Details of Sound Wave Installation

I added another section to the Sound wave Installation and incorporated LED's and conductive thread.  The thread is a bit unpredictable but I like the effect and the fact that it is invisible within my yarn.

Sound Wave Installation

This is an installation piece for my hand in on Monday.  

It is inspired by a sound wave and knitted on the Brother knitting machine 

using nylon monofilament and fine count yarns, it was then dyed in turmeric 

to achieve that bright green colour.

The Balance

The Balance is a beautiful visual representation of two sound waves colliding. The video created by Lithuanian artist Rimantas Lukavicius, shows us the sound traveling trough air, a thing we will never be able to see.

There is no explanation to be found on how the video was made, and if an analysis of the actual sound we hear was used as input. I guess it is just the aesthetics that count, this time. 

Video from Vimeo.

Amber Hards

Amber Hards is a knitwear designer just graduating from the University of the West of England, Bristol.  These images are from her Graduate Collection.   Nylon monofilament knitted on a dubied.

http://thingsilike-amber.blogspot.com/

Yu-Shin 'Mue' Kim

I remember seeing this work a couple of years ago and it has stayed in my mind.
It seems really relevant now as I am looking at veils / headwear / bubbles.

MFA Fashion and Knitwear Apr 2007

http://www.fashionschooldaily.com/index.php/page/100/?p=uqtqiqrakkedkjvm

Airborne Video Dress

The Video dresses are created by 15000 LEDs embedded beneath the fabric. One dress displays hazy silhouettes of sharks in the sea whilst the other shows a time-lapse sequence of a rose blooming then retracting. The effect is mesmerizing in its ambiguity: the loose white fabric covering the LEDS blurs and distorts the images so that they seem to pulsate in and out of existence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twice named “British Designer of the Year”, Hussein Chalayan is one of the most innovative, experimental and conceptual fashion designers of the present. By teaming up with engineering mastermind, Moritz Waldemeyer, he was able to turn even his most outlandish concepts into a reality.

 














The design brief was to create two video dresses that would show video sequences across the entire surface of the dress. There were just 4 weeks from the go ahead to the show, demanding a very pragmatic approach: no exotic components or materials, just off the shelf components and standard manufacturing techniques.
Given the inherent simplicity of the design, maybe one day in the not too distant future, we’ll all be wearing our favorite videos on our clothes!

http://www.waldemeyer.com/videodress.html

Project Space : Nova

Lucy Orta

Nexus Architecture x 50 Intervention Köln by Lucy Orta, 2001 

"Television, mass-communication technology, the information age, have all combined to revolutionize the social arena and distort our perception of our immediate surroundings. From the comfort of the remote control, to the security of the Living Room, we stand witness to the gradual erosion of the individual and our ability to function effectively as a collective unit. The phantom of difference transcends the spectre of the social order just as the notion of private space has become subsumed within the public arena… In a social environment such as this, founded on a set of inherent, dare we say schizophrenic contradictions; the work of Lucy Orta holds a special resonance. Intimately tied to the notion of Collective Action, her artistic endeavours create a symbolic space of interaction between the individual and his immediate neighbour. For George Simmel, the innate pressures of the urban environment that Lucy so eloquently confronts in her work, lead ultimately to a loss of self. Due to the myriads of differentiated interests and inter-relationships contained within the modern city the individual becomes entwined within the mass of humanity. Lost within a surfeit of what he describes as a many membered organism. In contrast, Lucy’s umbilical structures create an organism of a different type; a symbolic organism that proffers itself as a direct physical and visual intervention. Her constructions, with their many detachable appendages or Social Links unite different individuals into a self-sufficient entity that signals the power of a collective body over the isolation of a single soul. Nexus Architecture forges new inter-relationships and challenges notions of personal and cultural identity, the environment and the way we communicate and interact with each other." Mark Sanders

Images from : http://www.studio-orta.com/

Optical Fibres

Project Space

I created this set of work in the project space this week.  

It was a chance to develop a piece that could be displayed in a large space 

and it also gave me the opportunity to invite people to interact with it.

 

I asked the question "How does the colour make you feel?"

Everyone said that they felt protected as if they were in a safe environment.

Pink made people feel happy, yellow made them feel warm like when the sun

is coming up but the blue felt quite cold and drained.

Yarn Dyeing

Dyeing yarn with Remazol dyes. 
These are the yarns ready to go into the steamer.

The dyes are suitable for natural yarns only but I wanted to try a few different things.

Some worked better than expected but some just washed out.

