PDCON:Exhibition/Tesia Kosmalski: Staccato Coat

Staccato Coat

Artist: Tesia Kosmalski

The Echo Coats are sound driven garments intended to provide a fantastical utility for women in public space. The titles of the coats, such as “Andante” and “Largo”, borrow from the naming tempos in the western musical tradition. Each uniquely designed garment blends diverse sounds are music with the current ubiquity of individualized soundtracks. The coats integrate mini speakers, microphones and iPods to produce a new model for female centered public narratives. Environments such as retail points of transit and public architecture provide the initial backdrop for realization of the coats.

The project includes three coats that are designed in modernistic styles. They celebrate the point in history when sound began to open up conceptually and noise was incorporated into the classical music tradition. Each coat, entitled Andante Coat, Staccato Coat and Largo Coat, has a character associated with them. This character is developed in a video work accompanying their display.

The technology includes using RJDJ, a platform for reactive music for the iPod Touch and iPhone, using re-configurable ‘scenes’ to create real-time sounds. Speakers embedded on the outside of the coats project the sounds to claim sonic space, celebrating sound embodiment through the body carrier. The names are based in the classical tradition of music; Andante and Largo connoting tempo in beats per minute, and Staccato describing a stiff attack of a note. The coats celebrate noise, experiments with randomized language, and minimal composition, in an attempt to celebrate public movement.

The technological fashions created by Minnesota born, New York based artist Tesia Kosmalski, are a wearable response to her interest in public discourse, gender and sound. This interest began in producing and performing live video as a “VJ” and continued on into MFA in the Electronic Visualization Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she continued to explore these concepts through a wide range of technologies. It ultimately evolved into the wearable concepts demonstrated in the Echo Coats Project.