TechCrafts Final Report

Camila Mosso B 2.1.

Coach: Maarten Versteeg Assessor: Lucian Reindl

UNDERSTANDING DYEING TECHNOLOGY Developing a new technique trough awareness.

Intro Project Description: TechCrafts project aims to mix Technology and Craft in a collaborative way, first of all by understanding a craft and then give it some value through technology.

The first weeks were destined to learning a craft from a master and then start to develop your own concept around it, the integration of technology would happen in a natural way after the understanding of the craft technology and its environment.

Why I took this project (some goals): What called my attention when I took this project was the idea of mixing technology with crafts, regarding this subject, during my life and mostly during my studies in ID I realized about two things:  

Personal Identity is what leads you to show who you are and most of all, put a personal seal to everything what you do Crafts are an important part of our traditions and we are losing them.

Making a link to the project: One of the strategies that are being used to rescue traditions is adding value in a way that is easy for people that is not into crafting to understand the meaning of it, this can work for some specific products made with a particular craft and is not necessarily related with technology, but, in the other hand, we have the opportunity to add value to a craft, updating and/or adapting it to the present adding the application of a new technology.

The last point is the one that is going to be developed in this report, showing how the essential part of the craft, that is the experience and through trial and error you can get to new techniques.

Readings As part of the project, we were asked to read a book called The Craftsman, the aim was to understand the idea of crafting, herewith a comparison with local crafts from Chile was realized in order to get a better overview of the problem when seen from a familiar point of view.

The Craftsman1: Interesting Topics: 

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Seeking the common good for the community: In the book this point is shown as a very important role of the craft, the goal of the craftsman was not to work for himself, on the contrary, his work was intended to be for the community, he has a responsibility with it and was expected to look for the best for this one.

Sharing Knowledge: The knowledge is not for ourselves, when we share it, this one flows and start to grow. Sharing information makes our ideas develop using other’s knowledge and inspiration.

Practice and development of your own technique: Learn the basics, practice until you master the technique, and then add your own value and your identity; this is how crafts use to be learned, the student practiced and tried the technique until he surpassed the master with the development of the technique.

Study the Technique, understand why and how we want to design: In the book the following problem is raised, with the new technologies, like CAD and 3D printing, we can do models really fast, but not for this the quality is going to be better. The issue with fast prototyping is that we know what we want to design, but not exactly the reason or the way of building it. Experimenting with materials and different techniques can give a better overview and the experience to solve problems with different points of view.

Linking with Chilean crafts: Doing some readings about Chilean crafts is possible to identify certain elements that are common with what is described in the craftsman.

According to the text about textile Andean technologies from the Pre-Columbian Museum of Chile2 depending on the use that was given to them, crafts, or in this case textiles, could be used with an exclusive utilitarian purpose, but also they could be the ones who transmit ideas and ideologies about a culture, like some pieces that were exclusively worn by members of the high hierarchy. Related to this purpose is also the use of textiles as storytellers, in them some important moments/rituals/information were registered, the kind of information could be a poem, taxes, genealogies, and so on. This purpose could also be related with the information sharing, which however is not related to the craft knowledge, could be 1

The Craftsman, Richard Sennet, Yale University Press.

Museo de Arte Precolombino, Chile. Tecnologías educativos/tecnologias-precolombinas/textiles/introduccion/ 2

Andinas.

http://www.precolombino.cl/recursos-

associated with the essential meaning of crafting and how they influence culture and, since this one is part of the definition of a society, it also changes the last one.

Looking at a particular group of natives from the south of Chile and part of Argentina, the Mapuches, is easy to see the link between the search of the common good and crafts, in this group, women were in charge of giving shelter to the family3 with this purpose, the craft was used as a coin of exchange, the better the woman weaved, more possibilities has to give facilities to her family, for this reason the mastery of the craft was directly related with wealth and the and the assignment of a certain position in society. Most of the time, if the women mastered the craft and became good in a certain technique, new or old; she could become a master and teach to others. Thus, by putting in practice what she learned from her own master, and developing her own style, she earned a position and the respect from the society in which she was living in.

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Willson Angélica, Textilería Mapuche arte de mujeres, Ediciones CEDEM, Colección Artes y Oficios Nº3

Visits and Master During this stage of the research, some basic concepts of craftsmanship were developed, the idea of craftsmanship and how it works. In the following lines these visits to people who practiced crafts and also the meetings with the masters will be described to give a deeper understanding of how they influenced my final vision for this project.

Elderly Home Eerdbrand Knitting hate/love During this visit, we went to Eerdbrand Elderly Home, there, with a group of old women we learned how to knit with them. The story around these women is as follows, they learned this craft when they were young at school, in those days they use to hate it and after they finished school they stopped it completely. Just now they restarted with knitting, but mostly because it was something they knew and they could share it with other women of the same age and interest.

