Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

Experimental Weaving Residency

Established in 2019, the Experimental Weaving Residency is a program that hosts weavers in our research lab for up to three months with the goal of creating resources and techniques to share with a broader community. Each Fall/Winter, we will open a call for residencies for coming year.

Kathryn Walters

2023 (fall)
topics explored: actuating over-twisted cellulose yarns. Bio-inspired design.

Elizabeth Meiklejohn

2023 (spring)
topics explored: electromagnetics, cloth, partial weft structures, light scattering, soft sensing, lattice structures, collaboration with Irene Posch

Etta Sandry

2022
topics explored: sampling as method, waffles, self pleating structures, felting, sampling club.

Sandra Wirtanen

2019
topics explored: dry electrodes, elastics, integrated electronics, routing wires through cloth.

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

2023 Residency in Review

An animation showing the flaps opening and closing.

The 2023 Experimental Weaving Residency, featuring Elizabeth Meiklejohn, has come to a close and left us with new understandings about electromagnetics and cloth movement.

The 12-week residency took on the challenge of actuating, which is fancy for moving, a piece of cloth though a combination of complex structures and electrical components. The project emerged organically as we shared some ideas and ongoing projects of the lab with Elizabeth, who took a fondness to the idea of cloth that could hold two distinct states (e.g. a flap opened or closed, a cell extended or collapsed). With this in mind the first 4 weeks focused on a wide array of structures that we could imagine having two-states (known more broadly as bi-stable mechanisms), next, we joined forces with Irene Posch to think through how we might use electromagnetic coils to push and pull the cloth in different directions. We ultimately set ourselves a challenge to create an exhibition piece that showcases electromagnetic movement of a cloth. We added a challenge that the cloth needed to be woven in one piece with all electronics embedded into its structure. 

Two electromagnets are inserted into each flap. The electromagnets are then controlled by a web-based interface, allowing you to “play” them.
The cloth with all the flaps closed.
A video showing our interactions with the interface and the cloth in realtime.

By approaching programmable movement as a provocation, this project explored fabric elements capable of oscillating between two states. Collectively, we used our knowledge of weaving, electronics, and programming woven drafts to generate a series of samples that fold, flap, and collapse before arriving at a vision for an interactive textile component. The prompt: reimagine Posch and Kurbak’s 1-bit embroidered controllers within the vernacular of woven structure. The result, an e-textile woven in a single piece that, when removed from the loom, can be cut apart into flaps. When connected to electronics and a custom interface we built to control its motion, the cloth performs gestures. This lets the fabric behave like rustling, flickering and slow rhythmic opening and closing, suggesting a passage of wind or sunlight across the piece bringing it to life.

A detail showing the hand-made electromagnetic coils integrated into the back of each flap.

Each flap is controlled by two electromagnetic coils, one at either side of the flap. A strong neodynium magnet is also integrated into the base structure, directly under the coil when the flap is closed. When the coil is powered, it produced a magnetic field which attracts it to the neodynium magnet. When the wire that forms the coil is connected to power it becomes attracted to a magnet, and thus the flap closes and the cloth appears white. When power is disconnected, the attraction no longer holds and gravity opens the flap, letting light bounce from the flap’s bright orange interior onto the base cloth, creating a warm neon glow – effectively changing the color of the fabric in a large-scale, structural manner. 

Through close collaboration and extensive prototyping, we developed weaving strategies in which disparate elements – neutral base, neon flaps, copper coils – are fully integrated into a single-piece fabric on the loom. Designing a woven fabric that not only contains actuators, but lends itself easily to actuation through zones of rigidity and softness, was an equally important part of this process, developing from conversations with engineers and designers in our lab. We centered diagramming and process documentation throughout our collaborative process, maintaining a record of “design bookkeeping” that led us through iterations in coil form-factor, neon color composition and weave structure, finally converging as a color-shifting, actuating woven fabric.

In the following sections, we’ll break down the project into its components, photos of all of our samples, ideation, and methods are included in the 2023 residency catalog (coming soon_.

Sampling

To get started thinking through ideas and concepts, we began sampling in two directions. The first explored structures capable of collapsing and springing back into shape. And the others drew from the research in the lab on force sensing textiles to explore different structures that could sense pressure. While there are so many to explore, we’ll focus on one sample from each direction. 

An overview of all the samples produced during the residency.

Exploring Lattice Structures

This sample was my (Laura’s) personal favorite in the way that it held dimension and stretch, reminding me of a little sea creature walking along the ocean floor. Elizabeth designed it as a four layer structure of overlapping curves, such that, the binding points between the layers are made only from the layers passing through each other. Elastic floats are inserted between layers 2 and 3 to pull the lattice open. Laura translated this into AdaCAD to understand and communicate the structure to other weavers. 

Each sample Elizabeth created for the Residency was also carefully tagged with information about its structure and construction.

Sample 7b – EWR 2023
4-layer lattice with elastic floats, 0 offset
Techniques: multi-layer, shrinking floats
Weft 1 (w1): 200 tex bonded nylon
Weft 2 (w2): black elastic
Base: plain weave in w1, 15 epi per layer
Floats: w2 running through the center of the layer stack, not interlacing with anything. 

