‍Nadiyah:

Hi everyone. I'm Nadiyah, head of marketing at hundo, and we're here for our video on Art Meets Algorithm, the future of ai. Fashion. I'm here with a lovely Kenn. Kenn, do you introduce yourself?

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Kenn:

Hello. Thank you for inviting me here today. My name is Kenn Mayfield. I am an XR founder of Xyris XR Design, and I create, uh, now 3D Digital Worlds.

But I come originally from a, an art and drawing and photography background. I then delved into coding and into video editing and some 2D design, and now I've find myself since 2020 in the digital world, uh, creating worlds for people to gather, to talk about art and music and fashion and science as well. Thank you for inviting me. 

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Nadiyah:

No worries. Thank you for your time in joining us. Why is due to fashion important to you and how did your college lead you into this field? Also, your interest is in art, photography, reading, and gaming influence you, especially into the AI fashion.

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Kenn:

Thank you. I went to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design on the east coast of Canada.

And that, uh, used to be nestled in and around historic properties. Uh, there I was alongside textile artists. My focus was in drawing and photography at the time, but in the same building were people who were working with, uh, fabrics and felt a design and fashion and art. Independent of fashion within fabric.

When I went to study my academic credits, these were in French and uh, music theory that brought me to Dalhousie University and put me alongside the theater group, uh, which are fun, great people to be around. And of course, that also included costume designers. And as a result, in Halloween, I had the chance to rent some garments from the theater department and knew a guy who created latex masks.

So the ability, whoa. Is that a leopard? Yeah, it's a lion. At the time I was really into a TV show Oh. And had long hair, so I worked for that. Oh yeah. And, uh, of course borrowed a few Shakespearean or opera, uh, costumes, like a vest. Uh, some. Shirt, uh, some boots and so on. It was a great time. Yeah, I wore the mask the entire night and, uh, no one knew who I was at the time until it came off.

And it's good for the skin too, actually. Yeah. So, um, That gave me, of course, an initial experience in what it's like to wear a costume, to wear something creative that sits around you or sits around you on a human form. Now, two aspects of this kind of artistry that I appreciate are architecture where people live inside a designed space, and then fashion where people live inside.

Something that communicates their personality or their feelings or their, um, viewpoints. And with high fashion and creative fashion, it's just irresistible to want to jump into that and explore it. Cause you're dealing with fabric, you're dealing with form, you're also dealing with, uh, the sense of the fabric, how it feels and how it flows.

In space and in different environments. So of course now we have generative art, which allows us to cycle through a lot of different ideas very, very quickly. So, uh, my art and photography, uh, life drawing was my initial art form and we'd spent a lot of time doing, Initial gesture drawings that were very quick, uh, drawings where we wouldn't look at the paper but look at the subject and outline them in that way.

And the human form is, uh, a constant and endless source of communication and style, uh, and shape as well, which is another thing that digital fashion can really respect. The different shapes and the different tones that we are as a, a human family. And that's really attractive leading into photography.

Then you can start to bring out the best in both the subject. And the fashion, the costume with how you arrange the environment, the posing the light, and so on. So they're a very natural fit. Now I've been a bit shy. I've done a lot of architectural photography and I've done some person photography, so I'm missing an opportunity there.

If you look for Alfred Muca, uh, if you look for Muca as an artist, he actually used photography as a tool to stage his paintings and so much. It is the same with now, uh, generative ai. 

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Nadiyah:

Ah, sounds so cool. Yeah, there's a lot happening with generative AI and obviously a lot of people using like mid journey and stuff.

Um, so that No, that sounds really cool. So how do you see high fashion designers leading the way in public experiences with spatial web three, web three technologies? 

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Kenn:

When the pandemic started, I was in Prague at the time and wondering what to do next after coding, because I had coded for 10 years and, uh, wanted to move back to a visual medium to start answering or asking the big questions of life.

So, um, high fashion is what I noticed most. It seemed like they were the leaders in terms of. Creating a presence at the start of the pandemic in web three. A lot of really experimental design was finding a, a popular audience, uh, people who may not have considered it in real life, uh, high fashion in real life are we are now seeing it in the digital form, in gaming and just.

By themselves in terms of digital walkways. So I think that it's really encouraging and I'm really proud of digital fashion for leading the way and bringing that experimentation and colour and completely, almost sideways point of view from what we were used to, uh, as the web. Into the start of things, especially during that time when there was a lot of confusion and a lot of, uh, uh, staying at home.