It is quite difficult to mix the colours exactly how you want them and then 

some of the dye washes out.  The most succesful yarn was the paper yarn.

The yarns on the right are nylon-monofilament and elastics, the results are varied.

The yellow yarn is dyed with turmeric in a big metal pot on my cooker.  

This is the most successful of all creating a really strong colour.  I also tried red

chilli powder, this is the pale orange in the centre.

Sandra Backlund

This is Sandra Backlund's new knitwear collection for Spring / Summer 2011.  
Sandra Backlund creates unbelievable three dimensional collage hand knitted pieces. 
"I build my garments from a couple of basic bricks which I multiply and attach in different 
ways to discover the shape I want."

Designer / Sandra Backlund
Techniques / Crochet and fine gauge knit.
Materials / Metal yarn (100% copper),  shredded silk fabric and geometric plissé.
Website / http://www.sandrabacklund.com

  





















Images from :  www.knitkicks.co.uk

Fay McCaul

Knitted  Textiles

"I aim to push knitting into new realms by creating structures and fabrics that 'play with light', providing a unique and magical form of decoration for interior and exterior use."

Fay McCaul, a graduate from the RCA makes fantastic fabric that reflects the light and looks as though it is blowing in the wind.

She also makes lights that have been knitted with bio - luminescent wire. 

This makes the lights glow in the dark.

Images from : www.faymccaul.com

Connected

I am interested in communication and how we are all connected through technology, mobile phones, emails etc.  After looking at the work of Lucy Orta, who is concerned with communities and creating shelter,   I decided to create a maquette and a drawing thinking about these technological connections.

Nylon mono-filament

I received 2 very large bobbins of natural nylon mono-filament today.  They have been kindly given to me by Shakespeare mono-filament, a specialist fibre company.  I plan to machine knit the nylon mixed with other materials.

Shakespeare Sanstat Monofilaments have provided effective solutions to the serious, costly and often dangerous problems static electricity can cause in many commercial, industrial or service workplaces.

Our unique and patented carbon suffusion process chemically saturates the outer skin of nylon fiber with electrically conductive carbon particles. The carbon becomes part of the structure of the fiber, which retains the strength and flexibility of the nylon while maintaining excellent conductivity. These characteristics make it ideal for mechanical, chemical and thermal manufacturing processes. Our suffusion process produces a fiber with a durable, conductive sheath that will not crack, flake or lose its conductivity during flexing or extension. Carbon suffused fibers are available as monofilaments, multifilament yarns, tow, staple and supported yarn configurations.

Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze Installation at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle USA.


Image: www.flickr.com?photos/j-and-p/35874650/in/photostream

Lab Craft

I am really looking forward to seeing this new touring 
exhibition from the Crafts Council.

The exhibition features 26 makers who combine the hand, mind and eye, 
technical mastery of tools and material and aesthetic sensibility, with 
cutting-edge digital technologies such as rapid prototyping, laser cutting, 
laser scanning and digital printing.


Lab Craft will next be shown at:  Turnpike Gallery, Leigh, Greater Manchester 
30 October - 18 December 2010  http://www.labcraft.org.uk/

HOST

Huddersfield Open Studio Trail

I visited Samantha Bryan today at her new studio, at West Yorkshire Print 

Workshop in Mirfield.  Samantha makes exquisitely hand crafted fairies who 

practice strange and wonderful feats of flight.

My New Studio Space

This is my new studio space for the final year of my degree in Textile Crafts
at the University of Huddersfield.

And an aerial drawing of Menwith Hill, the US Electronic Monitoring 
Station (or Spy Base) in North Yorkshire.

Nigel Peake

Through Six Cities Design Festival

I came across this image by Nigel Peake, I have admired his work for some time but this is a collage that I haven't seen before.  I like the juxtaposition of the images and the combination of found paper and drawings.  I love the detail and the intensity in his drawings.

Image from: http://cruststation.wordpress.com/2007/06/page/3/

 

Tomas Saraceno

14 billions  by Tomas Saraceno at the Baltic in Gateshead.

I saw this installation last week and absolutely loved it.  It is totally inspiring.

The piece is a giant model of the web of the Black Widow spider created from thin bungee cords.  The web is composed of 8000 black strings connected by over 23,000 individually tied knots and is housed within a specially created space.  It took a group of technicians 2 weeks to install carefully adhering to Saraceno's plan and numbering system.  The title 14 billions refers to the estimated age of the Universe.

The installation is on display until 10th October 2010.

Images: The Baltic.