r aw
2015 Fashion & Lifestyle Trend Forecast
In RAW, we encounter the hyperreal. We see the seams of an encoded reality – beckoning numbers and letters, mad ciphers and symbols. We are linked; at times, hyper-connected to the machines of our own making. Self-designed, self-magnifying systems that amplify the noise of our everyday details. The din of data culture grows deafening. In our quest to control and understand reality, we break it down and we bleed information.
Rough edges, tassels and texture are made real with oversized, gilded accessories. Fabrics are heavy. We alternate structure with softness – layering one atop the other, creating a physical archive of the Data we carry.
R/ EMOTE
The coarse noise of the city is suffocating. We move against strong waves of urban sound; technology’s recurrent smart tones and ringtones booming as we quicken our strides to steady the beat. The landscape is grey, punctuated by small pockets of organic life and lost ritual. Unable to slacken the feverish pace of our hearts and minds, we plunge deeper into the matrices of a mechanized reality.
As we move further and further into the 21st century and “Big Data” seems to loom around every corner, philosopher and feminist, Gayatri Spivak, writes about globalization and information: The most pernicious presupposition today is that globalization has happily happened in every aspect of our lives. Globalization can never happen to the sensory equipment of the experiencing being except insofar as it always was implicit in its vanishing outlines. Globalization takes place only in capital and data. Everything else is damage control. We are inundated with data. Quite literally, so to speak, as we absorb, process and interpret physical and emotional stimuli. Data is nothing new. Being able to collect – and make sense of – large quantities of data however, is where innovation occurs. Making data “talk” is the objective here; we must learn how to manipulate data in order to make it useful. In some ways, negotiating the future of Big Data is akin to producing topographical maps of the world. As maps measure distance, mark rivers, draw deserts and oceans, Big Data maps the terrain of the virtual world, gathering digital footprints in order to reconstruct everything from new trends in consumer behavior to loopholes in national security.
Š 2015 Beth Lauck What Next