So digital fashion, from my point of view, infused the promise of web three with their experimentation and their style and their colour, and the wildness of it all. What a great beginning. 

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Nadiyah:

I agree. It's very beautiful. Even like the things that you post on LinkedIn, the images and the different garments, they're so, it's like.

It's like a different world. It's like you don't think it's real and it's just so cool having people being able to like, obviously purchase them and actually wear them online in different metaverses and gaming and stuff. So I think it's really cool. Um, what ethical conditions, considerations should fashion professionals keep in mind when utilizing AI technologies in the industry and how can they balance creativity, personal expression, and responsible use of ai?

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Kenn:

That's a really important question. I recently participated in a pre-accelerator out of Estonia for people who were involved with digital arts, and we talked about the legal considerations of ai. Now, I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't advice, but what I did learn is that, um, AI is built as we all know now, on a sampling of what's available on the web.

So it's very possible that you may inadvertently, uh, copy a style. Uh, through AI of an established artist, and that could lead to questions of copyright. Uh, the other side of the ethical question is who are you representing in your images? Um, I come from a particular background, myself and other people come from other backgrounds.

And as a photographer, I like to explore the different styles and shapes and, and tones that we are, the different heritages that we bring. As part of a human family, but I also have to be cautious of how far I step into that if it's outside of my own particular vocabulary or experience, because every little detail is a communication of an idea.

So ethical considerations of AI as a. It comes into fashion, have to do with representation of culture, and also representation of an established artist's, uh, style, both of which may become inadvertent, uh, questions in creating, uh, digital fashion. Now, a third part of the ethical question would be how does it relate to real world fashion and particularly fast fashion?

But I think that digital fashion is a question or an answer to that particular, uh, issue. 

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Nadiyah:‍

Yeah, there's a lot around it. There's a lot of ethics around it and like what's right and what's wrong, and exactly like you said, like what if you slightly copy a style of someone else and like it's like seen as copyright.

So yeah, it's very hard to know. Um, so how does the collaboration between AI design and real life textile artists and tailor's enhance the creation process, considering their expertise in fabric garments fitting and template creation? Um, for example, marvelous designer. 

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Kenn:

Yes. What I've learned myself. Now, my background, of course is in, uh, drawing, photography and 3d.

So what I've learned in working with real text, real life textile artists and tailors is our questions about how the fabric, um, falls upon a person's frame. And I've seen these artists will begin to feel the fabric and fold it over and see how it drapes. In different ways, and that familiarity with fabric and how it sits on a human form is, uh, vital to creating digital fashion.

It's not absolutely essential because in the 3D world and in high fashion, you have the ability to experiment. With altering the human shape or the silhouette. Um, although of course a person is still wearing them in those conditions, so it needs to have a practical aspect. In digital high fashion, we can experiment more, but it seems to me to be most successful, uh, when traditional principles of how clothes are put together are, um, pursued.

And Mar a marvelous designer does this really well because it allows you to create fabric and costumes. In the same way that, uh, a seamstress would create a template with front pieces and back pieces of fabric that would be sewn together. And in marvelous designer, you can sew them digitally. And that's important because when the physics of the costume are applied, the, the digital fabric will drape itself.

On a humanoid form, uh, more accurately. So, the oath style of creating costumes is to be, to try and, uh, shape in all of the individual wrinkles and folds of a fabric. Uh, and also by the way, uh, studying classical art will show you a lot of experimentation from painting and drawing of how fabric falls based on real life.

In Marvelous Designer, it uses physics and collisions with a humanoid form to drape that fabric in realistic ways and have it move in realistic ways. 

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Nadiyah:

That's so cool. Do you have some images that you could show us of examples?

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Kenn:

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So here we have one of my first ideas, uh, for digital design, for digital fashion.

This I call the ameral dress. It's based on a somewhat smoky, amorphous. Coalescing shape that you can see is still draping on a human form. And there's a great contrast between skin in this case and the dress itself with accents in the chest area and along the yarns and on the base of the skirt. You can also see how AI has rendered the folds in and around the waist area.

And all of this conveys, uh, the style of fabric. It is that it's, uh, slightly light. Um, transmissive fabric that'll transmit light, uh, but with some experimentation and strangeness as well.  

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Nadiyah:

It looks so cool. So how long did it take you to make this?

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Kenn:

This went through, I think about 45 iterations because there were questions of posing, uh, questions of style, how much of it was dreamlike compared to which areas were sharpened in focus.