Because Elizabeth uses a weaving software called PointCarre, we explored how we might make the same structure in AdaCAD using the layer notation feature and offer it to this audience for reference and play.

Try it in our Beta Version of AdaCAD: https://adacad-beta-fa4dc.web.app/?ex=sample7b

Or learn more about how to create this structure: https://docs.adacad.org/docs/howtouse/sample7b

Making Force Sensors from Pile Weaving Techniques

The principle of resistive sensing guides many e-textile projects. This form of sensing happens when fibers (specifically metal fibers) make contact with each other when they are subjected to external pressures. The closeness of the fibers changes the material’s resistance, which can be measured by a computer. If you’d like to read more about this phenomena, we wrote a paper about it with our former experimental weaver in resdiency Etta Sandry. While we have been using felt as a force sensing structure, Elizabeth experimented with structures that would pile the metal yarns in loops on the surface of the cloth such that when they are not pressed, the loops remain isolated from each other. When they are pressed, the loops collapse and change resistance. 

a swatch that tests four different conductive yarns. The one on the far right was most successful.
A detail showing how the structure piles the conductive yarn off the surface. When it’s pressed, the little loops press on each other, creating a short circuit through the yarn and resulting in a change of resistance.
This video shows resistance changing on a multimeter when the cloth is pressed. You’ll see the numbers go down when pressed.

Understanding Movement

To understand how the cloth might move, we repeated instructions provided to us by Irene Posch which allow you to use an electromagnetic coil and strong neodymium magnet to produce movement. To test this, we created our own coils (e.g. about 200 loops of 36AWG magnet wire around a Boba straw (sourced from the cafe downstairs). We stitched the coil to a cloth and put a strong magnet on top of it, attached to another cloth. When we attach the ends of the coil to a 9 Volt battery, it repels. If we flip the ends of the coil when we connect to the 9V, it attracts. 

one of the coils we tested. This one was made with 200 turns of 40 AWG magnet wire.
We attached each end of the coil to a electrical lead. When we touch the leads to a 9V battery, the magnet was repelled by the force, creating a fluttering movement.

Elizabeth tested a bunch of coil shapes and sizes to study their effects, and to see what kind of movement we could induce upon a magnet in a cloth. Simple helical or spiral coils create push-and-pull actuation; arrays of multiple coils can create side-to-side sliding actuation when powered in a specific sequence. Ferrous metal cores increase the strength of cylindrical electromagnets, but had no effect on our flat versions.. Handmade coils inevitably have overlaps where successive wire wraps cross each other, diminishing the strength of the magnetic field.

As we researched magnetic coils, we took special inspiration from fellow e-texitles community member Cindy Harnett and her team:

We chose to maximize the number of turns that would fit in a small low-profile coil by using thin magnet wire and a solid disk form factor rather than a hollow ring. We experimented with forming coils on table and Jacquard looms, constrained by the mechanics of typical loom weaving that makes any type of circle or spiral shape highly challenging to construct. 

diagrams created by Elizabeth to explore different methods of inserting a coil into a woven structure.

Weaving is like Tetris: you can’t go back and insert more material into fabric you’ve already woven, because more recent wefts block the shed from opening in that section. A coiled wire, repeatedly traveling between the fell line (the most recent part of the cloth that’s been woven) and a previously woven section, would be difficult to weave without breaking or bending some of the foundational rules. Adding supplementary wefts, whose motions are more like knotwork or embroidery than weaving, was one strategy to fix the coil to the cloth. Another approach (shown in variation 3) was to weave the coil within the cross-section of the fabric, rather than on its face, as a doubleweave tunnel. These precisely choreographed movements, and the wire coil’s continuity, are only possible on shuttle looms.

Want to make some of your own coils – you can try these steps:

Prototyping Cloth Movement and Structure

To help us understand what we needed from our coils, we decided that we must develop them in the context they would be used. From sampling and testing, we had some notions of what we might explore, and considered a cloth with multiple flaps. We decided to integrate a bright color on the back of the flap to amplify the visual effects of the flap moving.

Our first prototoype of the flap structure, created with muslin and rip-stop nylon.
we pinned coils onto the flaps to test their weight and how they might animate the opening and closing of the clap.

We began exploring the vision for the final piece by mocking up our concept in muslin and stitching orange rip-stop nylon to the back of each muslin flap. We would hand sew on different magnets and electromagnets to explore what might happen, how far we could get a flap to move. The general finding is that the stronger the magnet, the more the force of attraction and repulsion, but also the heavier the cloth. This meant that we needed to embed the magnet in the base cloth rather than the flap to eliminate the weight it would cause. 

Translating into Woven Structure

We began translating this structure to the loom by exploring partial weft insertions that, when worked back and forth across the loom, would create flaps in place.

