About
SOFTWEAR
DESCRIPTION
The Softwear Directory acts as a resource library positioned at the intersection of fashion, digital culture and artistic research. It aims to highlight and provide insight into a wide variety of digital (design) practices through the sharing of sources, tools and (meeting) spaces.
As our digital dimension presents a wide variety of multidisciplinary practitioners and collectives scattered across the internet, we can find many underexposed, independent, critical and networked ways of approaching, working with and through digitised forms of culture, fashion and identity tucked away in its crevices. This directory offers a glimpse into the diversity of siloed practices that use different vernaculars, but can be indirectly linked as a collective creative body as they explore (parts of) our digital realm in personal and novel ways.
DESCRIPTION
By collecting, stacking and linking these modes of (online) doing, making and experiencing fashion in its aesthetic, social and political forms, the Directory looks beyond the material product that fashion offers. While some of the subcategories are highly specific, ranging from educational programmes and experiments in digital materiality, to critical and independent practices that investigate the production of value, the impact of distorted images on our online identity, and the ability to self-publish online as a form of hacking traditional (fashion) media.
What is the added value of these shared sources and cross-disciplinary perspectives? And what impact might they have on our relationship with fashion? How can we incorporate, simulate or decontextualise their ways of doing?
The directory was initially compiled using a spreadsheet and has now, with a lot of help, been developed into a platform library, allowing more experimentation with filters, navigation, terminology and hierarchy. This online environment focuses on short, concise connections and, throughout the gathering process we have found overarching and timely issues that deserve more in-depth analysis and exploration. To fill this void, we are hard at work on our first periodical publication, featuring in-depth readings, conversations and interviews to accompany the growing content of this database. Think of it as a hard copy supplement to this soft copy environment. We hope to launch our first issue in autumn 2024 .
DESCRIPTION
This project was born out of personal necessity and frustration. It is the result of archiving notes, creating spreadsheets, collecting books, indexing urls and filling the clouds with screenshots in order to keep track of developments that live on the fringes of fashion and digital culture.
The Softwear Directory was made possible with the help of the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and would not have been possible without the help of many amazing creatives, coders and critics who have shared their insights and expertise along the way.
CURATOR
Chinouk Filique de Miranda
ART DIRECTOR
Kimberley ter Heerdt
WEB DEVELOPER
Artemis Gryllaki
GENEROUS INPUT FROM
Hanka van der Voet
& Beata Wilczek
Unless otherwise stated, all the contents on the Softwear Directory are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.