Textile touch points distribute interaction across the moving garment.
Interactive dance performance · 2024
Upcycling 2.0
An interactive dance performance in which touch, movement and an upcycled garment carry voices about clothing, care and sustainability.
Read the project ↓
Project typeArtwork · Performance · Research · Collaboration · Fashiontech
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Wearables & e-textiles · Circular textiles & sustainability
FormInteractive dance performance
Year2024
InteractionFour textile touch points
Presented15–16 May 2024 · TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes
01 · Proposition
A garment becomes a conversation
Upcycling 2.0: Electronics and Emotion brings textile repair, electronic augmentation and dance together to ask how clothing acquires meaning through use and memory.
Four touch-sensitive areas are integrated into the costume. As the dancer handles and activates them, recorded voices, textures and soundscapes enter the performance, connecting bodily movement with stories about attachment, textile production and sustainable practice.
The work does not treat upcycling as a purely material substitution. It considers the social and emotional conditions through which an altered garment can remain desirable, expressive and worth caring for.
Video documentation
See the garment become an instrument
02 · Experience
Touch, trigger, move
- 01
Wear
An upcycled costume carries electronic textile interfaces within its material structure.
- 02
Activate
Four touch points trigger recorded voices, sonic textures and environmental soundscapes.
- 03
Perform
Dance composes the fragments into a changing dialogue between body, garment and audience.
03 · Reflection
Upcycling is also relational
Material transformation becomes more consequential when it can support new forms of expression, memory and attachment.
By locating electronic interaction inside an upcycled performance garment, the project connects sustainability with pleasure and emotional resonance. Technology is used neither as decoration nor as a claim of novelty; it helps the costume carry multiple voices and makes the wearer’s touch part of how those stories are disclosed.
Choreography activates accounts of attachment, production and care.
Fashion, upcycling, millinery, sound and dance are developed as one system.
Credits & archive
Project record
- Concept, electronics, coding and sound design
- Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Fashion design
- Rachel Lapolillas
- Upcycling expert
- Rosi Tejera
- Hat design
- El Mehdi Benkhiye
- Choreography and performance
- Javier Arozena
- Commission and production
- NUMA Circuit Festival, Tenerife, Spain
- Presentation venue
- TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes · 15–16 May 2024
