Perceiving Dress – Optical Laces

The film Perceiving Dress: Optical Laces is generated from research into sensory and visual perception of dress worn in movement. The dress is the performance site, designed as a tool to extend the experience, perception and physical response of the dancer. The dancers verbal and physical responses to the garment have been analysed and employed to generate the performance and film production.

Clothing worn in movement and dance is understood through touch (or touch like processes) that includes visual, physical and perceptual investigation in the moment of wearing. The research explores how this knowledge can inform a more experiential communication with wearers and viewers in the production of short clothing lead films.

Understood through lived experience, clothing both conditions and is of the body. The materiality and form of garments and their relationship to the body encourages both physical and mental processing, triggering cognitive processes and physical response. This is further extended through the visuality of clothing and its interpretive qualities. The dress had been designed to enable an analysis of how the body mediates between these aspects in action.

The short film draws on this analysis and has been produced in collaboration between the designer/ art director and film director. It seeks to heighten sensory responses for the viewer by drawing on the dancers experience of the garment in movement. The sound has been specifically developed by two musicians to support this intention. Visually sensory information is highlighted through the edit and the direct relationship between the dancer and the garment. The work demonstrates the potential to explore further this complex dynamic to inform design, performance process and film production.