Blogs

Zuhal — living matter embedded in 3D structures to create grown wearables (wearabels) by Professor Neri Oxman

Prof. Neri Oxman from the MIT Media Lab and the Mediated Matter Group collaborated to create four grown and 3d printed wearables (wearabels).

Wearabels
From this process four wearables were grown. All off the grown wearables in this collection designed by Prof. Neri Oxman aim to embed living matter within 3D structures.

Qamar ~ Inspired by one of the most luminous objects in the sky, this piece embodies the surface of the Moon. Akin to a wearable biodome, the exterior contains spatial spherical moon-shaped pods for algae-based air-purification and biofuel collection to produce and store oxygen.

Zuhal ~ This piece was created to adapt to the vortex storms on Saturn. It has a hairy and fiberous large surface area designed to contain bacteria that convert the planet’s hydrocarbons into edible matter for humans.

Cognitive neuroscientists collaborated with artists and gaming and wearable technology industry partners to create the "My Virtual Dream" installation. This was then used in an experiment to discover more about learning in the brain.

https://www.baycrest.org/research-news/crowdsourcing-brain-data-overnight-experiment-creates-social-brain-lab-yields-new-insights-about-speed-of-learning-changes-in-the-brain

"...wind and breath are intimately related in the continuous movement of inhalation and exhalation that is fundamental to life and being. Inhalation is wind becoming breath, exhalation is breath becoming wind. --Tim Ingold, Being Alive" via Debbie Lyddon's "Aeolian Pipes and Air-Songs" booklet on her textiles (felt, wax, resin & wire) sculptures at the beach https://debbielyddon.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/aeolian-pipes-and-air-s... (pdf)

having recently had an appendectomy operation in which the recovery left me with reduced lung capacity (bilateral pleural effusion with lower lobe collapse), these words rang true for breathing and learning to breath through my tummy/diaphragm rather than chest.

with all the talk of data retention and vintage (clothes) stores & work stuff this week, I had a great dream about an encryption dress this morning. I couldn't find anything in the store that I liked, then finally chose a dress & said this'll do. turns out it had an encryption chip in it. we couldn't find the pricelist card for it — flat, vertical cards covered in plastic frames — sort of like house listings in the window of the real estate offices. had to scan through heaps of them - layers and layers. & seems to be waterproof also as the dress becomes swimwear/togs too (changes). lots of dream spent on adventure looking for it. turns out it cost $100K due to software licence. but they waived it & I got to keep the dress & encrypted all communications from then on. I was trying to work out how it worked without a keyboard to enter passphrase. but it was new tech. touch was all that was needed. I was also worried about the chip being so close to my heart (physical location) but it was proven to be safe to wear. good dream. chip was like a square button, sewn into the fabric. gather & press to activate. the encryption dress and chip were waterproof too because at some points in the dream it turned into togs/swimmers and I was in the water, I think when I was looking for the pricecards.

maybe it means I should get back to working on the flora gps test - flora's working, & gps arrived recently
#dream

reSkin Wearable Technology Lab & Coded Cloth was a lab + exhibition showing wearable technology projects in 2007/8. It was curated by Melinda Rackham.

http://www.anat.org.au/reskin

http://www.subtle.net/pdf/MRLEON.pdf (PDF) describes the background of the events and has examples of the work.

"In summer 2007, in order to facilitate such interdisciplinary experimentation in Australia,
Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) initiated the reSkin Wearable Technol-
ogy Lab in collaboration with Craft Australia and the Australian National University School of
Art. Twenty-one media and sound artists; programmers; jewelers; and object, textile and fash-
ion designers immersed themselves into an intensive three-week research and development
environment with six facilitators ."

last saturday (31st jan) I went along to Alex Falkiner's "Stitching off the Page (fancy edgings)" class in marrickville. it was a lovely afternoon learning new stitches and techniques for the edges of fabric. I really wanted to learn her "netting" stitch and just block out a few hours to spend stitching. great to speak to others too

some photos of the "in progress" parts of the stitches for future reference. I felt I was having a bad day stitching - extra slow and making lots of mistakes (which given my state that week after the recent surgery/recovery wasn't too surprising), but I'll try these again when feeling better.

the netting stitch is like blanket stitch but you stitch into the air / where the loops join instead of into the fabric

we went to life drawing class at 107 projects tonight. Syd Mead said that if you can draw people, you can pretty much draw anything (paraphrasing), so I'd like to practice more. I'm happy with a couple of these. I was trying rough outline of shapes and concentrating on shading the shadows. one lady asked about the other colours so I showed her the pastels. J's lines are amazing - I need to practice looser lines, and seeing & drawing volumes. and find my line at all. these are 5mins, 10mins, 15min poses - I'd arrived late so missed the 1-2 min poses. my proportions are out most of the time so this needs improvement. the model walked around later and looked at everyone's drawings. he said he thought my last one of him "everything is expanding", so hopefully that's a good thing?

adding them all here, so if I keep going throughout the year, I can look back and (hopefully) see improvements, and my line. these are charcoal (vine + thicker), white charcoal/pastel and coloured conte crayons

"Solace" project: India Flint is doing a residency in South Australia in June this year, and has invited people to make flags to hang.

"Make a triangular flag or pennon [meaning a personal ensign, derived from the Latin penna meaning a wing or a feather] preferably using a piece of pre-loved cloth. Stitch on it a word or a phrase or a sentence that might act as a wish for peace or an acknowledgement of beauty, imply a sense of stillness or simply something that gives you solace. It can be as brief or as long as you like. A haiku, a snatch of song, a word that takes you where you want to be. Attach ties to the tethering end of your flag"

& then post it to the address on the page. she'll dye them, and photos will go into a book/online.

http://prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/an-invitation.html has the details.

I made one tonight using a song snippet:

"sunlight falls, my wings open wide" from orpheus by david sylvian, on the secrets of the beehive album, because it always gives me solace when i play it.
japanese cotton with wool thread

some others in the Sketchbooks and Experiments for Textiles facebook group are going to make one too

Tilda Swinton's performance of "Cloakroom"

via http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/23250/1/tilda-swinton-the-art-of-the-everyday

extracts from the article by Susanne Madsen — emphasis added by me for the key points relating to my research:

It’s not every day you line up at a cloakroom and hand over your ticket to Tilda Swinton, who hurries back towards the rails to fetch your stuff and delicately presents it to you. But that was what happened at Swinton and fashion historian Olivier Saillard’s Cloakroom performance in Florence this week, where the audience were invited to leave things throughout the play, which Tilda then contemplated and interacted with, from her licking a jacket to throwing herself full force on top of a coat and burying her face in a hood, in a gesture of bringing out the poetry in ‘ordinary’ clothes.

on haptic human website, I'll be exploring the human touch in handmade objects, using the idea (feeling? what-if question?) that there's a transfer of atoms when objects are made, and when they are hand-made I think the *human* atoms get blended (even in a slight way) with the object's atoms, and it makes us relate to them more - we 'feel' the humanity, or the soul perhaps (our common atoms/frequencies). this will allow me to research across different topics and disciplines, and to apply "what-if" questions to try answer and explore.

this idea is based on my reply to a discussion on haptics on my textiles class forum, and some earlier thoughts about analog audio vs digital audio recordings (see below & attached)

note that there'll mostly be rough notes/stream of consciousness ideas here for a bit of fun, so nothing really to see here - move along

in this exercise we were to take photos of shapes, colours we liked near home and then make drawings of them. click on the photos below to see larger versions of them