Exhibition Review: Manus x Machina: fashion in an age of technology

Facade Tectonics World Congress 2018, 2018

It may be difficult for modern man to believe that what is known as handicraft was once the advanced manufacturing of the day. These techniques were used to create the first garments and portable shelters. There is much speculation as to their origin. However, the common thread in early enclosures is skin. Whether hides or woven surfaces, this cladding adorned the human form for warmth and then evolved into the first to enclose space and delineate interior from exterior. From these noble beginnings, the built environment of today is a global village of brick, glass, and metal. However, all methods of construction are steeped in these early traditions of fabrication. Many of the advancements of the world today trace back to the textile techniques of early man. Beyond the realm of handicrafts and pastimes, fiber techniques continue to generate complex concepts and forms. From the punch cards of the jacquard loom to the first read-only memory used in the Apollo space missions, the sheer breadth and variety of these examples express textiles' deep influence in process and result. With the increase in digital technologies and the rapid manufacturing of modern autonomous machines, traditional indigenous structures and fabrication techniques can easily be seen as outdated in comparison. However, simply because these digital tools and techniques exist, does not mean that traditional techniques cannot be used in new ways to aid or influence the design, development and fabrication of the built environment. In fact, it should be just the opposite. Throughout history, designers have seen the benefits of exploring and playing with these early fabrication techniques previously seen as pastimes of folk art. However, by leveraging these handicraft methodologies, it enables a seamless balance of old and new technologies to augment each other, effectively marrying early fabrication techniques with those of the digital era. From fibrous loops to weaving of walls, these fabrication techniques have heavily influenced many facets of the built environment in the 21st century.

Work:6 Parsons AAS Interior Design, 2013

2000

Decorum. carpets and tapestries by Artists

2012

In the recent developments of human computer interaction, one central challenge has been to find and to explore alternatives to the legacy of the desktop computer paradigm for interaction design. To investigate this issue further we have conducted an analysis on a fascinating piece of machinery often referred to as one of the predecessors of the modern day computer, the Jacquard loom. In analysing the Jacquard loom we look at qualities in design and interaction from some different perspectives: how historical tools, crafts, and practices can inform interaction design, the role of physicality, materiality, and whole-body interaction in order to rethink some current conceptions of interaction and design of computational devices.

2017

For decades, textile work barely figured in discussions and studies of modern art because textiles have historically been linked to women's work, domesticity and what could be called a "feminine sensitivity". However, contrary to the traditional image of textiles as rooted in diligent care, intimacy, and intuition, textile practices are logical and iterated operations, structural processes produced through mechanical and engineering decisions, much more than affective expressions of homely pragmatism. Their recognition as an art form only really occurred at the end of the 1990s with the emergence of the network as a major contemporary figure and the increasing attention given to the way in which algorithmic processes shape our contemporary condition, as well as from a revival of interest in craft and design which gave textiles a new significance, releasing them from the margins of modernity. Because of their common genealogies and operations, the interaction between developments in computing and textiles opened new fields of research between textile experimentations and digital technologies. We invited T'ai Smith to discuss how textile practices can both reorient our understanding of the modern project and, as a rule-based art, help provide direction to the artefactual elaboration of its future.

Textile Processing. A Media History of Punch Card Weaving, 2007

When we consider the subject of textile-making techniques, the question inevitably arises as to the role of actual manufacturing conditions in shaping works of art. Indeed, from the very beginning, weaving's inherent structure produced geometrical "mesh" or "grid" patterns and images – ones that, today, in the form of pixel images, have become the most common way to digitize images. In other words, the basic principles of technical image production were realized in woven material from its very inception. Weaving thus embodies the deeper-lying layers involved in the interplay of art and media, seeing as it is determined by a special and indissoluble link between art and technology. In this chapter, I'm examining the products and procedures of weaving and punch card weaving in the 18th century, but also, in equal measure, the material culture of the production conditions behind it.

METU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 2013