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Dear dearest dear mother
No full textThis essay attends to the archive of airletters sent by the young student artist Sue Irons (who later became Senga Nengudi) to her mother during her year of study in Japan, 1966-67. It illuminates the stretch and sustaining force of airmailed letter writing, its Black feminist solidarities and networks of care, and the importance of these transpacific letters to her "dearest mother" to her emerging practice
An exploration of the opportunities and challenges of bringing a 'soft' textile design approach into engagement with practitioners from science and engineering disciplines
Get PDFCurrent research in wearable smart textiles largely resides in ‘hard’ scientific fields, which prioritise technological function, yet often overlook critical design aspects that influence the wearer’s experience. Wearable smart textiles are often viewed merely as flexible platforms for technology, without sufficient consideration of how material interactions impact textile appearance, texture, handle and drape, all of which affect comfort and wearability. This narrow focus limits their potential by neglecting the experiential knowledge necessary for their holistic development. By addressing the gaps that act as barriers to textile designs recognition as a critical discipline in wearable smart textiles, this study explores the ways a textile designer, drawing on their intuitive and hands-on expertise, can advance smart textiles through engagement with the sciences to integrate both technical performance and sensory and tactile experience. Through reflective experimentation and sampling, textile designers work to harmonise function with sensory and tactile qualities, as articulated by Elaine Igoe. My study draws on Igoe’s thinking to further understand how a ‘soft’, textile design approach can be developed in emerging technology-driven contexts, such as wearable smart textiles. Integrating technology into fabrics, designers like Bruna Goveia da Rocha, Pauline van Dongen, and Emmi Pouta emphasise the material, tactile and experiential qualities of textiles and exemplify this 'soft' textile design approach. However, these design insights usually remain confined to design research, with limited integration into the broader science-led, wearable smart textile field. A bricolage methodology was chosen for its adaptability, enabling hands-on techniques to be combined with qualitative research. Using a Research through Design (RtD) approach, two exploratory case studies were conducted, focusing on the integration of technological components into knitted and embroidered innersuit samples. These projects involved cutting-edge, science-led contexts, allowing for the practical application of textile design expertise to achieve a balance between experiential qualities and functionality. In the first case study, I acted as a maker, facilitator, and workshop host, contributing textile design to wearable innersuits for nuclear decommissioning operators. In the second, I developed thermoregulation garments for astronauts, conducting semi-structured interviews to gain further insights into the interdisciplinary requirements of smart textile development. This practice-based research makes contributions across practice, mindset, and methodology. On a practical level, it develops textile design skills to create wearable smart textiles that incorporate polymer optical fibres and fluidic systems, with the aim of balancing function with design. It highlights a shift in approach from traditional to smart textile design, demonstrating how a soft textile approach and sampling can be re-positioned and embedded within wearable smart textiles to create fabrics where experiential qualities, such as appearance, texture, handle and drape, are thoughtfully considered and preserved. The study also fosters a flexible, multidisciplinary approach, in which the designer acts as a ‘material explorer,’ adapting to various roles and contexts. Methodologically, it introduces a ‘soft’ textile design perspective into the smart textile field, bridging the gap between traditional textile design expertise and technological innovation. This reflective, exploratory approach demonstrates both the opportunities and challenges of developing wearable smart textiles when engaging with practitioners from other disciplines
Materialising loss: Gestation and grief mediated through the medical image
No full textThe increasing reliance on medically derived data and imagery in diagnostic processes can leave an individual feeling emotionally alienated, particularly when this is related to the grief experienced through child and pregnancy loss. The PhD examines how such data and imagery can be subject to artistic translation and remediation as a way of opening up the invisible and intangible complexities of grief in relation to child and pregnancy loss, issues that have until recently remained silenced or taboo topics in the UK. The research practice also operationalises post-mortem medical research data and autobiographical and experiential narratives that were collected in a number of clinical and research settings. The consideration of the ethical implications of materialising medical data as part of research practice is crucial to the thesis, as is the critical reflection on the issues surrounding artist-led collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches that is at the core of the work. More specifically, the thesis works with data and imagery derived from ultrasound, Magnetic Resonance (MR) and Micro-Computed Tomography (micro-CT) imaging, which are diagnostic tools for many major health conditions, as well as offering pioneering non-invasive tools for foetal post-mortems. A range of artistic materialisation processes such as cyanotype printmaking, 3D printing, sculpture, creative writing, film, sound and installation practices are drawn upon as part of the research process. These serve to transform and remediate personal and archival medical data, which are interwoven with non-medical material to create new visual and narrative articulations of personal and collective expressions of loss. This interweaving informs the structure of the thesis itself, with visual materialisations and poetic writing punctuating the theoretical framing of the research. Not only do the materialising processes serve to expand on the meanings of the medical data, but also, by returning these artworks as site-sensitive installations to different exhibition spaces and diverse audiences, a gestation and grief space was generated where interpretations around the relationship of medical data and the experience of grief and loss could be uncovered. Several conceptual frameworks informed the thesis. The autobiographical narratives of Anne Boyer, along with other pathographies, in dialogue with Rita Charon’s scholarship on Narrative Medicine, were used to position the patient and parent experiences of being medically