47 Andrea Venero
Appendix
1. Textile process I started my research with Peruvian textiles, as I have had previous knowledge of the importance of Peruvian heritage textiles as they are universal and are already part of the hand weaver’s tools (Rowe, 2002). I had been influenced by Elena Izcue’s work, a Peruvian artist engaged in a series of studies on pre-Colombian art forms in textiles that had been used for the creation of patterns in merchandising products. However, I did not realize about how influential Peruvian textiles are in the broad sense (Miller, 1994) as they ‘integrate materials, structure and patterns’ (Tidball, 1969:24). What first made me think about using them as a tool to communicate my future ideas because of its direct link with my purposes about culture, identity and language. I thought that learning weaving techniques was the best way in which I would be able to design, furthermore I would be improving my skills as a pattern designer. However, in my process of learning tapestry woven, I realized that manual techniques are not part of my skills and are not something I would like to pursue. In contrary, I gained knowledge about pattern creation as I understood the system Peruvian civilizations used to create
theirs: repetitions in all over in order to defeat monotony, alternation of a pattern in negative and positive, rotation of motifs to generate different aspects, and the use of multiple colors (Tidball 1969). In summary, a system of presentation to bring harmony, variety, rhythm and cohesion to a design that can be easily integrated with the structure of the warp and weft technique. I looked back to my first approach to pattern design and started to consider ‘the square as my design unit, as whit it, remarkable complexity can be achieved’ (Proctor, 1990:4) and start working from a grid, as there are endless possibilities for these patterns when variables such as color, contrast alteration, texture, scale, repetitions and rotation are considered (BriggsGoode,2013). At this stage my aim was to process multiple information by synthesizing data in patterns (symmetrical icons and symbols placed in a grid since it allows complex patterns to be created by organizing objects in the space involving aesthetics about proportion, scale and color (Roberts and Thrift, 2002)) that represent Peruvian identity and the collective action.
Exploration of dimension, direction and repetitions. Made with Adobe Illustrator
‘Culture is a code we learn and share, every cultural pattern and every single act of social behaviour involve communication’ (Smith 1966; Goldwing 1977 cited in Jandt, 2013:20). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), people can not share thoughts directly. Our communication, at least the western understanding of it, is in the form of a symbol representing the thought we want to communicate. Encoding is the process of putting a thought into a symbol. The symbol into which we encode our thoughts can be different, we can encode thoughts into words or into non-spoken symbols (Jandt, 2013). I looked up to “Quilts of the Underground Railroad” (Tobin and Dobard, 2000) a controversial story that said messages encoded in quilts helped to African slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Although these quilts and the encoded messages are not confirmed to be real, they made me think about (i) the synergy between cultures in order to generate change, (ii) the use of encoded messages (non-spoken symbols) as language and (iii) the potential of textiles as a media.
My intention of creating a graphic system needed to encode messages in patterns. These messages will come from the article 12 of the Peruvian State Law Nº29735,that regulates the use, preservation, development, recovery, promotion and dissemination of Peruvian original languages, that represent real data even being translated in 5 different original languages. Thus, I have established that my visual design unit is a square, therefore I needed to develop a visual language to carry encoded message from transforming different languages into squares. Previously, I had recognized my computers’ software aptness and with the time to discuss new techniques and watching new approaches, I opted to use coding as it is a universal language that can process information and Proccesing, a flexible opensource software within the context of the visual arts. Also, by learning how to code and use a new software I was gaining more skills and be prepared for the new needs the market has as technology has been increasingly related to the creative field. John Maeda’s (2004) artwork became my biggest reference, specially “Color Typewriter”, where he designed the code in which a grid of colour tokens, instead of letters, are created by typing at the keyboard (Roberts and Thrift, 2002). I observed that in this case he was using an English alphabet, but for my
Code created to transalte turn numeric values into patterns
translation of text into ASCII decimal numbers. Using http://www.unit-conversion.info/texttools/ascii/
purposes I needed to use a Spanish alphabet as letters as Ăą are used in Ashaninka, Awajun, Shipibo, Quechua and Aymara written language. I realized that acquire what I wanted was complex as a proper understanding and learning of this new language will take time, moreover I recognized a problem about generative design, you design the process in which the algorithms works but you do not have control over the outcome, sometimes it can be interesting and sometimes not. However, I was able to find solutions around my limitations regarding coding. With an autodidact way of learning using tutorials on internet I spotted that using numerical values instead of characters is easier because there are only 10 different values (0-9). I defined that each value will be identified with a colour but, this colour will be set within the range of 0 to 255 colour in the hue spectrum (pure spectrum colors commonly referred to by the “color namesâ€? - red, orange, yellow, blue, green violet). At this stage I had a code that can turn numbers into squares of colour, but as said before I needed to use caracteres. There is when I looked for different encoding representation of text that had already existed in electronic communications.
I found first ASCII, American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a character encoding standard originally based on the English alphabet that has different representations, for example: the letter “a” can be represented as binary as 01100001, octal number as 141, decimal number as 97 or hexadecimal number as 61. For this collection, I decided to use the decimal number, for instace: “a” will be represented as 97. The software itself gives a colour value to each number. Hypotetically lets said that a 9 will be represented a a red square and 7 as a yellow square. As I decided to use natural colors and the hue spectrum in my collection, I defined a new color value after the software ramdonly defines it. If a 9 is a red square and a 7 yellow, to me a 9 will be brown and 7 will gray.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Pattern created with the code and sofware developed
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Edited pattern acording to the colour palette
2. Reflection The transformation from concept to a unified vision and ensuring everything goes as planned is one hard task (Viction, 2011) but for the project I executed a tailored collaborative strategy
to meet the objective (Markopoulos, 2016)
I set
up myself regarding sustainability (limiting consumption while making objects, using raw materials that do not affect the environment at the end of the useful life of the garment, respect for the health of workers and respect for human rights, as well as the creation of new and more transparent links with communities of interest and the exploration of new areas of fair trade) and stablished networks that will definitely contribute in development of my work, after all, my creative process is a team effort. I am committed with the development of projects that can generate change and shift behaviours in any social, economic, or ecological aspect. Since designing is always about making choices and decisions, but never more than at the point of handing final decisions to production (Paulins,2016:), I recognized in this stage an opportunity to make a positive contribution for society’ (Gwilt, 2014:2) as focussing on the here and now and the pragmatic, practical decisions about the entire cycle (materials, processes, suppliers and onwards to consume, point of disposal and potential reuse) (Fletcher and Grose, 2012) can move towards sustainability long-term.