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Press release
Restaging Fashion: Interactive visualisation of vestimentary sources
The interdisciplinary research and digitisation project "Restaging Fashion" at the UCLAB of the Department of Design has developed explorative approaches to holdings from the Kunstbibliothek Berlin with its collection Modebild - Lipperheideschen Kostümbibliothek and from the collection of textiles of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg (GNM). The resulting visualisation of the collections brings together vestimentary sources in the digital world and creates interactive access for researchers and interested parties. In addition, a visualisation of 3D digitised historical clothing from the Nuremberg collection was created in cooperation with the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History Luxembourg (C?DH). The developed prototypes ReFa-Reader and 3D Stories are freely available to try out.
The project "Restaging' Fashion - Digital Contextualisation of Vestimentary Sources" (2020 - 2023), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and based at the UCLAB of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, was dedicated to the cultural history of clothing, its appearance and symbolism. The starting point was the collection of pictorial sources on fashion, costume and traditional dress from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century, donated by Franz and Frieda von Lipperheide in 1899 and now owned by the Sammlung Modebild - Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek. The collection of 600 paintings is being made available digitally for the first time. In addition, 1,000 selected prints and drawings from the same collection are provided to supplement and contextualise the content. Various textual sources as well as historical garments enrich the information further. In order to add historical garments, 15 selected historical items of clothing and accessories were captured using a combination of 3D scanning and photogrammetry. The resulting visualisation enables cross-source and multidisciplinary research into the works. The chosen form of collection presentation allows an introduction through narrative elements as well as a free exploration of the holdings. As a result, the ReFa-Reader is available as a freely reusable prototype.
The expansion of the narrative strand was the focus of a co-operation between the UCLAB and the C?DH. The aim was to create a way of enriching a 3D model with explanatory information and embedding it in a scenography. Based on the form of scrollytelling, this resulted in a narrative-driven animation of the clothing models. The application also highlights aspects of the garment using markers on the 3D object, as well as allowing its free exploration. 3D Stories is also freely available as a web-based prototype based on open software.
The UCLAB (Urban Complexity Lab) of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, project initiator with many years of experience in the visualisation of cultural data, is testing experimental methods of collection presentation by means of visualisations, which are used on the one hand as an aid to content exploration and on the other as a tool for interpretation. The bridge to teaching at the Department of Design is formed by mediation offers in the form of introductory workshops or seminars: together with the researchers at UCLAB, cultural collections are examined, concepts for interactive visualisations are developed and functional prototypes are developed and evaluated.