (Bolton, 2002). With technology, such functions can be amplified and go beyond needles and threads. Artists and designers around the world are actively embedding technologies into clothing to produce new interactive interfaces that connect technology with fashion, human beings, and the environment.

Sense and Sensuality celebrates new creative approaches that bring artists and designers together with engineers, scientists, and scholars from other fields. This exhibition examines how technology is being used to interact with our body, cultures and surroundings, and engage our senses and expand our sensibility.

Artists participating in this exhibition comprise faculty, students and alumni from ADM, and leading artists from Singapore and Southeast Asia, the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The exhibition is divided into five areas including craft, form, function, expression, and dimension in relation to technology.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Biju Dhanapalan, Robert B. Epp, Phoebe Lim, Richard Loveless, Muhammad Mustajab Bin Mohamad, Mark Ong, Vladimir Todorovic, Nagaraju Thummanapalli, Christine Veras, Roy Wang, and the ADM IT and AV Staff for their assistance and dedication. Thanks also to NTUitive, the NTU Museum, the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), the Centre for Asian Art and Design (CAAD), the Frank Lloyd Wright School – Taliesin West (Arizona), Arizona State University (ASU), the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM), and to all participating artists and students for their generosity and dedication to making this exhibition possible.