Anouk Wipprecht x Can Buyukberber: FashionTech Meets Immersive Digital Arts
FashionTech Designer Anouk Wipprecht and Visual Artist Can Büyükberber share insights from their week-long residency, discussing their vision for Fashion 3.0. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, they explore how fashion, robotics, AI, and digital arts can shape the future of fashion and immersive experiences.
Anouk Wipprecht, FashionTech Designer
anoukwipprecht.nl
instagram.com/anoukwipprecht
Can Buyukberber, Visual Artist & Director
canbuyukberber.com
instagram.com/cbuyukberber
anoukwipprecht.nl
instagram.com/anoukwipprecht
Can Buyukberber, Visual Artist & Director
canbuyukberber.com
instagram.com/cbuyukberber
First Encounters
Q: Can you tell us how you first met?
Q: Can you tell us how you first met?
AW: My name is Anouk Wipprecht, and I’m a FashionTech Designer. I combine fashion and technology. For me, fashion is about expression—how we can express ourselves. I often ask, what would happen if garments started to react to our body signals? That’s why I incorporate electronics and sensors into my designs. The first time I crossed paths with Can was during our Autodesk Pier 9 Residency. We were both resident artists there.
CB: I’m Can Büyükberber, a visual artist. I met Anouk at a really pivotal time in my life. This was in 2017, when I was in San Francisco doing my master’s at the San Francisco Art Institute. At the time, I was working on a VR experience that also involved 3D-printed sculptures with sensors embedded in them. Anouk was actually one of the first people who tried it out.
Q: What did you think of each other’s work at the time?
Q: What did you think of each other’s work at the time?
AW: What I really loved about that project was the flow and the immersion—it had this sort of psychological depth that really grabs you and pulls you into a completely new life form.
CB: Anouk and I share a similar sensibility when it comes to aesthetics, but what I find most fascinating about her work is that her canvas is the human body.
Rethinking Fashion and Technology
Q: How do you see technology transforming the fields you work in?
Q: How do you see technology transforming the fields you work in?
AW: Fashion, in general, is such an old field. It’s very analog, you know? There’s the catwalk, and that’s about it. But it can go so much further. One of the things we’ve been discussing is this idea of Fashion 3.0.
CB: When it comes to immersive arts, I feel like there’s so much room for improvement. A lot of the time, it’s more about spectacle or sensory overload, but it can lack depth. There’s so much untapped potential when it comes to integrating robotics, AI, and fashion—not just in the digital space but in the physical world, too. Imagine bringing models, garments, and interactive designs into a truly immersive environment. That’s a totally new frontier.
AW: What excites me about the intersection of fashion, robotics, and immersive art is how it brings sci-fi scenarios to life. We’ve been dreaming about these ideas in movies and books for decades, and now we finally have the tools to make them real—whether that’s through transformative spaces, the garments we wear, or the environments we inhabit.
CB: One of the reasons I love the concept of the Visiting Artist Series is because it fosters interdisciplinary dialogues.
The Power of Collaboration
Q: What makes collaborations like this unique?
Q: What makes collaborations like this unique?
AW: Drawing from other fields really expands how you think, design, and approach problems. A lot of my work has a mechanical foundation, while Can’s often draws inspiration from physics. That’s what makes residencies so special. You’re not just sitting and theorizing—you’re merging styles, visually designing, and creating something entirely new together.
CB: What really stood out during this collaboration was seeing Anouk’s engineering mindset at play. It made me appreciate the problem-solving approach of a fashion designer. I learned so much from watching how her process overlaps with design thinking.
Q: If you had to summarize this collaboration in one word, what would it be?
Q: If you had to summarize this collaboration in one word, what would it be?
AW: If I had to describe this project in one word, it would be mind-expanding. Well, okay, technically two words!
Interdisciplinary Convergence: Can Buyukberber's Visiting Artist Series
Can Buyukberber's Visiting Artist Series is an initiative designed to cultivate interdisciplinary dialogues and creative partnerships within the global art community. Inspired by his residencies at institutions like Adobe and Autodesk Pier 9, Buyukberber draws on his extensive expertise and the advanced capabilities of his digital art studio to establish a residency program that promotes collaborative exploration.
Can Buyukberber's Visiting Artist Series is an initiative designed to cultivate interdisciplinary dialogues and creative partnerships within the global art community. Inspired by his residencies at institutions like Adobe and Autodesk Pier 9, Buyukberber draws on his extensive expertise and the advanced capabilities of his digital art studio to establish a residency program that promotes collaborative exploration.
By welcoming artists from diverse disciplines into his creative environment, Buyukberber aims to transcend the limitations of traditional art forms, merging them with state-of-the-art digital techniques to produce innovative, immersive experiences.