Earthsuits: Plastic Extinction

Welcome (back) to Earthsuits.

During last year’s Digital Innovation Season, we examined Earth as an increasingly volatile system shaped by climate disruption and accelerating technological change. Earthsuits extends this inquiry by proposing wearable technologies as adaptive interfaces, tools for sensing, surviving, communication, and adaptation to this changing Planet Earth. This year’s theme intertwines these ideas with the pursuit of plastic extinction: a future beyond virgin plastics.

Earthsuits: Plastic Extinction is the theme for the fifth iteration of Central Saint Martin’s Digital Innovation Season (DIS), where we explore and celebrate creativity in the digital space, through public talks and student workshops that enhance critical and creative future skills.

The project starts from the premise that plastic is a finite substance, shaped by histories of extraction, disposability, and petrochemical dependence, whose continued presence demands not only technical adaptation, but cultural, political, and economic reconfiguration. The project invites designs that are imaginative yet materially grounded, attending to the afterlives of plastic and exploring what becomes possible when plastic is scarce, and valued or approached differently.

Digital Innovation Season is open to all Central Saint Martins’ students and some sessions are open to the public. Spaces are limited throughout the programme, so please only book if you can attend. If you book for an event you can no longer attend, please remember to cancel the booking.

Design: Eleonora Ortolani (@eleonoraortolanix)

Earthsuits: Plastic Extinction public programme

For UAL students and staff, these talks will take place in the LVMH Lecture Theatre at Central Saint Martins.
We will also be broadcastings the talks on our YouTube channel for the public.

Designing Earthsuits

These workshops are open to all Central Saint Martins students, though spaces are limited.

Worldbuild 

Have fun and win cash prizes with Worldbuild: a 3-day competition programme for MA students across Central Saint Martins

11–13 February, LVMH Lecture Theatre

Students will be placed in teams of four to take part.
You can sign up individually, as a pair, or as a group of four.  
Teams of four BA students can submit a special request for participation.

Prizes of £300 will be issued to four teams - with more details to follow!

The project is supported by the LVMH Maison/0 Challenge Fund, which aims to develop creative collaborations through student and graduate-led engagement.  These collaborations are designed around a specific brief or challenge, this year related to ‘plastic’.