Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2023 - 17

Exhibited in the [UN]Common Design Project by students at the National Taiwan University Department of Drama and Theatre. | Photo by Adéla Vosičková, Prague
Quadrennial 2023.
informed her of possibilities. However,
she did not understand how the choreographer
and dancers might respond to her
work and create something unforeseen.
Dean and Hudek broke through traditional
hierarchical structures with these
projects.
Dr. Simona Rybáková (Czechia), Dóra
Halas (Hungary), Juli Balázs (Hungary),
and Fruzsina Nagy (Hungary) also broke
barriers with their project Eastern Bloc
catwalk concert. Designers and musician
Hálas generated their own story via
costume exploration; the collaborators
were designers, directors, storytellers,
and writers. The project was born during
the war in Ukraine with Communist oppression
looming as a concerning threat
to Eastern Europe. They began their collaboration
on Zoom with plans to create
a site-specific performance. They also
wanted to work with younger people who
had not personally experienced living under
Communist rule, and Nagy's students
were brought onto the project. The site of
the original performance was the image
rich Memento Park, a Budapest graveyard
of defunct Communist monuments.
The show was performed in an invented
false spoken language based on common
words in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and
Slovak. The visual content, which was simultaneously
frightening, powerful, and
humorous, was paraded down a catwalk
and supported by gorgeous acapella singing,
some spoken text, and evocative projections.
A portion of the entire piece was
performed at Divadlo X in Prague during
the PQ, and its inventiveness, biting humor,
and costume-driven storytelling was
met with resounding audience enthusiasm.
This piece demonstrated that artistic
collaborators without the traditional hierarchical
structure led by a director can
create a cohesive, focused, and highly successful
work.
Digital Technology
Throughout the PQ, the uses of technologies
old, new, and renewed were
discussed and demonstrated. For some
practitioners, the presence of ecoscenography
is gently moving into the frontloaded
calculus of design considerations.
Environmental awareness can sometimes
lead us back to older (and perhaps lost)
forms of technology, such as natural dying
or newer inventions such as edible/compostable
costumes and scenery. Some
uses of electronic digital technologies can
also conserve physical resources, saving
time, money, and perhaps even having
an environmental impact. The moral and
economic implications of the use of AI in
digital creation of costumes is only now
coming to a general cultural awareness;
the ownership of the creation of AI material
is in current debate, and it will likely
have longstanding legal implications for
artists.
The Marvelous Designer software
workshop conducted at DAMU by designer,
researcher, and author Dr. Maarit
Kalmakurki (Finland) demonstrated an
expanded design process, as well as the
possibility of conservation as a byproduct
of digital design. Marvelous Designer is
one of the current industry-standard digital
tools for animation costume design;
the program is used in gaming, animated
feature films, and television. Kalmakurki
expertly walked participants through an
all-day hands-on workshop that explored
the many features and tools of the program.
Essentially, Marvelous Designer allows
the artist to draw a flat pattern piece
in one screen and then the pattern piece is
automatically sent to the body of an avatar
in another adjacent screen. The designer
can manipulate the pattern pieces to
change the way they drape on the avatar.
The program cannot be reversed in process:
drawing the design and then developing
the flat pattern. The design must come
from the flat pattern drawing. Hence, students
in the workshop with costume construction
and physical flat patterning skills
worked with more facility than students
who had little or no knowledge of patterning
and draping. The designer can " sew "
the pattern pieces together on the avatar,
and this process joins the pieces, uniting
FALL 2023 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | 17

Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2023

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