NEW
In collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, this Speculative Futures project seeks to answer the HACKMASTERS brief asking
“What will the Future of Fashion look like ?”
In a future where water has become scarce, emerging government policy and rationing has subsequently shut down the fashion industry due to its rapid depletion of resources over the last few decades. It has left forests razed, landfills mountainous, and the ground upheaved and barren in its wake.
Project NEW, a government owned technology company, has introduced a clothing distribution system that reads an individuals brain waves and vitals, combining them with their consumer habits, preferences and tastes, in order to provide suitable clothing articles that are adequate for the person, but most importantly, the environment.
After agreeing to the terms and conditions, a user’s personal data is taken to train the system's LLM which begins recommending the user items of clothing based on the latest data registry of their needs and desires.
The surveillance and lack of privacy seen in the video may feel dystopian, but it has become increasingly normalised for us to share our personal data in exchange for access to online platforms and social media networks.
Project NEW is an intelligent rationing system aiming to reduce the amount of clothes produced, and therefore the waste, by narrowing down the number of choices made available to the users. With the AI only recommending what it knows you want to see, it becomes easy to forget that your choices are limited and have already been pre-determined by the government.
Project NEW is not just a look into the future, it is a distortion of what is currently happening.
The machine displays the allocated clothing catalog to the users, with the price of the garment being proportional to the length of the supply chain between the person and item. This means that locally made items are significantly cheaper to obtain than important ones.
Project NEW recognises that creating sentimental ties with what we own can help cure the overconsumption which causes all this pollution and waste.
What we wear can change how we feel, how we act and affect how we think about ourselves. If clothes are so powerful, who holds the power over what we wear?
… then, he who holds power over what we wear holds power over us.
At this point, is there anything which we would not give to get what we want?
Meet the Team
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Matthew Su
Design, Innovation & Creative Engineering
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Nicolás Gil
Design, Innovation & Creative Engineering