This piece is worked from the bottom to top edge on the loom, woven in one piece, so the flaps open in the direction of the weft. You can see if you look closely that we experimented with different structures for the orange flaps to minimize the appearance of orange on the surface of the flap, and maximize on it on the back of the flap. Ultimately, we found the flaps to be too rigid. The insertion of the flaps in the weft direction created too much weft yarn movement in the joints. 

These are Elizabeth’s design files used for understanding how to implement the flaps along the weft direction by moving partial wefts sequentially to the right and left in different segments across the width. 

We explored different materials and also different colors, as well as integrations for the magnetic wire used in the coils in the next sample, but the flaps, still felt too rigid. 

To ease the stiffness in the joints of the flaps, Elizabeth turned the design by 90 degrees, making flaps in the warp direction instead of weft. This design ultimately gave us the movement in the flaps we were looking for, but also made us add a section above each flap that needed to be “cut” to release the flap from the backing. We cut and finished these edges. 

The Final Product

Elizabeth weaving the final piece, in 4 minutes.

We initially used nylon monofilament, combined with undyed cotton, to lend stiffness to the fabric but found it too rigid and a bit unwieldy to work with. Instead, we shifted toward a “kitchen-sink” weft with many yarns bundled together, eventually choosing a mix of bleached and unbleached linen, paper and raw silk. Thin elastic yarn was briefly tested as a supplemental warp to help flap hinges snap closed, but we moved away from this idea when we rotated the design for the final iteration. Neon polyester sewing thread, strong neodymium magnets and 40-gauge magnet wire (copper with an enamel coating to prevent coils from shorting) were selected to maximize the visual impact and actuation strength of the fabric.

During the weaving process, we integrated the coils and long ends of the coils into the cloth itself, pulling them all to the top left corner of the cloth for each connection. Again, boba straws came in handy, as Elizabeth attached each long and very delicate string of magnet wire to a tape covered straw segment to manage the wires while weaving. Coils were integrated and then taped in place to hold them during the rest of the weaving process. 

Screen capture of us showing all the little coils Elizabeth was working with. Irene is impressed. Elizabeth is hidden behind, the cardboard and coils : )
Working the cloth
a detail of the electromagnet and cloth integration.

We can also see small bobbins of wire being worked through the warp here using the technique we’ve found in the lab to be most robust for routing, simply adding a pic or weft system designated to picking one end every so many wefts and slipping the supplemental wires under the raised ends at those points. This process allows one to gradually carry the traces through the cloth while ensuring they are firmly embedded into the cloth structure itself. 

Here you can see how the wires follow the edge of the cloth structure. 

To finish the piece, Elizabeth cut the flaps to release them from the base cloth and finished their edges. 

After the flaps were cut and finished, the final outcome emerged: 

Programming and Electronics

Laura took the lead on programming an interface to control the coils, as well as the electronics to route power to each coil. We’ll share our design here for those who might already be savvy with microcontroller platforms like Arduino and the basics of working with transistors to control high-power components.

While we aspire to a custom PCB, we used this breadboard based circuit to test and control the electronics.

The electronics include: 

  • Sparkfun Thing ESP 32 Microcontroller Board
  • 16 N-Channel MOSFETs (
  • And AdaFruit Boost/Buck Power Controller 
  • 16 10 KOhm Resistors

1 MOSFET and one resistor are used to control power to each coil. The MOSFET works by acting a low voltage switch (controlled by a digital pin on the ESP32 board), to open a channel for a high-voltage/high-current stream of power required by the coil. The barrel jack means we can plug it all into the wall and the Boost/Buck converter makes sure to regulate the wall power to the level used by the Microconroller. 

The most difficult part of the circuitry is perhaps just getting the cloth to have stable connections without breaking any of the 32 incredibly fragile magnet wires extending out of the cloth. Elizabeth and I approached this by weaving our own ribbon cables and hand sewing the magnet wire from the fabric to the cable to form stable connections. Each ribbon cable had 16 silicone coated wires woven into the structure. We created 2 such cables, 16 to attach to one end of the coils, and 16 to attach to the other end. The pattern for the ribbon cable used a few pics of tabby in cotton, before attaching the wire as a supplemental weft using a satin stitch. 

Before attaching the wires, we threaded each magnet wire through the plastic header usually used for electronics connections, though, with the metal tines removed. This essentially created one little “hole” for each wire that would be spaced in standard spacing as other electrical components. This also let us organize the wires, making sure that we were keeping track of coil 1, 2, 3 and so on. 

We stripped and soldered the tips of each wire integrated into our cable, before twisting them together with the stripped ends of the magnet wire. Using no solder, we fastened the connections in place by folding the twisted wires back on themselves and stitching any exposed metal down with thread. It worked quite amazingly and created really strong and stable connections. 

Because we used an ESP 32 board, our fabric could talk to the internet. In fact, it has its own website, where interactions upon the website control the movement of the cloth (if it is plugged in). This was accomplished using a connecting a simple Angular website to a web-based database, specifically, a Firebase Realtime Database. The ESP 32 is also connected to this database, and listens for changes which occur when someone selects flaps to open and close on the website. You can find all the code at: https://github.com/UnstableDesign/Flappable

We loaded the interface on a tablet to showcase how touching regions on the interface closes the associated flaps. Voila! Thanks Internet. 

