Enclothed Cymatics is a sensory instrument that aims to generate a wearable field of light and sound using the expressive potential of water. The installation brings together a series of projects that explore the challenges of environmental advocacy and responsibility, focusing on the damaging and wasteful uses of water in the fashion industry. The series explores how multi-sensory interaction design might be used to not only intrigue an audience, but also inform participants about how our clothing impacts our environment.
These projects use various technologies such as projection mapping and augmented reality to create 'wearable stories' of garment production and provenance, 'wearable data' in personalised consumer statistics, and finally 'wearable spaces' in the form of an immersive audiovisual environment.
The final work shifts the environmental advocacy from the artists to the medium and allows the small amount of water to impress its range of natural patterns onto the audience and space around them using a series of resonating water lanterns. The presence of the viewer alters the state of the water and the resulting caustic patterns to heighten the sense of our impact on our environment and allow the audience to 'wear' water in a new way.