And here it began to approach a composition. That began to seem both intriguing, but also communicated the beauty of the dress and the subject. And then 

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Nadiyah:

what type of tools would you use to create this? Would it be Mid journey or, 

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Kenn:

Yes. These were created entirely in Mid Journey, so that would be, of course, text based.

You enter in a prompt and it'll do its best to represent that as an artistic instrument and as a way to shake up ideas. And create new ideas that may be outside one's habits. It's absolutely fantastic. So even if I were concerned about copyright, I could use this image to do a reverse image search online, first of all to see if it closely resembles established artists.

But then I could also use it as inspiration for sketching out, uh, a modification of the design. Or building it into marvelous designer, for example, or working with, um, a textile artist who uses computer tools to create that. So becomes, uh, an almost penley inspiration, which I really liked about the early, mid journey.

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Nadiyah:

Yeah, it's, it's so cool. Oh wow. 

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Kenn:

This one is more recent, as you can tell by the rendering. And I was working at combining biological forms with humanoid forms. Now in my background, I've kept a marine tank at home. I'm interested in biomimicry. I've worked with scientists on collaborative 3D environments, and I wanted to see how this could be applied to fashion even through the randomness of mid journey.

And here we have a different style. It's very much as part of the prompt, uh, a model. Uh, presenting yourself and, uh, she this lovely, lovely, uh, coffee shaded skin, beautiful hair contrasting with the shape and the colour and the impression of texture of the headdress. And one could begin to say, well, this is more high fashion or stylistic, because it's very unusual.

Is the dress alive? Uh, is it mimicking something that's alive? And it has this dialogue between the wearer. And, uh, the shape itself that begins to become interesting. So here we begin to explore some bioluminescence as well, uh, once again on Coral. And this is mixing in a bit of Iceland. And Iceland of course, is famous for its, um, magma based or lava based, uh, geology.

So we have this really dark environment, slightly stormy environment with out of place, almost tropical alien style, uh, corals. And is this symbiotic with a human form? This is probably the most avatar, like, and I'm most fond of this because it reminds me of my marine tank with my clownfish and pistol shrimp and, uh, corals and it's micro flora and fauna as well.

And here you can see, uh, how it could possibly drape on a real human form in terms of the spreading of the skirt, the strange combination of almost infused organic shapes. And then this interesting kind of overlay. Of the top piece on the shoulders and arms here again, we're exploring the underwater theme.

And it's something that's a little bit out of a fantasy novel or out of, uh, heritage folklore. Is this a presence underneath the sea? It's also slightly dangerous because the question becomes, why is she under the water? Is she commanding the water or commanded by it? 

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Nadiyah:

Um, so can you discuss three or more of your favourite digital fashion designs highlighting the dimensions of light, dark beauty, and presence?

I know that you. Touched upon on your images, but is there some more we can go in more detail about them? 

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Kenn:

Sure. Thank you. I'd be very happy to. This was one of the first images I created, and this was on an earlier version of Mid Journey, which was almost more painterly and experimental and less, um, uh, restrictive in style.

It was less realistic and more. Um, atmospheric and imaginative. So I called this the feather dress and I was able to create, uh, a small narrative based on different iterations of this at the time. And it was a relatively small prompt, but we can see here it has a mysterious cloaking style, uh, presence to it.

And something that's almost a little bit. Angelic or otherworldly and perhaps some of the best art combines different nuances of what we feel. On one hand, it seems slightly comforting. It seems comforting because of the gold colour, um, the warm ambience, the feathers which we can associate with friendly things like birds and, uh, other creatures.

But then you also have this. Mysterious face that you can't quite see that appears to be looking towards us. Uh, so now we ask, is it a friend or is it a, a foe? And having that ambiguity in the design, I think makes it more worth talking about. And in the background, it has an almost photographic, hand painted style background with a few random pieces as well.

So it becomes dreamlike and flowing, but yet could still be built in real life as a, a real cloak with how it falls. Around the human frame. Which one's your favorite one? Uh, I think, oh gosh, I have three favorites for different reasons. Um, the Emerald Dress, because it was the first see the feather dress because here I began to see there might be a possibility for creating real art or real narrative.

And then the, um, biomimetic or the biological style dresses, because they fuse. Natural world and human made fabrics and begin to perhaps, um, evoke questions about our place within the biosphere and the diversity of the biosphere. Plus I miss my fishes as well. 

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Nadiyah:

So can you see how we could use these to create real life clothing?

