Invisible man: Literature and the body in design practice

RESEARCH BACKGROUND Currently there is an international community of theorists and practitioners across design and art disciplines that identify the human body as a performative and culturally constituted context for wearing and making artefacts of dress. However, the potential for designing wearable artefacts through studying phenomenological qualities of skin has been largely overlooked. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION The works comprising 'Invisible man: Literature and the body in design practice' include sculptural props and a selection of cast prosthetic appliances that can be temporally applied to the body using special effects makeup techniques. Participants are encouraged to innovate ways of dressing their skin by interacting with the materials and sculptures. This is a critical design strategy for building haptic awareness of skin as an embodied site for designing practices, and for imagining alternative modes of dressing. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE The research demonstrates how design ideas can be generated through haptic play and interaction with temporal wearable artefacts that draw attention to skin as a site for design activity. Its value is attested through selection for an exhibition curated by Li Jönsson, Maarit Makela and Flemming Tvede Hansen at the international Nordes 2013 'Experiments in Design Research: Expressions, Knowledge, Critique' conference (June 9-12, 2013), at KADK, School of Design Copenhagen; the creative work was complemented by a double blind peer-reviewed conference paper that examines strategies for identifying and imagining how skin can function as a situational context for design practice.