A detail view of the interface used to control the cloth.

There is so so so so much content, ideas, and inspiration generated through this process. So much so that it’s taken us over 3 months just to put this blog post together. At the same time, we have been designing a catalog to print and offer to the community and preparing the piece for exhibition at Textile Intersections in London on Sept 20, 2023.  Please follow us on Instagram for more updates. 

A preview of the residency catalog, coming soon!

Acknowledgements

This Experimental Weaving Residency has been supported by the National Science Foundation Grant #1943109. The project was a collaboration led by Elizabeth Meiklejohn, Laura Devendorf and Irene Posch with support from the Unstable Design Lab and ATLAS Institute more broadly. Special thanks to Hunter Allan-Bonney for Photography support and Deanna Gelosi and Atlas Zaina for preparing the “Magnetic Reverberations” for installation and shipping.

Categories
Announcements Experimental Weaving Residency

Announcing the 2023 Experimental Weavers in Residence

Two pieces by Elizabeth Meiklejohn

Our experimental weaving application process has concluded and we are happy to announce that our 2023 Experimental Weaver in Residence will be Elizabeth Meiklejohn.  We have also extended an invitation to Kathryn Walters to join us in Fall 2023 as an extension to our residency program that focuses on collaborations with students currently studying at other academic programs. 

This year, we had a much smaller, but very high quality set of applicants. This resulted in us combining the shortlist and finalist phases by focusing on the top six applicants, each of whom brought unique perspectives and approaches to our ever-evolving notions of what experimental weaving is and how we might be able to support it through collaborations across craft and engineering. We chose to work with Elizabeth for the next residency because her practice combines garment design, custom software development, woven structure and a really inspiring practice of hacking and building her own equipment to explore new possibilities for woven structure. Her aesthetic beautifully crosses the digital and physical, often playing at the intersection with simulations as much as shimmering multilayer structures. We are excited to learn from her approaches and share them with this community. She recently finished her MFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design and will be joining us in February 2023. 

Kathryn Walters

One of the hardest parts of the residency selection process is choosing only one person, and we’ve been looking around for ways we can grow the program. In this spirit, we extended an invitation to Kathryn Walters to join us in the Fall as a kind of research exchange. Kathryn is currently a PhD researcher at the Swedish School of Textiles who elegantly pushes the boundaries of woven structure, her work demonstrates techniques for self-shaping, shape changing materials and structures. You can learn more about her (amazing!) practice by viewing her talk in this year’s experimental weaving talk series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSEAEPUOC1o. Kathryn will be visiting the lab in Fall 2023. 

Stay posted for more updates from the residency and a future call for 2024 artists in residence. We will also continue our experimental weaving talk series next year to feature some applicants from our process and to bring broader attention to the practices of experimental weaving across the world.  In the meantime, we have published all shortlist applicants, finalists and committee members who have provided permission below.

This program has been funded by the National Science Foundation under grant # 1943109.

2023 Residency Finalists

Isabelle Camarra
https://isabellecamarra.cargo.site/

Isabelle Camarra is a Material designer specializing in industrial weaving and knitting whose work playfully integrates texture and biomaterials. 

Kathryn Walters 
https://www.kmwalters.com/
@kw.textiles

Kathryn Walters investigates transformative textiles and three-dimensional form. Her work explores form-generating behaviour.

Lars Shimabukuro

www.lars-shimabukuro.com 
@landlockedfishcake 

Lars Shimabukuro’s work crosses photography, printmaking and weaving and showcases playful combinations of color and structure. 


Lucy Smyth
https://www.lucysmyth.com/
@loom_labyrinth

Lucy Smyth is Fascinated by stubborn materials and challenging structures. Her mathematical explorations spans costume and weaving, focusing on texture and form. 

Melanie Olde 
melanieolde.com 
@melanie_olde

Inspired by biology and structure, Melanie Olde is an Australian-based researcher and weaver, who investigates movement and sensory experience in three-dimensional cloth.

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

Call for Applications

Applications for the Next Experimental Weaving Residency are Now Closed

Spring 2023 : Cross-section

The Unstable Design Lab is hosting its third experimental weaving residency with the goal of developing new techniques and open-source resources that can co-evolve fiber arts and engineering practice.  Our annual theme, cross-section, speaks to our ongoing interest in growing community at the intersections of craft and technology. As such, we look to this call to not only select a resident, but to identify a group of like-minded folks with whom we can collectively define the commitments and possible societal contributions of experimental weavers. As such, we invite interested parties to attend a series of experimental weaving talks we are hosting this Fall.

The chosen resident will work with the Unstable Design Lab, as well as researchers from the ATLAS Institute and University of Colorado more broadly, to create a series of swatches inspired by challenges currently faced by engineering researchers. For example, shape weaving techniques for creating form-fitting and/or compression garments for counter-pressure spacesuits, integration of power harvesting diodes, compostable or easily reusable textile structures for zero-waste manufacturing, or structures that dynamically fold and unfold to support mechanical structures or soft robotics (to name a few, but not all, possible spaces for experimentation). Applicants may wish to review our recent projects to get a stronger sense of the interests and values of the group. Applicants should be open-minded, curious, and above all deeply knowledgeable about woven structures and their behaviors. No knowledge of computer science, electronics, or engineering is required for participation.

