5XÉçÇø

Margarita Benitez is a Professor in Fashion Design and the Fashion Technologist at KSU’s School of Fashion. She is currently the Faculty Director for the TechStyleLAB, a creativity hub that focuses on digital fabrication and digitalization at the School of Fashion, which organizes the bi-annual Fashion Tech Hackathon. She is the lead for the 5XÉçÇø Annual Virtual Fashion Show (est. 2022). She is a hybrid creative researcher and is an artist, designer, technologist, and academic.

Her practice-led creative research addresses topics including:

• Digital Fabrication
• Biodesign & Biomimicry
• Fashion technology & Virtual Fashion
• Material explorations
• Interdisciplinary collaborations
• AR/VR/MR
• Interactive textiles
• Data visualization + sonifications
• Interactive installations

She has worked with researchers across 5XÉçÇø in subjects including telerobotics, physics, and advanced materials/liquid crystal projects. Her work with the latter was even featured in a KSU Super Bowl commercial. She was a Design Innovation Faculty Fellow in its inaugural year (AY22-23) and is part of the Environmental Science and Design research Institute as a Steering Committee Member.

Margarita is a partner at //benitez_vogl art + design studio located in Akron, Ohio. Together with Markus Vogl, a Professor of Art at the University of Akron, their studio explores the intersection of art, design, technology, and entrepreneurship. The studio is currently working on projects that explore 3D printing, digitally created animal habitats and enrichments, site-specific public art such as artifacts through techno-voxel street art, and transformation of the human form via technology using concepts of biomimicry. The pair have worked on interactive sound and visual installations, open-source tools for artists, and the concept of prêt à faire (ready-to-make) through generative design and fashion applications. The studio received an honorable mention at the 2016 CO.design Innovation by Design for versus [gridiron].

Margarita received two National Endowment for the Arts grants in 2012. In 2013, she took up the Fulbright Fellowship and Artist-in-Residence position at MuseumsQuartier | quartier21. The following year, her project S.A.R.A. was presented at the International Symposium on Wearable Computing's Design Exhibition at Seattle's EMP, where it received the ‘Aesthetic Design’ Jury Award.  and won the 2019 IFFTI Manchester Best Non-Paper Presentation Award for Skin [d.e.e.p.].

In addition, Margarita’s creative research has been presented on six continents. Her most notable highlights include presenting at:

• International Foundation of Fashion Technology 2023 Conference in Dunedin & The Shapeshifting Conference in Auckland (New Zealand)
• The BIFT/ITAA Symposium in Beijing (China)
• The Digital Fashion Conference in London (United Kingdom)
• New Media Art Caucus Artist showcases during the Annual College Art Association Conferences
• ISEA 2018 Durban, South Africa

Research Institutes and Initiatives:
Environmental Science and Design Research Institute
Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute
Design Innovation