Presented as part of the Melbourne Fashion Festival ↗ Independent Programme.

Untethering Dreams is an experimental AI fashion experience exploring the emerging potential for fashion to gain new agency through augmentation  with generative AI technologies. Featuring a collection of archival Comme des Garçons, the multi-part film and Augmented Reality experience delves  into the contemporary dynamics between physical fashion and our growing ability to synthesise our own virtual dreams.

The work combines experimental R&D into generative AI processes with philosophical musings about the expansive futures of these dawning technologies. The resulting experience creates a contemplative journey where archival fashion is awakened into newly discovered and poetic states of motion before we cross over into a speculative dream world of technological bliss.

To realise the project a large dataset documenting five archival Comme des Garçons garments was captured using 3D photogrammetry, photography and filmed footage. This rich body of documentation forms the underpinning of bespoke AI models created for each of the featured garments. The unexpected and surreal visual fragments generated from the models allow us to see the garments through a novel AI-constructed lens and glimpse into the dream-like future possibilities of the technology as a medium.

Created by Superficial, the project builds upon prior work with the Virtual Fashion Archive using advanced imaging techniques to expand archival fashion into never-before seen virtual possibilities—this time working with photogrammetry and generative AI