Timeline

Application DeadlineAugust 30, 2022
Notification to Selected ApplicantOctober 1, 2022
Residency Dates12 weeks between Jan 15-May 15

Resources

The resources available to the resident include a desk in the Unstable Design Lab, priority access to a TC2 digital jacquard loom (3W warped at 60 ends per inch), access to other weaving, spinning and knitting equipment in the lab, access to traditional and novel weaving materials, programming support for some custom software needs AdaCAD, access to the fabrication facilities at the ATLAS Institute, access to motion-capture and high-end audio equipment in the B2 Center for the Media Art and Performance. While we can provide instructions for getting started on the TC2, the artist is ultimately responsible for the design and production of their swatches—there is no technician devoted to realizing the work on the equipment.

As a collaborator in the Unstable Design Lab you will be working among artists and researchers across many domains of research. You would share immediate lab space with PhD students Deanna Gelosi, Eldy Lazaro, Mikhaila Friske, Sasha De Koninck, and  Shanel Wu as well as undergraduate researchers. We will work in close partnership with Allie Anderson’s Bioastronautics Lab, specifically with her PhD student Ella Schauss

Expectations

The resident will be expected to work at least 30 hours per week with the lab members and collaborators evolving concepts that address the artist’s interests as well as the engineering teams’ needs. The selected resident must be willing to share any techniques they develop as open-source resources to both the collaborators and public more broadly, including producing necessary documentation for others to replicate their techniques. To facilitate the exploration of projects of mutual interest, the organizers will schedule meetings with various researchers during the first week of the residency to better understand their needs and challenges when it comes to integrating textile structures into their research. The resident, then, will be able to select the challenges that most interest them to further explore, sharing their findings with the research teams as they develop.

Stipend, Housing and Timeline

Stipend*$9520 USD
Airfare Reimbursement$450 USD
Materials**$500 USD
* the stipend will be taxed by the US government and this may have significant impact for international applicants
** materials budget does not go directly to artist, but is to be spent by the lab during the residency on supplies determined by the artist.

The residency scheduling is flexible but should total 12 weeks should take place between January and May 2023 in Boulder Colorado. The resident will receive $9520 as a stipend, $450 towards airfare to and from Boulder, and a materials budget of $500. The artist will be responsible for locating housing and travel to and from the university. International applicants are welcome to apply but should note that the stipend will be lower due to taxes taken by the US government on international workers. 

A Note for International Applicants

We welcome international applications. If you are of non-US citizenship, please make note that the stipend will be particularly affected by US taxes on international workers as well as some fees for VISA processing in your country of citizenship. As we reach the later stages of the application process, we may use this information to provide you with more specifics on the taxes you may incur as well as verify with the host university that you would be eligible to work within the institution. We can provide flexibility in the residency dates to support applicants who may be facing additional challenges obtaining a VISA and/or traveling to the US due to current current restrictions given COVID. For more information on the particular program through which we host residents, visit: https://www.colorado.edu/isss/cu-departments/hiringhosting-international-students-scholars/international-scholars-j-h-e-pr/j-1-3

History 

2019: The first iteration of this residency ran for a 6-week period in summer 2019 with support for the center for craft materials-based research grant. The resident, Sandra Wirtanen, and collaborator, Katya Arquilla, focused on the development of techniques for weaving dry electrodes for physiological monitoring. During the residency term, Katya and Sandra worked closely to sample different methods for producing a shape fitting garment with integrated electronics as well as different structural explorations of woven electrodes. The results and outcomes are documented in several formats here.

2022: After taking a delay for COVID, we changed the residency structure to allow for a longer time for the resident and our team to work together during the regular university semester. We also decided to focus more on ideation and play as opposed to the production of a single concept outcome. Our next residency began in Jan 2022 with our selected weaver, Etta Sandry. While the residency was postponed to Fall 2022, we worked closely in the first month to produce instructional materials related to woven structure and its potential applications to engineering research. Those results can be found here: 

Organizers

Laura Devendorf
Director of the Unstable Design Lab
Assistant Professor, ATLAS Institute
& Dept. of Information Science
website

Steven Frost
Faculty Director of the
B2 Center for Media Arts & Performance
website

Allison Anderson
Assistant Professor, Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences
website

Selection Committee

The selection committee and organizers will work together will determine the finalists. The organizers will ultimately select the chosen resident.

