Digital Costume as 'Sustainable' Costume? Blending Physical and Virtual Bodies

Combining tangible and digital means in the field of costume design by merging live digital content with traditional costume materials opens new possibilities to create evolving performance dramaturgies and unusual bodies. This paper focuses on recent and ongoing explorations from the field of costume design for live and mediated performance that combine physical and virtual tools to design multi-layered characters and costumes. The study analyses experimental works that address questions of virtuality and materiality through the costumed body. Such works explore in practice ways in which the physical meets the virtual, and how art, design, and performance-making blend with digital means through the medium of costume. The combination of analogue materials, digital technology and moving bodies can provide characters and costumes that can change and reshape over time, while also blending physical and virtual bodies. On a theoretical level, the paper addresses the many dimensions and multiple ‘physicalities’ and ‘materialities’ that such costumes offer to the representation of human and non-/super-/post-human bodies and characters. The paper aims to stimulate discussion on how digital tools may evoke new visions for costume design, and whether this carries a sustainability potential.