And could you create this for digital fashion world and in with physical garments, like how do you think that we could combine the two and brush them together? Or do you think we can or. Do you think we can? 

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Kenn:

I think that's the most interesting question because we talk about interoperability of digital fashion between Metaverse worlds and now we're talking about interoperability between the digital world and the real world, uh, which is a fascinating concept.

One leading to the other. Uh, we know that AI has promoted new ideas. In terms of manufacturer, in terms of, um, new compounds, uh, that people can use. And I wouldn't be surprised if AI is already on the way to creating a real world digital print. I know that it can be used to create, um, digital garments with an overlaying silk screen, for example, or particular weave.

And this gets to the perimeter of my experience with, uh, Digital design. I would love to speak with a, a real designer. So my perspective is, yeah, I think that's entirely possible. Um, is the computer set up to a loom? Can a, uh, binary brain creates instructions for a digital loom to create this? Can an AI suggest a different compositions and materials to use?

Can that be infused with fiber optics as is done now through a manufacturing process? And the organic shapes are an interesting question. In this case, we think, well, the organic shapes would be best created by hand using hand materials. But what if we consider in a science fiction sense crossing over to creating biological forms?

Would those then be alive and attached to address? What are the ethics of that as well? So I think that, yes, eventually. Being able to bring a address from the real world to the digital or the digital to the real world, I think is the ultimate in interoperability. And if we think about imaginative, uh, novels that I've read about changing one's own dna, would we then be able to express these materials from the human form directly?

And it gets into stratospheric, uh, imaginative ideas there. 

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Nadiyah:

Yeah, no, it's really cool. I would love to, like I said, I would love to have one of your dresses in real life to wear. Cause I think they're so cool. So I'm hoping one day can happen. Um, to switch up a bit, how about for brands that are obviously in the retail space, um, fashion brands, traditional fashion brands, how do you think that they could incorporate digital fashion?

Cause obviously at the moment, I feel like a lot of traditional brands haven't tapped into space yet. Um, obviously with the whole Web three Metaverse, a lot of, um, bigger brands. I had a more expensive luxury brands tapped into like NFTs and like Roblox and Fortnite. But how about like smaller brands and other brands?

How do you think they could. Join and get involved.

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Kenn:

I think that smaller brands and individuals and small, uh, groups and teams actually have the advantage here. My suspicion or I expect that established brands have the audience, uh, like a real world gallery. Having that no notoriety or that knowledge of one's name in everyday households is great advantage.

And I'm sure that, I would imagine these companies at best would have an experimental arm to see what could be done in this digital world. But I'm a biased towards individual designers at the school and college level and above because that's where the innovations happening. That popular fashion is often followed real world fashion, uh, not the other way around.

So I think that, I like to think that the upcoming generation of designers. Are the ones who are going to write the vocabulary of digital design, who will find the ways to manufacture it? Who have their voices heard? And their identity heard in a way that's really immediate and emotional and visual and almost musical, uh, in its manifestation.

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Nadiyah:

Definitely. I think it's definitely a space where a lot of creators, new creators, young creators, are coming to this field as a place for them to express themselves, and I feel like they can take advantage of that and. Do designs that they feel they wanna show the world. And like you said, like how you, similar to you, you, you love the ocean, you love sea life and animals and that's what you are doing with your artwork and using AI to help boost that.

And I feel like a lot of people that, don't know much about this space obviously, which is why we're doing this video. I feel like a lot of people can learn from this and start doing things on their own if like, they can use AI to help boost their creativity as well. So I feel, yeah, can't wait to see what happens.

Um, so what advice do you have for aspiring digital fashion creators who want to make a meaningful impact in the industry and prepare them with the right vocabulary? 

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Kenn:

Hmm, that's a wonderful question. What comes to mind immediately is it really is important to study the traditional means of creating dresses, uh, starting with a sketch and working with a very loose pose, exploring, um, fabrics on the page, and then exploring them near life to find matric fa matching fabrics.

Define matching fabrics to see how those change in terms of shape, how gravity affects them. Uh, I think it's also very important to delve into the history of style and fashion, which is, uh, as old, uh, um, a venue as anything else that people have had an advantage of. We've always, uh, decorated ourselves and we've always accentuated our silhouette and our shape and our status, uh, based on, uh, clothing.

And many people do it extremely well, and the outliers for whatever these may be, are the most interesting. So, um, Study the traditional means of fashion and how it's made. Study fashion history. Get to know materials because it's very tactile process, and then begin to explore with that knowledge, the very easy to approach ai, text to image prompts that we know now, and then see if that can feed back into your experimentations with placing this on a human form.