Some important points for me in this visit was to see how the craft itself made this people get together and share, one more time, the concept of “sharing” appears in a craft environment. Another interesting situation was that none of them spoke English, so I had to learn by signs and gestures, with this experience I realized that learning a craft doesn’t involves that much verbal communication, because it involves a lot of doing, you can learn by seeing and practicing.

As is seen, the craft becomes part of a social activity, more than the object of crafting, the opportunity of sharing with others is the central piece here.

Heidi Feeling the Felt: When we entered to that house you could see that was not a regular home, the place was full of books and the dinner table was a tree trunk with a plain surface on the top, also Heidi showed herself as a very enthusiastic person, eager to show us what she did an teach us the techniques of felting. All through this visit Heidi encouraged us to explore the material and the technique, maybe it was because of the nature of the craft and the material, but this seems to be the best way to work with it, treat it as a piece of art, as your own creation, because that is what it is. This is why the guidance was as less as possible, the idea was to try to get to know the material through our own hands and even making “mistakes” develop our own way of perform the craft.

Margriet Klees Dyeing Awareness Again a different house, you could see the place full of dyed wool and even a spinning wheel, Margriet was a very nice master, she learned the technique with natural dyes by herself during the 70’s, also with other people, this was another example of learning by doing.

The technique of dyeing is quite different from felting in a way that it takes longer and is more exact, since you need to know the correct combination of the amount of mordant, dye and wool, and also the times and temperature of washing, exposure to mordant and then dyeing. the main idea that I got was the ritual, how the long process that the fabric has to pass to be dyed contributes to the awareness of the craftsman in its own craft, dyeing is more a recipe than other thing, and dyeing with natural dyes requires even more time, patience and knowledge of the technique.

Conclusions of Readings and Master Diagram with conclusions and explanations With this small research is easy to see how the crafts traditions are not only present in a crafting environment but also in the way of thinking of a society,

Explorations: Way of working: Taking “errors� as new possibilities of exploration Looking for different dyeing techniques: The process to start was as follows, with trying different techniques the intention was to gain some experience and get inspired with this ones. Getting familiar with dyeing allows the understanding of the process and the possibilities that the technique enables.

Throughout the entire process the mistakes were the ones that lead me to the experimentation of new ideas, through these ones; the comprehension of the technique becomes easier since to discover the reasons of the mistake, you need to understand what is happening in the process.

Techniques: REGULAR DYEING IN FELT:

This exploration intended to combine the learned techniques in the previous meetings with the masters.

Two different ways of applying the dye were explored, immersing the fabric in the hot water with dye using two colors1 and using a pencil to apply the dye3 The third sample corresponds to the natural felt without applying any dye.

USING ELEMENTS: This technique consists in using external elements to wrap the fabric around; the idea is to block the access of the dye to some areas of the fabric in order to get different tones in this one.

To control of the shape is complicated since you can’t see what the exact shape of the wrapping is, there is a certain control like round1 or random2, depending on the way that the fabric was placed in the element but is impossible to reproduce the same shape twice.

BATIK Batik consists as in the previous technique in blocking the access of the dye to a certain areas of the fabric but in a much more exact way.

A piece of wax is melted on the fabric, in this way it gets into the fibers and the dye is not able to reach these covered areas, then the wax is removed with heat. The result is a draw with the exact shape of the wax.

NUI SHIBORI

1, 2, 3

In this exploration stitched shibori was used. A running stitch is used on the cloth and then pulled tight to gather the cloth. With the cloth all gather the dye can’t reach the tighter points of the fabric, in this way, the stitched areas remain the original color and the rest are dyed.

WATER AND DYE4 With this exploration the goal was to experiment with the dye applied directly to the water after putting the fabric in this one. As a result is possible to obtain a really fluent shape, at the moment of use two colors these combine. Depending on the amount of movement in the water the shape becomes diffuser or sharper (more movement, sharper shape).

PRESS AND THE “MISTAKE” The press system works like Christmas decoration, the fabric is folded using a certain shape, constrained with a press and then immersed in water with dye; the result is a geometric line pattern. The first “mistake” 1 was to use wood as a press , and because of this the result was a non-defined line since the wood absorbed part of the dye letting it have access to the fabric fibers.

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The second “mistake” was the use of a heater to dry the fabric ; Thanks to the understanding of the dyeing process that was achieved during the master meetings and the previous explorations origin of this mistake was easy to identify: In order to dye what you need to do is heat the fabric WHY? Because you need the fibers to open HOW TO ACHIEVE THIS? When you heat the fabric, the material tend to expand due to thermal expansion4 this also means that the fibers of this one tend to open

After this was clear, a series of explorations around this “mistake” were executed in order to get a better understanding explore the possibilities with it.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion

UNDERSTANDING THE MISTAKE

1: First test with the heater, checking the theory and how detailed it could be.

