Suspended Animation (2018) is a couture design by fashion designer Maartje Dijkstra, developed in collaboration with creative programmer and music producer Beorn Lebenstedt aka Newk. The design is totally shaped out of black manual 3D printed shimmering structures and crystal surfaces, meaning using a 3D printer pen to hand exicute a fabric. Some of the crystal elements in the design are set in motion using integrated SMA technology (Shape Memory Alloy). Nitinol is a nickel-titanium alloy that is well know for its shape memory, has the capacity to recover its original shape after having been deformed. By this elements of the dress move very slowly and shifting shape – depending on the level of power (heat). The dress is an ode to slowness inviting us to reconsider the importance of time and of slowing down with regard to technological hyper-acceleration. Inspired by the phenomenon of suspended animation that is also called ‘apparent death’, the artists explore the necessity of a hiatus (in other words a hyper-metabolic state of the body or the brain) in order to preserve our mental and physical abilities. This state, that shows similarities to hibernation, causes the organism to slow down radically in order to preserve it indefinitely and reanimate it in due course.
Collaboration with video artist Noortje Stortelder. This video is developed as a projection mapping for the face part of the presentation of Suspended Animation for the exhibition Tec art Rotterdam 2018