I have been working on this project for over ten years. The foundations of it started in a sponsored group project in design school. I looked at emerging military technologies - this was back in 2002, and I discovered Augmented Reality. The military was using it for heads-up displays in fighter planes.
I took the idea back to my group and we came up with a dozen different scenarios, from AR raves to snowboarding goggles. The one that stuck with the team was the idea of AR fashion and what it could mean to social interaction.
After graduating design school I focused on being a gainfully employed designer (for better or for worse) and left my dreams of working on advanced concepts behind.
Fast forward a few years and this crazy AR fashion project was still calling to me- I had to find a way to make this happen. The project was named Sartura and I pitched it to anyone who would listen, I pitched it to the biggest apparel company in the world, I pitched it to tradeshows, to tech companies, anyone.
The feedback was generally positive but the concept was way too 'meta' for most people. It was a little too abstract, most people got hung up on the gaps in the technology at the time- it was just too much.
Sartura has become more than an uncompleted project to me. It has become part of a framework that is shaping the second half of my vocation as a practicing designer. My practice will involve shaping the aesthetics and functionality of mixed reality objects- particularly in shared spaces.
I hope to continue to add my experiments and sketches to this post as my journey continues.
Let's get meta!
