The final component of SEEN ON SCREEN’s creation process comes from the algorithms in our atelier.

The first of its kind, DRAUP integrates both digital textiles and garment design into a generative system to produce a new kind of unique, digital object that sits on the border of fashion and art.

So, what is generative production, and what does it mean for fashion?

WHAT IS GENERATIVE CREATION?

Usually associated with computer art, a generative creative process consists of a pre-coded system, which with the help of chance, produces multiple unique outputs where new and unexpected things emerge.

With similarities and differences between the outputs, each piece is understood in relation to another, as examples of a greater work. The thread that ties the pieces together — that which makes a collection — is just as much the work of art as the individual piece.

WHAT DOES A GENERATIVE SYSTEM MEAN FOR FASHION?

For centuries Paris couturiers have created garments which are both unique and tailored to clients, and at the same time part of a wider brand. In the context of fashion, a generative approach to creation does just that — it reforms the relationship between a single garment and its collection.

By producing outputs that are both one-of-a-kind and an expression of a wider collection — the generative system mirrors the couture model; each piece is unique yet tied to its contemporaries with a shared algorithmic thread.

DRAUP enlists the generative process to create digital garments which possess this additional complex creative face — one which is defined by process as much as product. More than just clothes, the collection becomes part of the wider movement of generative art making, infusing each output with the conceptual and historical background which lies behind the artform.

SEEN ON SCREEN

The collection’s generative creation process works on the level of 2D (its garments’ patterns) as well as 3D (its garments’ form)

SEEN ON SCREEN’s garments are made up of a series of digital layers. Its generative production process revolves around those layers. So, how each layer is combined, how they lay over each other, determines all of the garments’ characteristics: its moiréed pattern, its shape, its folds, its materials, its cut, its color etc.

To determine each characteristic, the generative system randomizes the layers (their qualities, their relationship to each other, etc.) to produce multiple different layer combinations. And, from those different combinations, not only are the collection’s unique moiréed prints produced, but also its unique 3D fashion characteristics:

GENERATIVE TEXTILES: A PATTERN, BY CHANCE

Moiré patterns often occur serendipitously. As you pass by a fence or TV screen, occasionally it all lines up to produce an optical show. SEEN ON SCREEN’s long-form generative process mimics the conditional nature of real life moiré patterns.

Just like the layers on screens, the garments’ layers’ qualities — their alignment, scale, pattern, distance and rotation — all affect how and if the moiré emerges. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. 

Chance, within set parameters, determines each layers’ characteristics. And out of those characteristics, each garment’s unique moiré print emerges.

GENERATIVE GARMENTS: A ONE-OF-A KIND PIECE

SEEN ON SCREEN’s generative process brings a unique 3D design to every moiréed textile.

Textures, forms, panelling, and crop — the parameters of the collection’s design elements are carefully crafted to then be implemented by chance. This produces immense variation across the garments, but all under the same creative principles.

Some design variables, like “materials”, produce subtle differences between garments, whereas others, like “panelling”, can create vast variations across even a single garment type.

Let’s dig into two…

1. DESIGN VARIABLE: PANELS

The garments in this collection are built with a panelling structure. This design feature “panelling” consists of flat, folding or shattered material which makes reference to the collection’s screen-spawned origins. To create variation in the panelling across a single garment type, a system was created which uses a box and a Voronoi fracture.

Voronoi fractures are normally used to simulate something shattering. They algorithmically replicate the pieces that would result from a blow.

In this collection, the Voronoi fracture node algorithm uses a box’s shape as an input to define the garment panels. By moving the vertices of the box with a point jitter, different panelling emerges. In each iteration, the point jitter seed changes to determine the shape of the box and, in turn, the shapes that are projected onto the body of the garment.

These panelling shapes are duplicated within the algorithm. One branch uses the panelling to determine material assignment and the other is converted into curves/lines to create stitching lines.

Importantly, the expression of this trait is different across different garment types.

In our dress, the panels are expressed more like shattered pieces than flat ones.

And, much like our tops, in the dress, the panels are always contained within the borders of the garment. The fracture lines are determined, but the overall shape of the garment stays the same. This is not the case with the hat.

Panelling, in the hat, looks a lot different. Here, the panels entirely reshape each hat’s structural shape.

Using a mountain node which deforms an object through a 3D noise pattern, the hat’s panelling is made to be wildly different in each output through the noise offset ie. controlling where noise deforms the object.

Much like the panelling system of other garments, the mountain function is made variable through the offset property inside the mountain node. This results in the random emergence of different shapes appearing in different places.

2. DESIGN VARIABLE: COLOUR

The moiré pattern is susceptible to colour. If there's not enough contrast between the colours of the interfering layers, it won’t appear. Therefore, in order to create our garments’ colour system, we quickly learnt the need to fix the relationships between the colours’ level scale and saturation. So, to discover new colour variations, that relationship needed to remain fixed whilst the hues were shifted.

The collection is made up of 6 fixed colour settings:

1. Harmonics

2. Inverse

3. Aberration

4. Printed

5. Disparity

6. Greyscale

Unlike in other collections our palettes don’t prescribe a specific set of colours for the garments. Instead, they prescribe a colour relationship, a fixed setting, that will encourage a moiré pattern to emerge from the layers as opposed to scare it away.

Within each colour setting option, the garment colours are then chosen from a long list of colours (hue shifts) which work within that relationship.

Ultimately, SEEN ON SCREEN’s generative process weaves chance into each of the collection’s properties to produce unique design variations —  2D and 3D, dimensional and abstract — across  every garment.

SEEN ON SCREEN drops @ 9AM ET on April 25th. Follow DRAUP on Twitter, join our Discord and sign up for the allowlist