Fashion designer and UQAM professor Ying Gao has developed two dresses that illuminate themselves, but only while you’re paying attention to them.
Inspired by an essay entitled “Esthétique de la disparition” (The aesthetic of disappearance) by Paul Virilio, the dresses work by way of including sections of photo-luminescent thread as well as an imbedded eye-tracking technology that is activated only by the gaze of the spectator.
While it has been said that a photograph can be “spoiled” by blinking eyes, these garments were made with that thought in mind as they only really exist while they are being viewed.
When you’re not paying attention, they fade to black.
Absence often occurs at breakfast time – the tea cup dropped, then spilled on the table being one of its most common consequences. Absence lasts but a few seconds, its beginning and end are sudden. However closed to outside impressions, the senses are awake. The return is as immediate as the departure, the suspended word or movement is picked up where it was left off as conscious time automatically reconstructs itself, thus becoming continuous and free of any apparent interruption.
(Image: Dezeen)
