coding chaos: unveiling consumer culture in tina tarighian's 'scan artist' fashion show

Tina's first augmented reality fashion show was a refreshing end to NYFW, and leaves us with questions if there should continue to be a fashion "cycle."

The environment of nearly every NYFW presentation, for either a large or small brand, is the same. Fashion/art/influencer/instagram/friends/acquaintances/internet users gather towards the front of whichever door they believe models will emerge from, only to line themselves up quickly as the DJ’s music fades out. Tina Tarighian’s fashion show debut SCAN ARTIST started similarly, until the techno sounds were replaced by a calculated beat and a series of projected words and images brought the audience to terms with what their consumer habits had predisposed them to believe about Tina’s show (and fashion as a whole.)

For anyone familiar with Tina’s work, it is anything but predictable. The coder/artist creates computable live visuals for DIY and techno gigs across NYC, and her website is only a small representation for what her creative work entails. Her coding work is rooted much more in chaos than order— and I was amused to discover that the venue for the show was a local lesbian bar in Bushwick.

The show began with a short introduction by Tina, where she gave her guests instructions on how to access the show visuals even from the back of the shotgun-style space through their phones. In the front was a mess of computer screens and projected images. The models walked through the space wearing capes with scannable codes, and as the talk-to-text voice dictated what the clothes would visually entail, so they appeared. This included horse heads, pink testicles and red angel wings. The voice affirmed to the audience that our consumer habits are not necessarily unique but rather as data-driven and information-generated as the images on our screens throughout the course of the show.

This is not the first time Tina has communicated these concepts: her previous augmented reality work for the body positive lingerie brand Uye Surana as well as her solo work STOP BUYING THINGS! for Google Chrome serve as predecessors for this highly ambitious hybrid fashion show.

SCAN ARTIST’S final message to “SCAN ME’ in overlapping computer voice comments on the curiosity behind QR codes and how these desires in physical space lead us to make digital choices: choices that contribute to capitalist acceleration and consumer waste. After all the clothing “pieces” are digitally presented, the real-life models tear up giant cardboard QR codes with physical force in order to render them unscannable and without meaning: signifying the fragility of the digital space while also reminding us of its power over our consumer habits.

You leave the space without being prompted to purchase anything, without any desire to get ahead of the trend cycle that will end up in tomorrow’s landfill. Instead, the show ends with a digital souvenir— a 3D rendering of a shirt that reads, “I went to Tina.zone and all I got was this fake T-shirt.”