Compositional Sensing

Abstract

This paper explores how fashion design can critically engage with contemporary sensing technologies, not merely as tools for measurement, but as an active medium that shapes how bodies are seen and known. It proposes compositional sensing as a methodological framework in which sensing is treated as a dynamic, co-constructed process rather than a passive act of data capture. This approach is demonstrated through Dust Enforcer, a choreographed performance between a human wearing a reflective foil suit and a forensic grade lidar scanner. Rather than recording a static body, the scanner captures fluctuating densities, gaps, and spatial anomalies produced through movement, reflectivity, and interference. Each gesture becomes a compositional input, inscribing spatial data through a recursive feedback loop between the body and machine. What emerges is not a coherent silhouette, but a field of conditional appearances. Reframing fashion through Stan Allen’s theory of ‘field conditions’, the paper argues for a shift from designing objects to composing responsive environments for data generation. This offers new possibilities for designers to critically interrogate the epistemic assumptions embedded in sensing technologies, and to intervene in how bodies are constructed, represented, and governed through data.