Fast Art – A Virtual Fashion Exhibition

Sammanfattning: This thesis focuses on research through the design process of building an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience concept resembling a digital art gallery. It covers the topics of sustainable fashion, changing people’s perspectives and behaviour, and new technologies like VR and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Through the experience of the art pieces displayed in the virtual gallery, created with AI, and focused on the critique of the fast fashion system, users are involved in the process of opening a space for reflection, discussion, education, and learning on the relative topic. The subjects of the research are deeply analysed in the Theoretical Framework. Therefore, this section is divided into three main research areas: Sustainable Fashion, changing people’s behaviour, and VR and Artwork. The three other key chapters that follow this first one are the Methodology, Concept Development, and the Final Concept and Validation chapters. In the first two, it is presented the design process and the CoDesign methods used during the process to gather information and insights in order to create the final concept. Meanwhile, in the latter, the content discussed is the concept created as the final deliverable of this project and the validation session that was organised to evaluate it. In conclusion to this thesis, the last chapter of Conclusions and Discussion answers the research questions at the base of this project and presents the possibilities offered by the concept of a virtual and immersive art gallery. The outcome of this project is presenting a design for a virtual art gallery showing AI-generated pictures that combine classical art pieces with problematic issues in fast fashion, intended to change people’s perception of sustainable fashion. Moreover, it is discussed the potentiality of using VR as a relevant and promising medium to convey a meaningful message about sustainable fashion that might induce people to embrace a more responsible consumer behaviour. In this optic, the final concept has the opportunity to be used as an educational tool for younger generations and the chance to place it in public spaces or art exhibitions to be experienced by people.