thing tank 2021-22

2021-22. Faculty Fellow, University of Delaware Center for Material Culture 2021-22 Thing Tank on the theme of ecomateriality.

In Plain Fashion: Material Speculation as a Method to Generate Hybrid Spaces and Objects for Critical Inquiry. (working title)

Keywords: textile, fashion, sensorial, speculative prototyping, hybridity, 3D simulation.

Key concepts: making as problem finding, material-led design, provocation, conceptual textile, tactile human perceptual response in the digital age.

The weaver and scholar Annie Albers (1957) in her writings on design suggests the maker develops the ability to respond and the flexibility to react. At the core of her philosophy was the notion that material can teach; that material has demands of its own and suggestions of its own for its finished form. Hybrid spaces and objects present an open-ended opportunity to vision possible futures, feel out and amplify invisible pasts, unravel and re-weave, tackle entanglements and figure broken threads and fashion loose ends. What might hybrid material-led and sense informed fashion (or textile) be? What narratives unfold when materials are making sense of themselves? How can material teach in this hybrid space and what are the new tacit lessons of textile making?

My proposed work seeks to bridge a disconnect between analog and digital, technical and experiential, with “considerations of inextricable links” I would like to pick through the “entanglements between people, possessions, and planet” through material speculation inquiry (the intent to critically investigate our world through the design of material artifacts that are specially crafted for the purpose of inquiry (Wakkary, 2015). Practice-based inquiry will guide proposed creative research. Concurrent with tactile experiments and evaluations (textile holdings, wardrobes, goodwill, brick and mortar and/or digital retail) I will investigate modeling systems for textile virtual simulation such as scanning and rendering textiles and apparel utilizing 3D and 4D technology programs. Scholarly outcomes of this project will include design artifacts exhibited through juried exhibition, process portfolio and published case study.

References

Albers, A. (1957). Handweaving Today: Textile Work at Black Mountain College. Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from

http://www.albersfoundation.org/teaching/anni-albers/texts/

Wakkary, R., Odom, W., Hauser, S., Hertz, G. & Lin, H. (2015) Material Speculation: Actual Artifacts for Critical Inquiry [Online]. In: Proceedings of The Fifth Decennial Aarhus Conference on Critical Alternatives, 2015. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, pp. 97–108. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from <http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/aahcc.v1i1.21299>