Augmented realities

Digital contaminations be- tween the audiovisual sector and the textile and fashion sector

Abstract

The contribution presents the preliminary results of a project currently in progress, whose objective is to start a synergic collaboration between the audiovisual sector and the textile and fashion sector in the city of Prato through the production of contents related to textile manufacturing that make use of the most innovative media production technologies (3D, animation, mixed reality, etc.) conveyed through the 5G infrastructure. In particular, the project develops from essential archives of the Prato textile district to elaborate a digitisation procedure of fabrics through product reverse engineering techniques. Thus, we start with physical objects to obtain three-dimensional digital models ready to be manipulated, processed and fed into the subsequent project activities. The contribution focuses on the results of this first phase of research and, thus, on developing a textile digitisation procedure aimed at experimenting with more meaningful interactions between physical archives and digital technologies. Specifically, through a series of tests using a combination of software and hardware tools from the industrial and audiovisual production sectors, a phase of intensive experimentation is described in terms of material simulation aimed at making the properties of textiles transmissible on digital media. These are highly relevant research trajectories for the textile and fashion system of the area since they make use of the pre-existences preserved in the archives in the form of operational and manipulable knowledge, but which project the distinctive differences of Made in Italy into a future competitive context by making use of the skills and tools of the audiovisual sector.