Humans vs. machines, Really?
- second show launches / 1430 CET on CNN
- 26 may 2016
- 2 Min. de lectura
(CNN) The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Spring 2016 exhibition, titled Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, focuses on the role the handmade and machine-made play in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear, and their symbolic associations over the years.
With more than 170 ensembles dating from the early 20th century to the present, the exhibition will address the founding of the haute couture in the 19th century, when the sewing machine was invented, and the emergence of a distinction between the hand (manus) and the machine (machina) at the onset of mass production. It will explore this ongoing dichotomy, in which hand and machine are presented as discordant tools in the creative process, and question the relationship and distinction between haute couture and ready-to-wear.
Manus vs Machina
Ever since the sewing machine was invented, the distinction and discordance between the hand (manus) and machine (machina) has been an issue within garment production, with the hand-made typically seen as higher quality. (However, over the years detractors of the hand have criticized it as elitist or anti-modern, while the machine represents progress and democracy.)
"The majority of pieces in the exhibitions are an amalgam of the hand and the machine. It is very rare to have a garment in which the hand and the machine is completely absent, whether it is haute couture or ready to wear."
A look inside the exhibition
With such a vast subject, stretching back to the 1900s, Bolton explained how he narrowed it down.
"I have really focused on designers who have had a history of trying reconcile the hand and the machine in their design process, and who deliberately make it part of their process."
"Wearable technology is something I am very ambivalent about [...] I think the biggest problem with wearable tech is the aesthetics of it and the fact that it is really just there as a gimmick, as opposed to something that has a realistic application in terms of fashion."
Watch the video above for a look inside Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as curator Andrew Bolton explains the major themes of the exhibition.
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