Claudia Hill Introduces New York Fashion Week to Spatial Mediations

Designer Claudia Hill Showcases Spring 2001 with Architecture and Technology

New York City—August 16, 2000: Claudia Hill, one of the fashion industry’s most innovative designers, in collaboration with artists in fields of architecture, music and technology, will be showcasing Spatial Mediations. This multimedia event will challenge the conventional notion of fashion runway show presentation on Saturday, September 16, 2000 at 9pm at Eyebeam Atelier, located at 542 West 21st Street, the future home of Eyebeam’s new museum of art and technology. As the static elements of fashion and architecture interact with the dynamic elements of video, performance, and sound, the project will reveal the parallels of each domain and unite them. Combining perspectives from Claudia Hill, Asymptote Architecture and Skuli Sverrisson, Spatial Mediations incorporates a provocative use of media to create a compellingly new experience to showcase the apparel designer’s spring 2001 collection for New York City’s fashion week.

As architecture is designed to envelop multiple persons, clothing shelters a single wearer. Based on this analogous concept, Claudia Hill’s spring 2001 collection focuses on three-dimensional designs that are inspired by shapes—organic, architectural, random. Spatial Mediations will allow these shapes, on the human form, to project off of the wearer’s surroundings. Just as Claudia Hill has designed a collection that emphasizes space within space, the collective presentation will apply the same notion of inversion to the traditional runway show.

Asymptote Architecture, a collective of Hani Rashid and Lisa Anne Couture, has produced some of today’s most technologically and conceptually forward architecture. Contributing to the development of new architecture through an interdisciplinary approach that crosses conventional boundaries, Asymptote Architecture’s most recent projects include the new Guggenheim Center for Art and Technology in New York City and the New York Stock Exchange Command Center, a project that injects virtual information into a real space. Their works are also a part of the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Hani Rashid of Asymptote Architecture was selected to represent the United States at the International Biennale of Architecture in Venice.

Skuli Sverrisson, through electronic music, is capturing audio snapshots of architectural sound. His recent work includes a collaboration with renowned performance artist, Laurie Anderson, on her mixed media creation of Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick. Additionally, Sverrisson is directing Anderson’s latest recording for Nonesuch Albums, due out this fall, and is working with such musical personalities as Hal Wilner, David Sanborn, Park Van Dyke, Mino Cinelu, and Lou Reed.

The facility for Spatial Mediations is provided by the Eyebeam Atelier, Inc. (www.eyebeam.org), a non-for-profit new media arts organization that initiates, presents, supports, and preserves artworks created with computers and digital tools.

Spatial Mediations is be sponsored by *Surface magazine and Bombay Sapphire.