Kristina Andersen,
Future Everyday, Eindhoven University of Technology
website

Sarah Rosalena Brady,
Computational Craft, University of California Santa Barbara,
website

Annet Couwenberg,
Fiber and Material Studies, MICA,
website

Annapurna Mamidipudi,
Scholar and Craft Researcher,
website

Alex McLean
Research Fellow, Then Try This
website

Holly McQuillan
Critical Textile Topologies & Materializing Futures, TU Delft
website

Vernelle A. A. Noel,
Director of the Situated Computation and Design Lab, Georgia Tech
website

Jane Patrick,
Creative Director, Schacht Spindle Company,
website

Etta Sandry
Weaver and 2022 Experimental Weaver in Residence
website

Clement Zheng
Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore.
website



Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency Public Resources

Experimental Weaving Talk Series Returns!

Wednesdays at 9AM, Mountain Standard Time
Online, Fall 2023

The Experimental Weaving Talk Series returns this Fall! Join us as we invite a new round of weavers to share their approach to weaving and experimentation. This talk series began in 2022 to engage different perspectives on what “experimentation” means to various weavers and how it becomes enacted across practices. Our goal with the series is to bring attention to weavers whose work animates possibilities for weaving. In defining experimental weaving, we also aim to illuminate how these are inherently practices of technological innovation and how students of technology can benefit from learning about the histories of weaving and the utility woven techniques.The talks are intended for the public and are all accessible online, as well as for students in the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of the “Experimental Textiles” course.

All talks will be hosted via Zoom:

Elizabeth Meiklejohn

September 27, 2023

Elizabeth Meiklejohn is a textile engineer, designer and researcher focused on complex structures and experimental techniques in weaving. Her work blends digital and hands-on methods to achieve dynamic forms and capabilities in fabrics, all while investigating material origins and tendencies. Elizabeth was the 2023 Experimental Weaver-in-Residence; this talk will present her work as well as the outcomes of the residency.

Elizabeth will share her background and areas of research as a textile designer, from 3D woven structures to self-shaping fabric behavior. Her talk will cover the time she spent as Unstable Design Lab’s 2023 Experimental Weaver-in-Residence, sampling, prototyping and creating an interactive fabric while developing new systems of notation for woven textiles.

elizabethmeiklejohn.com

@etmeikle

Patrice George

October 25, 2023

Patrice George recently retired from the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she was  Associate Professor in the Textile Development and Marketing Department for 18 years, specializing in woven textile design, and the history of the textile industry. She participated in beta-tests and product education in the emerging field of computer-aided design in the early 1980’s, creating an early course in computer-aided woven design for the School of Visual Arts in 1984. She has been a design consultant to the interior textile industry since founding her NYC studio, Patrice George Designs, in 1979. She has also been a guest instructor at textile schools, a consultant to international handweaving projects, and a frequent presenter and workshop leader at professional textile seminars and conferences.

We’ve invited Patrice to reprise the presentation she offered at the Praxis Digital Weaving conference: From the PC to the TC:  A VERY Short History of Digital Design For Woven Textiles

Patrice’s talk will trace the history of  digital weaving technology, from IBM’s first software patent in 1970 for Janice Lourie’s Textile Graphics System, through the adaption of digital textile technology by industrial mills, hand loom and power loom manufacturers, textile education and artists’ explorations.  The transition from slow design to advanced applications for woven textiles today will be discussed and illustrated.

Lucy Smyth

November 8, 2023

Lucy Smyth is a weaver based in Northern Ireland who works across art, design, education, and costume. Through the recurring themes of movement and contrast, Lucy interrogates the relationship between 2D and 3D to create sculptural interdisciplinary fabrics or artworks.

Driven by material and process, Lucy’s practice explores inherent behaviors to challenge and reimagine. This practical connection and the use of thinking tools such as paper folding, fabric manipulation, and sketching nurture her work to creatively evolve and achieve, achieving technically complex structures.

lucysmyth.com

@loom_labyrinth

Lars Shimabukuro

November 29, 2023

Lars Shimabukuro (b. Honolulu, Hawai’i) is a mixed and trans artist whose work expands ideas of homelands, family, and memory to include the queer landscapes that raised them. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art from Yale University in 2013, an Associate Degree from Haywood Community College (NC) focusing on weaving in 2019, and completed the Core Fellowship program at the Penland School of Craft in 2023. Lars has shown nationally and internationally, and teaches weaving at craft schools. 

Shimabukuro will share about their process of translating identity into weaving, and how weaving structures inspire the forms in their sculptural work. He will also share about his practice in other materials, and how those explorations are starting to incorporate textiles.

lars-shimabukuro.com

@landlockedfishcake

Acknowledgements

This series is hosted by Steven Frost and Laura Devendorf with the support of Etta Sandry.


