- What major historical point does your project make?
The project will relate to the larger theme of the transformation of consumer society and the transformation of the body that took place during the Enlightenment that cut across classes (I do not wish to discount the important role that the presence of servants played in these rooms, nor do I wish to discount and the innovations of their costumes). My aim is the get the people and their clothes back in their rooms, as the clothes are to be given a pride of place as much as the furniture is in the Tessé room.
- How do you intend to express your point visually?
With my project, I would like to digitally counteract the dull qualities of the museum period rooms by introducing the viewer to the users of the space. By placing bodies in the space, the three-dimensionality of the space will be revealed. Revealing the size of the costume in comparison to the space will be an eye-opening experience for many (for example, the size of the skirts of the costumes would fill up all of the space by the desks).
- What digital means do you intend to use?
I can first experiment with placing the clothing (with images of it on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s mannequins) onto actual images of bodies (sourced through stock photos) and make sure that the period details are correct. This could easily be done using Photoshop, which I have past experience with. The next major step would be to then populate images of the period rooms with these figures. I could project the Photoshoped figures and their clothing three-dimensionally using Rhino3d (which I have some prior experience with) and do my best to place them within a Panorama (or SketchFab 3D Scanned) image of the room.
I am very excited about the opportunities for collaboration between other groups and members of my own group, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the final product of our combined efforts.
I hope you all have lovely Spring Breaks.
Best,
Samina
This is a fantastic project and I think you have some good ideas for ways to get started. Here are a few thoughts and ideas for the digital aspect, especially considering you have experience with Rhino:
1. If you haven’t spent time on the website already, I would encourage you to spend some time looking at the Met’s online collection and to use their search functions to find images of clothing from the period (there are already some images of clothing on mannequins). http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search?ft=
2. One question I have is about how you will choose the clothing that you want to place in the room–certainly one of the most important factors is your own interest in particular pieces of clothing. You might also want to have some other ways of choosing pieces, such as trying to incorporate clothing at different scales. There are many smaller pieces such as scarves, purses, fans, and slippers that people wore or used along with objects at a larger scale, such as dresses, robes, or waistcoats.
3. I suggest that you start your project by experimenting with the workflow you outlined using Photoshop, but also try another workflow that is more focused on Rhino. What you could quickly do is make a rectangular room in Rhino using a rough estimate of the Tessé Room’s dimensions. Then, you could try to model a piece of clothing. This might be slightly harder than projecting the clothing into the room using Photoshop, but I think it will give you tremendous insight into some of the processes of clothing manufacturing and will give you far more control over the way you consider the clothing in three dimensional space.
You have a few options with modeling the clothing. One idea I had is that you could digitally construct these panniers–it would be amazing to see the structured panniers on a figure in the rectangular volume of the room. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/139668?rpp=30&pg=3&rndkey=20150320&ft=*&when=A.D.+1600-1800&where=France&what=Costume&pos=64
Or, you could start with something smaller such as this hand screen. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/229070?rpp=30&pg=3&rndkey=20150320&ft=*&when=A.D.+1600-1800&where=France&what=Costume&pos=89
Another option is that you could find patterns, such as these waistcoast panels, and model them. This would be slightly different from what you are outlining, but is another way to study the three dimensionality of the clothing. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/87677?rpp=30&pg=3&rndkey=20150320&ft=*&when=A.D.+1600-1800&where=France&what=Costume&pos=75