And then maybe also express it and explore it in the digital space with avatars. It seems to me that this can increasingly become a means of both income and also ownership of what you design, uh, in the digital world. So I look forward to seeing what will be created by your generation and your people in this environment.

And that's my advice. There's a thousand or thousands of years. Of history to de delve into and seek inspiration from. The greater your vocabulary and knowledge, the better your images will be.

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Nadiyah:

When you talk about, obviously we've spoken about AI using the journey, um, the tools I wanna dive into when it comes to sharing.

So obviously we talk about ethical considerations. So as a young person that's watching this video and wants to try out their journey, try out their creations. Where is like the best place for them to share them, to get seen? Um, what sort of, um, implications do they need to make sure that they have security wise?

Um, And yeah, what do they like? What would be the steps for them for the process? 

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Kenn:

That's a very interesting and important question. Um, as with anything else, the question of, uh, intellectual, intellectual ownership of your design is vital to being able to build your, um, collection, your personal collection.

And there will always be people that want to take that. Uh, or to take your time to create it. So I suggest, um, keeping a record of the designs you create, there may be an opportunity to copyright that as a human, uh, effort in the future. If you create something in ai, there's currently a copyright or legal question.

And again, I'm not a lawyer. This is in legal advice, but I do have to navigate this as everyone else does. If something is created entirely in the computer through generative art, Copyright from the human perspective requires human hands to be involved in the process. Now, I know that you're also interviewing another wonderful, uh, artist who has created her own AI to generate her own images, and she's been able to copyright these as well and produce a book and a publication based on that.

So own what you create. Um, read into the legal requirements and the ethical requirements. Um, are the designs you're creating truly yours? Do you have a direct uh, effect on their creation? And lastly, if you use AI for inspiration and then redraw it and create it in real life, uh, I believe that ownership is yours, but you also have this amazing backstory.

Pr, increasingly an ability to bring that into the digital world. Uh, so there are some larger concerns and it becomes a competition at that point, but you can own what you create. Exposure is an interesting problem. Do you show what you create over the web, through TikTok or through events? Do you participate in digital online events to show your avatar with your costume?

Do you find a real world gallery that people can walk into to see either a costume you've created or, uh, on a screen, an image of what you've created? And these go directly into the age old problem, uh, for hundreds of years of finding, uh, an audience and a venue for your work. And that doesn't really change.

With digital, you have more ability to create your own. Environment and show. In college, we would have, uh, textile students who would show their work. But, uh, in terms of finding and building an occupation out of it, that begins to run into the same problems that real world painters have in terms of finding a patron or a venue.

So, creating your own, having your own shows can help to start, create, create, can help create, uh, a momentum for what you're doing. Cool. 

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Nadiyah:

‍Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing everyone creating their cool AI designs and hopefully seeing you out in the world. So, one last question. What is one thing you're most excited about for the future of digital fashion?

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Kenn:

Oh gosh. Seeing the, the riot of imagination and colour and individuality and personhood expressed in a way that people can start to communicate their expressions and their body language through, through motion capture. Easier connections between what AI may create in a 2D sense and translating that into a 3D item that avatars can wear.

How young designers will take these ideas and make them by hand in the real world as well. Uh, I hope that we see a really. Exciting and energising cultural transformation of imagination. Uh, taking us away from, uh, old ideas of how we interact with, uh, fashion and interact with the digital world into this new realm where it's much more alive and expressive.

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Nadiyah:

I agree. I really hope that to you. I feel like there's a lot of space for young creators and new creators, old creators to come back and really use a space to their advantage. So Kenn, where's the best place for people to connect to you? Get in touch asking your questions and see your cool artwork. 

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Kenn:

Thank you. I'm on, uh, Twitter as xyris Kenn one n underscore. Um, Xr, metaverse XR or Metaverse vr. If you do a search for xyris Kenn with two Ns on the web, I'll pop up there and a muscle on my webpage, which is xyris.Ca, and of course through hundo. 

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Nadiyah:

Definitely. Um, I wanna say thank you so much for your time today, Kenn. Obviously we are gonna have this monthly thing, so this is obviously our second, um, event. Um, so please. Follow us on hundo.xyz and add us to your newsletter on our website, hundo.xyz. And yeah, keep updated for more. Thank you, Kenn. It was lovely speaking you today. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of the day.

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Kenn:

Bye. Thank you, Nadiyah thank you.