Archive: 2022 Experimental Weaving Talk Series

Melanie Olde

Bio:  Melanie Olde is a weaver, researcher, teacher and artist. She researches cellular structures for form, function and array to interpret these in biomimetic, moving, woven 3-dimensional cloth to advance innovative exploration. Olde works on an AVL 24 shaft CompuDobby Loom in Canberra, Australia and has also worked with mechanical and computerized jacquard systems.
Melanieolde.com
@melanie_olde 

Kathryn Walters

Bio: Kathryn Walters is a PhD researcher in Textile Design at the Swedish School of Textiles. Her research investigates transformative textiles developing three-dimensional form. She explores emergent behaviour arising from the combination of material properties and textile structures, where textiles are seen as systems with responsive properties. Her process embraces the use of industrial jacquard looms as an extension of weaving as craft.
kmwalters.com/

Jessy Lu

Jessy Lu is an artist exploring textiles as a form of computation with respect to both their historical origin and technological future. With a background in R&D as a materials engineer, she has worked on exploratory applications for fabrics used in hardware technology. Her art practice focuses on exploring image processing techniques and the use of algorithms to determine pattern and color allocation. Currently, Jessy is working on a research project in Taiwan studying knots as a form of craft tradition, sculptural object, and as a framework for tactile modalities of aesthetic experience. 

jessylu.com
@lu_jue

Alyson Ainsworth

Bio: Alyson Ainsworth is a New York City-based weaver whose work explores overcoming traditional limitations of the loom. Through the use of materials, hand manipulations, and complex weave structure, she creates weavings that combine new techniques with the familiar. She is interested in pushing the boundaries of weaving as a discipline—from both art and design perspectives—and exploring the connection of functional and aesthetic textiles in the process. 
Alysonainsworth.com
@alysonainsworth

Victoria Manganiello

Bio: Victoria Manganiello considers weaving a form of communication. Her ethereal fabric pieces radiate color and light while referencing computer programming and bar codes. Manganiello is currently producing a documentary film about Women and Textiles and is an instructor at NYU and the Parsons School of the Arts in New York. Her textile-based installations combine hand-spun yarns and hand-mixed dyes with modern materials and techniques, creating conceptual hybrids that lean towards the future while employing methods from the past.

victoriamanganiello.com 
@victoriamanganiello  

Etta Sandry

Etta is the 2022 Experimental Weaver In Residence, this talk will present her work as well as the outcomes from the residency.
Bio: Etta Sandry is an artist, educator, and facilitator from the midwestern United States, currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her material-focused research is rooted in fibre and weaving and spans media through sculpture, writing, and installation. Etta completed her MFA in the Fibre & Material Practices program at Concordia University in the spring of 2021. She has exhibited her work in the United States and Canada and was the 2022 Experimental Weaver in Residence at the Unstable Design Lab in Boulder, Colorado. 
ettasandry.com/
@ee_teetee_ay

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency Provocations

An Intro to Weave Structure for HCI

This publication includes a workbook on weave structure as well as a reflection on how HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) researchers might look to craft publications for inspiration when communicating the contribution of craft-oriented research. The workbook included in this publication is intended for HCI researchers to learn the fundamentals of weave structure in the context of weaving force sensors. The project emerged in collaboration between the lab and Experimental Weaver in Residence Etta Sandry and our shared interests in communicating the technicality and fundamentals of weaving to broad audiences.

You can read the full publication on Issuu, however, you will be able to download when it becomes officially published in June.

Citation:

Laura Devendorf, Sasha de Koninck, and Etta Sandry. 2022. An Introduction to Weave Structure for HCI: A How-to and Reflection on Modes of Exchange. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 629–642. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3534567

Full Publication and Talk:

Download the Publication
Watch the Video

Notes:

We will be reforming this activity book into an interactive format that’s linked with AdaCAD. Stay posted.

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

2022 Experimental Weaving Residency Call for Entries

Experimental Weaving Residency
Spring 2022 : Consider Everything an Experiment 

Part of the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Unstable Design Lab is hosting its second experimental weaving residency with the goal of developing new techniques and open-source resources that can co-evolve fiber arts and engineering practice. The chosen resident will work with the Unstable Design Lab, as well as researchers from the University of Colorado, to create a series of samples inspired by challenges currently faced by engineering researchers. For example, shape weaving techniques for creating form-fitting and/or compression garments for counter-pressure spacesuits, integration of power harvesting diodes, compostable or easily reusable textile structures for zero-waste manufacturing, or structures that dynamically fold and unfold to support mechanical structures or soft robotics (to name a few, but not all, possible spaces for experimentation). Applicants should be open-minded, curious, and above all deeply knowledgeable about woven structures and their behaviors. No knowledge of computer science, electronics, or engineering is required for participation. 

Timeline

Application DeadlineSept 15, 2021
Notification to Selected ApplicantNovember 1, 2021
Residency Dates12 weeks between Jan 15-May 15

Resources

The resources available to the resident include a desk in the Unstable Design Lab, priority access to a TC2 digital jacquard loom (3W warped at 60 ends per inch), access to other weaving, spinning and knitting equipment in the lab, access to traditional and novel weaving materials, programming support for some custom software needs, access to the fabrication facilities at the ATLAS Institute, access to motion-capture and high-end audio equipment in the B2 Center for the Media Art and Performance, and an exhibition space to showcase work at the end of the residency (also at the B2). While we can provide instructions for getting started on the TC2, the artist is ultimately responsible for the design and production of their swatches—there is no technician devoted to realizing the work on the equipment.

