Talent Talks: Jeppe Juel
Fusing traditional crafts within the field of fashion, sculpting methods and digital practices, Jeppe Juel explores how we can expand and hybridise analogue and digital methods within fashion design.
Jeppe Juel - Process image
Could you please introduce yourself?
My name is Jeppe Juel, I received an MA Fashion Design from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design. Since my graduation I have worked on a number of projects within the themes of body, transformation and technology and exhibited some of my work both here at NOoF, various places In Europe and locally in Copenhagen where I live. Besides my practice in design I also hold a position as an external lecturer where I teach fashion-theory as well as digital craftsmanship within the field of fashion design.
Jeppe Juel - Process image
How would you describe your practice?
I would say my practice is informed by a meeting between traditional crafts within the field of fashion, sculpting methods and digital practices. I am always curious about how we can expand and hybridise analogue and digital methods within fashion designs. In my work I explore the body, a body that is both physical and tangible as well as culturally constructed and abstract. I am curious about what makes us favour and desire certain bodies while other bodies easily become marginalised and objected by society.
I see fashion as a medium that can effectively expand the human frame and potentially challenge our notions and presumptions of what a body necessarily is or should be. My methodology within digital craftsmanship – involving both; avatar creation, 3d sculpting, and now generative technologie – allows me to explore these themes of bodily transformation more freely and abstractly compared to certain analogue processes.
In the real world you always work within the premise of physical boundaries - in the digital realm those rules don’t apply in the same way, and I feel that you can really push a vision and concept beyond the boudries. One of favourite things about my work is the challenge of translating processes and craftsmanship from fashion into the digital space, and vice versa; explore how digital creations and experiments can be manifested IRL and become tangible and relatable to the physical body.
Jeppe Juel - Process image
NOoF commissioned you as a part of their Artistic Research programme. Could you tell us about your experience?
The experience of being part of the NOoF Artistic Research programme has been quite unique in the ways it has let me push, explore and play with the themes from my preexisting body of work. The project has really taken my established digital skills to unknown territories, especially to the area of generative design and AI. The questions of how we as designers interact with these new technologies has and in many ways pushed to elevate the craftsmanship and aesthetic qualities of my own work.
Being allowed freedom and time to research and explore your own interests so intensely is quite a gift after graduation in my opinion. Having a team to constantly inform as well as challenge your work has really taken the project down avenues I did not expect to begin with. Looking back at it, that process has been very validating and an important reminder that my projects only continue to become more relevant in a world where the digital agenda is omnipresent and the discourses on body and social sustainability are increasing exponential.
Jeppe Juel - Process image
You were asked to develop work in relation to the theme of regeneration. How did you approach this topic?
Once i was introduced to the theme it immediately sparked a lot of different thoughts. The word “regeneration” itself gave me instant connotations of both biology and technology, something broken returning to its original state or even beyond that, becoming something new and different for what it was. This theme of human transformation, even post-body, quickly become buzzwords for the project and also heavily influenced the prompts used to feed various AI’s.
I convince myself this is still present when also looking at the aesthetic nature of the project at its current state - where It immediately reminds me of a form of unfamiliar embryos in the middle of some mutation process or some strange variety of chrysalis in its state of metamorphosis. There is a grotesque and even monstrous quality to the work in this project, and I like that quite a lot - it speaks to the idea of challenging our view of which bodies are legitimised and valued and which bodies are not. The fashion system is in many ways flawed and even broken, so one of the areas that needs regeneration is no doubt the whole value system surrounding body and beauty, which fashion quite significantly contributes in shaping -for better or worse
Could you tell us about your creative process?
The process during the research project was in many ways very playful and above all driven by a genuine curiosity I developed for generative technology and how that could interact with representations of the human body. During the period of my research I remember how, when returning to the project after the weekend, new demos and variations of some form of generative technology would have launched - and the week after the same thing would happen again.
It was just so thrilling to explore how these new AI’s and generative technologies of both text, 2D images and 3D form, could potentially be used for project within the field of fashion, outside what was perhaps the initial target areas of generative tech that arguably often focus first and foremost on other areas of art and design than necessarily fashion.
Jeppe Juel - Process image
What were the most interesting results, the most important takeaways?
Given that generative technologies have been the hot cake of the public conversation in art and design for a while already, I think most people by now have realised that AI holds a lot of potential, some arguably also of concerning nature of course. But what surprised me the most as a designer during this project was how much the AI technology I used started to become a reflection of my own creativity and aesthetic preferences more and more as the project progressed. There was a strange and almost uncanny synergy between what I intended for the project thematically and aesthetically and what the AI would produce for me in the end when prompting it.
One of the things that I found funny was how much the generated end material resembles my own body of work and previous projects – such as the sculpted torso I exhibited here at NOoF in 2021. I think the theme of authenticity and originality is so interesting in this context, because it is one of the first arguments we go to when talking about generative technology, that it is incapable of such qualities – which is a completely understandable but at the same time a somewhat reductive response to new technology.
It’s a sensitive topic because creativity is something we often talk about as a unique human quality. However while it is resealable to be critical towards certain aspect of generative technology and the materia it creates, it is in my opinion also important to recognise our own positionality and biases when it comes to creating - and how AI in may ways holds a mirror up in front of us as designers and artists. I would for example highly questions my ability to create the pieces I do today if I had not had a childhood informed by references and intertextuality from science fiction and computer games or an education in design where I found project inspiration in the existing designers and artist within the field of 3d technology.
While AI is informed by the data available to it, is that not true for us in many ways too? No work made will ever be purely original, we always build on an existing canon of design and art, often very unconsciously. There is of course a range of difference to this logic and power dynamics to consider when “being inspired” by someone or something- but to focus on our personal intentions for creating and doing it out of authentic passion is for me more important than aiming to be completely original, because I don’t really think you can ever truly succeed at that anyway – wether you are human or machine.
Can you imagine developing the project further? And if so, how?
In many ways I see the project where it is now as being in its “nymph” stage of life. I believe it is a project that invites for further exploration of both the themes and technologies applied. Both going further into the themes of grotesque bodies, that somehow hold a captivating beauty to them, and the technology of both AI and new production methods of 3d printing to materialise some of the digital creations from the project.
In other words: I really want to explore exactly which bodily creature will be birthed from these “mutated embryos” or what human form will burst out from the metamorphosed chrysalis - how these experiments can be translated into tangible wearable pieces down the line.
How do you envision the future of fashion and your role therein?
I just hope that I can create work that is interesting and speaks to people other than myself, that I can for even small moments make people question or reflect on themes within my work. I think for me personally I have already found my passion in the design and art world and in a way it feels like each project explores the same thing, yet every time something very new as well - something that just keeps unfolding - I hope I can allow myself to continue that and be a contributor among many in regenerating a broken view on the body and the way we negotiate beauty- in a manner that never stops being playful and curious.