2023 Resident: Elizabeth Meiklejohn

This 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.

Watch Elizabeth present her residency project