Expectations

The resident will be expected to work at least 30 hours per week with the lab members and collaborators evolving concepts that address the artist’s interests as well as the engineering teams’ needs. The selected resident must be willing to share any techniques they develop as open-source resources to both the collaborators and public more broadly, including producing necessary documentation for others to replicate their techniques. To facilitate the exploration of projects of mutual interest, the organizers will schedule meetings with various researchers during the first week of the residency to better understand their needs and challenges when it comes to integrating textile structures into their research. The resident, then, will be able to select the challenges that most interest them to further explore, sharing their findings with the research teams as they develop.

Timing, Housing, Stipend

Stipend*$9520 USD
Airfare Reimbursement$450 USD
Materials**$500 USD
* the stipend will be taxed by the US government and this may have significant impact for international applicants
** materials budget does not go directly to artist, but is to be spent by the lab during the residency on supplies determined by the artist.

The residency scheduling is flexible but should total 12 weeks should take place between January and May 2022 in Boulder, Colorado. The resident will receive $9520 as a stipend, $450 towards airfare to and from Boulder, and a materials budget of $500 to be spend during the residency. The artist will be responsible for locating housing and travel to and from Boulder, Colorado. International applicants are welcome to apply but should note that the stipend will be lower due to taxes taken by the US government on international workers. 

The funding for this residency has been generously provided by the National Science Foundation under a grant looking to better understand how craftspeople can be integrated into engineering research. As such the selected resident will be asked to provide feedback and data about their experience to better understand how universities can support such collaborations in the future. The funding will allow us to host this residency again in 2023 and 2024.

International Applicants

We welcome international applications. If you are of non-US citizenship, please make note that the stipend will be particularly affected by US taxes on international workers as well as some fees for VISA processing in your country of citizenship. As we reach the later stages of the application process, we may use this information to provide you with more specifics on the taxes you may incur as well as verify with the host university that you would be eligible to work within the institution. We can provide flexibility in the residency dates to support applicants who may be facing additional challenges obtaining a VISA and/or traveling to the US due to current current restrictions given COVID. For more information on the particular program through which we host residents, visit: https://www.colorado.edu/isss/cu-departments/hiringhosting-international-students-scholars/international-scholars-j-h-e-pr/j-1-3

Organizers

Laura Devendorf (she/her),
Director of the Unstable Design Lab
Assistant Professor, ATLAS Institute
& Dept. of Information Science
website

Steven Frost
Faculty Director of the
B2 Center for Media Arts & Performance
website

Allison Anderson
Assistant Professor, Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences
website

Selection Committee

The selection committee and organizers will work together will determine the finalists. The organizers will ultimately select the chosen resident.

Kristina Andersen,
Future Everyday, Eindhoven University of Technology
website

Matt Bethancourt,
Director, Whaaat!? Lab for Games and Experimental Interactions, 
website

Sarah Rosalena Brady,
Assistant Professor of Computational Craft at UCSB, website

Annet Couwenberg,
Fiber and Material Studies, MICA,
website

Annapurna Mamidipudi,
Scholar and Craft Researcher,
website

Christy Matson,
Artist and Weaver,
website

Pam Meadows,
Curator, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
website

Vernelle A. A. Noel,
Assistant Professor, University of Florida,
website

Jane Patrick,
Creative Director, Schacht Spindle Company,
website

Michael Rivera,
PhD Candidate, Carnegie Mellon University,
website

History 

The first iteration of this residency ran for a 6-week period in summer 2019 with support for the center for craft materials-based research grant. The resident, Sandra Wirtanen, and collaborator, Katya Arquilla, focused on the development of techniques for weaving dry electrodes for physiological monitoring.

Collaboration Team

As a collaborator in the Unstable Design Lab you will be working among artists and researchers across many domains of research. You would share immediate lab space with the students and faculty listed on the people page. Additionally, we will be working closely with Ella Schauss (a PhD student working with Prof. Anderson) and Michael Rivera (who will be a post-doctoral researcher at the lab during Spring 2022).

Application

To apply for the residency, please fill out the form below. Our selection criteria will be determined by your approach to experimentation, aesthetic of your work, and the demonstration of techniques that you employ in the work so please use the images and statements to provide details to those ends. Details about how you document and share your work will also help your application.

applications are now closed

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

Next Residency to be Held Spring 2022

We have received generous funding form the National Science Foundation to continue and conduct research through the experimental weaving residency for another three years! Due to COVID, we have delayed the start date of this residency to Spring ’22. Stay posted for a call for applications this summer. You can sign up for our newsletter for updates to your inbox (see link in the footer).

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

Craftspeople As Technical Collaborators

in the video above we describe how craftspeople and human-computer interaction researchers can form mutually beneficial partnerships.

The video is the presentation portion of our 2020 CHI paper entitled:

Craftspeople as Technical Collaborators: Lessons Learned through an Experimental Weaving Residency
Laura Devendorf, Katya Arquilla, Sandra Wirtanen, Allison Anderson, and Steven Frost.
CHI 2020 – Best Paper Honorable Mention

We self-published a very similar, and more graphically pretty, version of the paper as our 2019 Residency Catalog

Categories
Experimental Weaving Residency

2019 Residency Catalog