Scenografski in dramaturški potencial nosljivih tehnologij v oblikovanju kostumov

The research area of this study is wearable technologies in costume design. The investigation focuses on the scenographic and dramaturgical potential of electronic costumes. The practice-based study covers several areas: theoretical framing, methodology, design, empirical results, and description and analysis of people's experiences. The investigation is grounded in various theories: performance, phenomenology, new materialism, and interaction design. Particular attention is paid to the scenographic, interactive, and multi-sensory aspects of costume design as a means of performance making. Following a survey of existing wearables, the researcher designed and fabricated a series of non-character-based costume prototypes using low-cost electronics and open-source programming. He then developed a workshop and performance to test them with performers, dramaturgs, directors, and other designers to gain their diverse insights as observers and wearers. A triangulation research design helped explain how the use of technology and innovative dramaturgical approaches in costume design changes the perception of what costume is, how technology affects costume in relation to scenography, performers, and spectators, and how technology embedded in costume can advance the future work of costume designers. This research makes new connections between scenography, costume, and technology, conducts experimental work in a distinct way, captures interdisciplinary evidence, and develops creative educational processes. It aims to produce findings with practical and life-long learning implications that could be of use to the professional costume community. Electronic costumes can be classified as a subtype of costumes. By integrating electronic components such as sensors and actuators, they have sensitive, transformative, and explicitly performative properties. Circuits and programming transform electronic costumes into time-based spatial body events that manifest themselves in performance not only as aesthetic forms but also through dramaturgical processes. Electronics and software enable connection and interaction with other performance elements such as light, sound, space, time, the bodies of the performers on stage, and the bodies of the audience. They provide an additional level of sensory engagement for the performers and audience by creating an immersive environment that can be experienced physically and viscerally. Electronic costumes affect the way we perceive, sense, or make sense. They contribute significantly to the creation of characters, meanings, spaces, situations, and key moments. Electronic costumes can change their physical appearance or switch interchangeably between different functions and im/materialities. They communicate wirelessly with other elements connected to the same local network or via the internet and, like other scenic elements, can be controlled and operated physically or remotely by human or non-human agents. The design constraints for electronic costumes are parameters for interface manipulation that determine how the electronic costumes are activated and how they interact with the performer, the environment, and the audience. As this thesis proves, electronic costumes offer greater expressiveness, deeper immersion, and a stronger sensory impact on the audience than conventional costumes. The active participation of the performers and/or the audience in controlling the costumes leads to the unpredictability of the play and non-linear dramaturgy. Thinking in terms of trajectories is a creative strategy for costume designers that ensures a coherent dramaturgy of the costume experience. The ‘light-costumes’ case study was used in this thesis as a tool to develop a practice-based approach. The study shows the extent to which performance can be generated through costume and how electronics can be used to explore the perception of costume. Embodied light that moves in unison with the wearers constantly draws attention to the costumes and allows the audience to perceive everything that is happening through the eyes and bodies of the performers. The light-costumes transform the environment and reflect the inner thoughts and feelings of the wearers. The light they project immerses the performers, the space, and the audience in diverse affective atmospheres. The costumes can communicate wirelessly with other costumes and scenery without the need for fixed lighting, wall sockets, or lighting technicians, forming a swarm-based scenography. The outcomes of the thesis show that performers and interactive systems can be equal partners. Wearable electronics allow performers to develop new choreographic skills and increase their expressiveness. It gives them the ability to change the look of their costume at will and in real-time. The light-costumes take the audience on an experiential journey. They enrich the spectators’ understanding of the performers' technique, heighten their awareness of their own bodies, and trigger their haptic vision and kinaesthetic empathy. Electronics and prototyping offer the costume designer advanced tools for meaning-making and the opportunity to break with conventional theatre hierarchy by weaving a web of new relationships between various tangible and intangible elements such as body, costume, movement, light, sound, space, and time. Designing costumes as a sequence of actions, impressions, and affects offers, as this thesis attests, a new approach to costumographic dramaturgy.