Body Architects

LucyandBart 

LucyandBart is a collaboration between artists Lucy McRae and Bart Hess. They like to picture human bodies and faces physically altered with a shocking but artistic realism. Foam, grass, sharp triangles of paper...fascinating and repugnant simultaneously, the pictures become disturbing with the emotional state of the subject is unknown. Each transformed human looks blankly towards you, showing no emotion of opinion about their changed form, but simply allowing you to see it.

LucyandBart say that they work from instinct having to idea of the final outcome. They start from a single material, exploring volumes on the body and ways of re-shaping the human silhouette. They believe that their work is a reflection on society and current technologies knowing that the notion of ideal beauty will evolve and change depending upon new technologies.

Lucy has collaborated with Philips Design to develop a series of dynamic garments as part of the ongoing SKIN exploration research into the area known as 'emotional sensing'. The garments, which are intended for demonstration purposes only,demonstrate how electronics can be incorporated into fabrics and garments in order to express the emotions and personality of the wearer. The intricate wearable prototypes include 'Bubelle', a dress surrounded by a delicate 'bubble' illuminated by patterns that changed dependent on skin contact and 'frison', a body suit that reacts to being blown on by igniting constellation of tiny LEDs.

This leads me to question if electronics be incorporated into our own skin so we can express our emotions and personality, like mood rings that change colour, glowing skins?

Levi Van Veluw 

Levi Van Veluw is a Dutch contemporary artist, his photos are a series of self portraits, drawn and photographed by himself, a one man process. His work focuses on modifying the face, combining it with other stylistic elements to create a third visual object of great impact.

The features if the face are normally covered, such as the eyes, nose and mouth. This removes the senses of the body and objectifies the body giving an eerie effect.

Orlan

Orlan, born Mireille Suanna Francette Porte is a French artist born in 1947. She adopted the name Orlan in 1971, which she always writes in capital letters.

The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan is a project started in 1990 involving a series of plastic surgeries through which the artist transformed herself into elements from famous paintings and sculptures of women. Orlan's goal in these surgeries is the acquire the ideal of female beauty as depicted by male artists. When the surgeries are complete, she will have the chin of Botteicelli's Venus, the nose of Jean-Leon Gerome's Psyche, the lips of Francouse Boucher's Europa, the eyes of Diana and the forehead of Leonardi da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Orlan picked these characters not for the canons of beauty they represent...but rather on account of the stories associated with them.

Since 1994, Orlan has been creating a series of digital photographs titles 'Self-Hybridizations' where her face merges with past representations (masks, sculptures, paintings) of non western civilisations.

Madame Peripetie 

If it can be imagined it exists.

Madame Peripetie aka Sylwana Zubura is a polish photographer based in Germany. The conceptual photographer is greatly influenced by surrealism, dadaism as well as the new wave era of the 80s. 

A new fashion photography book by London-based image maker Madame Peripetie titled ‘Dream Sequence’, contains a series of portraits of imaginary characters, whose features are replaced by flowers or other objects while their bodies are covered with bizarre garments and colours. The book which evolved out of a long-term photography project, has won several awards (including the Double Gold at PX3 2011 in Paris, and an honourable mention at the International Photography Awards 2013 in New York), and has been compiled for costume designers, fashion stylists and everyone who is interested in character design and image building in general.

The motto of the book If It Can Be Imagined, It Exists reflects the overall approach used in its creation, since the images it contains plunge straight into a surreal world of mixed references and rampant imagination, all the while staying in touch with ''the philosophical concepts of the beautiful and the sublime.'' The impressive part of the project however, is that all the objects, compositions, beautiful colours and patchwork aesthetic were achieved not with the aid of digital retouching and editing, but rather live in the studio and on the models themselves, deploying advanced make-up techniques, bunches of real flowers and the clever use of props and camera. 

Appendices

Books

Dream Sequence by Madame Peripetie 

Sites

http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/6040/1/the-magic-of-lucy-and-bart [17th Oct 2014] 
http://www.lucymcrae.net/lucyandbart-2/ [17th Oct 2014] 
http://levivanveluw.com/work/origin-beginning-photographs [18th Oct 2014] 

Photo References

Lucyandbart
Available from: http://barthess.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/DSC_0026 [17th Oct 2014] 

Lucyandbart Germination day 1 
Available from: http://barthess.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Germination_Day_One [17th Oct 2014] 

Lucyandbart Germination day 8
Available from: http://barthess.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Germination_Day_Eight [17th Oct 2014]

Lucyandbart Grow on you
Available from: http://barthess.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/grow_on_you_part_two [17th Oct 2014] 

Levi Van Veluw Hair
Available from: http://offtheorange.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/levi-van-veluw-natural-transfer-i [17th Oct 2014] 

Levi Van Veluw Moss
Avaialable from: http://www.ormsconnect.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Levi-van-Veluw-03 [17th Oct 2014]

Levi Van Vewluw Stone
Available from: https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/718221/disp/510181234792968 [18th Oct 2014] 

Orlan African
Available from: http://twincarolina.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/africa_orlan [18th Oct 2014] 

Orlan Columbian
Available from: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/cocu108/data/images/Week9a/album/slides/orlan-hybrid3 [18th Oct 2014] 

Orlan Medusa 
Available from: http://medusatalksback.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/orlan-medusa [18th Oct 2014] 

Images courtesy of Madame Peripetie 
Available from: http://www.yatzer.com/dream-sequence-sylwana-zybura [18th Oct 2014]