Week 2: Ideation processes with Pablo Garcia Tello¶
The focus of this week was to put our minds in another mindset to generate new ideas and innovations for the future of fashion. During our session, we explored two different methods: creative deconstruction and multiverse thinking.
1- Creative deconstruction¶
Creative deconstruction is an ideation and innovation method using the categorization, deconstruction and reassembling of narratives to generate new ideas and concepts.
What is fashion? It is an experience! An experience can be described by its nature (what type of experience?), context (how the subject is involved) and mode (how the interaction is taking place).
Here is a table allowing us to categorize an experience depending on these 3 parameters.
By creating a narrative and categorizing it, we can then reassemble it in a "wild why not" way and generate new ideas!
Individual focalized rational narrative¶
I love hiking and I'm going on a solo trekking trip for a few days in Switzerland. I recall being really cold sometimes and really cold some other times on my previous trip so for this one, I want to buy myself a thermo regulating shirt. After doing some research on the internet, I found a coat from Colombia that has the best quality/price ratio when comparing to the competitors products from brands like the north face or napapijri...
Now, let's create a "wild why not narrative" out of it.
Why am I not going on a trip organized by the Mars colonization & tourism association ? I am volunteering to go on one of their first trips organized by this new program. For that, what do I need? Why not a shirt to avoid thermic shock from ertion inside the space suit? Why would I use the internet when I can use my human interface. I am going to mars, so price does not really matter, so I can get an expesive and fancy one. Why would I need something durable when I am only wearing it once? I can use a suit that would be biodegradable/flammable when exposed to molecules very specific to earth atmosphere?
The interesting idea that came out of this "wild why not narrative" is the concept of fashion for necessity and protection against climate.
Collective peripheral emotional narrative¶
The Lakers were celebrating their victory over the Miami heat. They decided to extend their trip in Miami. Enjoying the nightlife, beaches and boisterously gaiting down the main boulevards. As they walked down Miami Boulevard — on their way to the club, Club Space — they spotted a store selling high end bucket hats. After having a bit of a laugh over the return of the trend, they recalled how they’d talked about how strange they feel without their team jerseys. They decided as a way to maintain their team spirit — they’d buy a bucket hat and wear it for the duration of the trip. With the loud Miami font on front of their hats, they proudly dowded the hats at the airport on their way home.
Now, let's create a "wild why not narrative" out of it.
Lakers team are not satisfyed with their victory over the Miami heat and want to humiliate them further and sore over them to further elevate their triumph. They decide to order a private jet party with their "Space club jet on demand" app. As they board it, they notice the jet crew is also offering a chip implantation service to store teir memories of the experience and decide as a team to all get implanted with this memory chip. After implantations were complete, they feel the ressurgence of the victory feeling they had felt after the buzzer and spotting the champagne bottles, they each grab one and begin spraying it over the Miami skyline.
The interesting idea that came out of this "wild why not narrative" is the concept of fashion for necessity and protection against climate.
2- Multiverse thinking¶
Concept¶
Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanistics is called the multiverse theory. It says that all events of all choices are going on in parallel universes, so all the stages of an outcome exist at once, just in different universes.
Pablo Gracia Tello came out with the multiverse thinking game for ideation of innovations. The game uses 2 different types of building blocks: social constructs and ressources. Social constructs are ideas created and accepted by people in society, and the ressources are sources of supply or support. They can be measured and have to be able to tie it to a numeric. The social constructs and ressources can either be abundant, absent or scarse. To have more accurate data, we can use the book of statistics "if the world were a village of 100 people".
Then, we ca discuss the combinations of ressources and social constructs and place them in a table depending on their scarcity. We can place a point in the table depending on how things are at the moment and how we thing things will be in the future. Then, we can imagine what technology was developped to go from the present point to the future point, and using all the combinations, make a narrative.
Our example¶
For this exercise, we chose Energy and cotton from the water consumption point of view as a ressource, and chose Fashion for experiences and fashion for protection as social constructs.
Protection is defined as a legal or other formal measure intended to preserve civil liberties and rights. It is the condition or state of being kept safe from injury, damage, or loss. In our case, Protection in Fashion would be for women's self protection, securing assets or environmental resilience.
Experiences are defined as practical contacts with and observation of facts or events. It leaves an impression. Our future definition of Fashion for experiences could include virtual immersive spaces, digital experiences, physical store where fashion experiences can be bought, physical garments that you put on and are immersed in an experience, VR headsets, electronic tattoos...
Final narrative¶
It is 2051. 10 billion people. + 2°C. The elite and the global majority have two diametrically opposed experiences with fashion. Fashion for protection has become paramount for the impoverished global majority, while the minority elites immerse themselves in a constant state of sensuous experiences.
Immersive experiences blending the virtual world with elite estates and oasis events are all the rage. Fashion weeks are virtual, but people continue to gather, see and share each other's looks while participating in digital catwalks. The upper class is thriving, going to those events using VR headsets or immersive rooms, allowing them to attend events regardless of their location in space or time, to live experiences again and go to any place digitally. Those immersive experiences are a dreamstate for those who have access to it — but continue to be a distant dream for those who barely have their basic protections afforded.
Due to the level of poverty, most vulnerable individuals need and seek shelter from climatic and civil unrest. Women have been experiencing a major increase in domestic violence and attacks. Physical attacks are the most visible, however — even the middle class are experiencing digital attacks to their assets at a constant rate.
Cotton, discovered in 5000 BC continues to be used, along with the land use required to sustain it. Fashion companies seeking a ‘Sustainable’ marketing spin since 2020 continue to rely on this resource as the majority of fashion companies can’t afford to replace it with the latest textile innovations. This has amounted to impoverished communities experiencing a devastating lack of drinking water while continuing to require jobs in cotton production.
Access to energy has become, in many respects, paralleled with access to shelter. Due to extreme climatic conditions, the elite sport thermo protective and self cooling clothing, enmeshed with regenerative threads — while the most impoverished communities, who need protection from the elements, namely the sun have the least access to it.
Designers continue to develop physical and digital garments for protective purposes, incorporating shulls for precious belongings, inflatable shelters for vulnerable body parts and even responsive weaponry. Many of these lower end garments continue to be reliant on extreme cotton yields with less functionality.
Methodology learnt at CERN¶
--> To be completed
ATTRACT project: technology to use¶
Attract technology we have to use: Headset mixing augmented reality anf viruality called H3D-Visionair. See the invisible through an AR system that overlays on top of reality to change the view (JARVIS vibe). Final outcome: make a movie. Film some material of stuff at CERN.
pablo.garcia.tello@cern.ch