imaged. The speculative feminist thinking of Donna Haraway and her concept of ‘staying with the trouble’ as well as Maria de Puig de Bellacasa’s ‘care’ and ’carelessness’, were employed in thinking through the ethical implications of remediating medical data and imagery outside the clinical context. Carol Mavor’s performative writing on art history and visual studies provided a narrative context for the art practice that also situated the research within the arts and humanities field. While this research draws on the work of these thinkers and explores their interconnections, it is not defined by any one of them. It remediates the medical image and associated patient and parent narratives, speculates through these, and generates an alternative space of loss. Further, this research highlights narratives of loss through the realisation of a conceptual and physical gestation and grief installation space into which public audiences were invited. As such, this research respectfully and care-fully proposes that medical data could be made use of ethically, through artist-led interdisciplinary collaborative processes that serve to expand upon the meanings of these data. As such, the present artistic practice could also serve clinical practice (and patient treatment) by helping to identify patient narratives through the artistic translation of the lived experience of pregnancy and child loss
A space of possibilities: Design addressing intimate partner violence
Get PDFThis thesis-based research examines the growing application of design in contexts related to intimate partner violence (IPV) worldwide, which continues to be a profoundly naturalised part of our contemporary world. Addressing IPV involves carefully considering contextual implications such as safety, trauma, and intimate relationships. With designs growing application in areas of addressing harm, it thus is essential to explore how these implications demand different design practices. By examining how designers frame problems, the processes they employ, and the outcomes they produce, this research aims to uncover the designerly knowledge embedded in these aspects. Investigating this under-researched area aims to deepen designers' and design researchers' understanding of how design may address IPV and its implications. Ultimately, this may lead to a more meaningful engagement with IPV issues. Combining theoretical and empirical input, this thesis, through a feminist emergent methodology, explores (1) the realities and possibilities of designing to address intimate harm; (2) designers' rationale when applying design to IPV; and (3) spaces to support the adaptation of design. The research investigates two case studies exploring designers' practices in (i) recovery and response interventions and (ii) prevention with men. It then continues to explore what space may support new and existing designers through a workshop and interviews with designers. The research outlines methodological and practical implications by analysing the rationale designers use to adapt their practices to the circumstances of IPV. From here, six guiding principles emerge from patterns in design practices in IPV. These principles include critical awareness, supporting safety, relational focus, dialogical engagement, encouragement, and making visible. Furthermore, it offers a conceptualisation of a space of possibilities for designers to explore these principles and develop a deep awareness of situational and structural factors. Overall, these findings enhance the theoretical understanding of design within IPV contexts and distinguishes intimate harm as a distinct form of harm requiring designers' attention. The principles support in reframing design's social role from effecting change to supporting change, and alongside the conceptualisation of a space of possibilities for designers, re-centres designers' personal journeys during the design process. Additionally, the thesis proposes an feminist emergent methodology for researchers examining design's adaptation in response to changing contexts, particularly at the intersection with trauma. This research has broader implications for designers working within the realms of gender, violence, and crime
ReWilding AI
No full textReWilding AI presents critical aspects of research exploring the radical mattering of narrative ecologies and storytelling via immersive and distributed intelligence. Presented by the RCA’s Radical Matter proto-Centre and Digital Direction programme
Challenges to the adoption of textile biomaterials and the potential role of digital supply chain platforms
Get PDFThe damages of the textiles and apparel industry are well documented. Fibre choice has a significant impact. Biomaterials show strong potential for supporting material flows that sustainably integrate waste (Circular Economy); however, their adoption is challenging for brands and suppliers. This qualitative case study investigated brands' and suppliers' experiences, needs, and wishes for a digital procurement platform. Results found four key issues: honesty and transparency in business, a lack of standards, data burden, and communication challenges currently harm the adoption of biomaterials. If developers of the so-called ‘Industry 4.0’ procurement platforms can provide the information needed for decision-making, minimise the burden of maintaining evolving datasets, and facilitate the exchange of swatches, samples and final orders, digital platforms could positively contribute to adopting biomaterials in the textile industry
Perversions at her adolescent fingertips, or, Francesca Woodman’s autoerotic attentions: An essay-caress
No full textThis chapter article focuses on Francesca Woodman’s late 1970s fashion photography "attempts". Drawing on the adolescent-attentive work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and the tactile philosophy of Luce Irigaray, it contributes a queer-feminist theorisation and historicisation of the visual/verbal "essay-as-caress", reconfiguring through this lens Woodman's black-and-white photographs of young girl-women and textiles as instances of autoeroticism and feminist perversion
Rift
Get PDFIn this entry, for Lara Favaretto’s Prospective Lexicon (commissioned by the Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art), I offer 'rift' as an important term for the near future. The schema of the rift allows us to read across the disastrous lesions in material and social fabrics caused by capitalist societies, and imagine how to repair them
CERFI: Analysis everywhere: Militancy, research, architecture and psychiatry
Get PDFCERFI: Analysis Everywhere is a research book project exploring the overlooked legacy of the research cooperative Centre d'Études de Recherche et de Formation Institutionnelle (CERFI) – in English, the Centre for Institutional Study, Research and Development and its experimentation with collective research practices, analysis of the social unconscious, and militant action-research in institutional programming