2: Test in felt, only works in the side that is in contact with the hot surface, this could be due the temperature reached in these areas.

3,4 : Thermopaint test, evaluating the transparency.

Alternatives for heating sources 5: Hot Battery 6: Heating a copper wire with fire 7: Regular house heater

From these explorations it was possible to understand more or less the critical points due to make the dye reach the desire areas.

Constant: The heat needs to be constant until the fabric gets completely dry, otherwise the design will get blurry.

Thickness: Depending on the goal of the dyeing, the fabric needs to be thin in order to allow the dye to reach both sides of it.

HEATING WITH WATER 1 The following samples correspond to the result of explorations done by heating a surface susceptible to heat conduction that were heated through the application of steam.

In the first series of explorations, the heat conductive surfaces (in this case tin and aluminum foil) were placed at the top of the fabric, and the heat (steam) source, under the fabric, leaving a distance of a few cm between these two.

What happens here is that the dye tend to use the spaces where the steam have access, thus, the image in the fabric is a negative of the shape that is placed on it.

A problem with this is that the fabric doesn’t dry completely, that’s why in the beginning the draw is really neat, but after a while the image tends to get blurry.

HEATING WITH WATER 2 In this series of explorations the heat conductive surface was placed between the fabric and the steam.

Whit this order, the fabric is allowed to get dry since is not in contact with the steam.

1: A tin with holes was used for this exploration, the result is neat but could be better 2, 3: Aluminum foil was folded in a way that allows the fabric to be in contact only with some parts of it, the parts that are in contact with the foil gets more heat and, hereby becomes darker.

4: Magnet experiment, an metal sheet was placed at the top of the steam, then, with the help of some magnets, the fabric was pressed against the hot surface, the dark spots corresponds to the place where the magnets used to be.

Conclusion: This method gave a really good outcome regarding sharpness, the shape was really clear in explorations 2 and 3.

GETTING THREE TONES After checking that the previous explorations were working and remembering a curious fact, the question about getting three tones was putted on mind.

Curious Fact: Red Cabbage is able to measure PH through changing color, which means that the red cabbage dye when is exposed to substances with different acidity changes its color depending on the PH of the substance. The more acid, the more pink, and if the substance is a base, the cabbage dye becomes blue or green.

The fabric was dyed and after this, a series of explorations were made based on measuring the PH idea.

1-9: Different substances were applied to the fabric: 1: Mandarin

6: Honey

2: Lemon

7: Ice Tea

3: Grapes

8: Tomato

4: Vinegar

9: Peach

5: Olive Oil 10-11: Electricity was passed through the fabric , the result is a green line, similar to what happens if you apply a base substance to the dye.

12: Initial test with Lemon 13-14: Heating test, the fixation of the dye is tested, after applying lemon juice, some of the dark areas remains darker.

Conclusion: Even though these explorations gave a really interesting outcome, they were discarded due to the lack of fixation of the colors. After applying this dye and making the desired draws, if it was exposed to a new substance it would change color again and the main goal was to get a proper fixation at least with two tones.

ELECTRONICS ATTEMPT If we go back to the first attempts of generating heat, one was made with a battery in short-circuit, when a short-circuit is induced, energy is released in form of heat. In order to generate the same effect in a different material this one needs to have high resistance5.

After trying with different materials, including different kind of wires, the best result was from the conductive thread used in soft electronics.

1: Simply gluing the thread to any surface, giving some shape and then applying the fabric+dye+water.

2: Stitching the thread to the fabric and then immersing it to the mix water+dye.

3-5: An attempt to give a controlled pattern to the design.

Conclusion: Even though the idea of making a linear draw was a glimpse of what could be a final proposal a few but important problems were present in the results: 1. As can be seen the color saturation is not constant, this phenomenon is caused by the uneven temperature reached in the different points of the thread, being higher at the ends which are in contact with the power source.

2. The thread tends to oxidize due to the exposure to the water.

With these problems the use of electricity and conductive thread was discarded.

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Conversations with Electronics experts.

STEAM+REPOUSSÉ: As seen in the previous explorations the contact with a hot surface was one of the keys to get a neat result, that’s why the next and final exploration intended to develop an easy way to capture any hand-made image in the fabric.

The result is a neat image, and the results vary depending on the side that the fabric is applied, if the 3 repoussé is placed with positive side up is possible to obtain the draw in darker tones, then if the repousse is placed with the negative4 side down the draw will be lighter

Final Outcome: Technique/Proposal My final proposal is a system in which you can draw your own preference to be captured in the fabric.

Through a heating system a piece of tin is heated up with steam and the fabric, previously soaked in dye, is placed at the top, the places that are in contact with the tin become darker due to the heat and the fibers opening.

Observation: One of the final tests was made in felt and it didn’t work, the reason for this is that the felt expands with the dye and uses the whole surface including the embossed areas, with this; all the fibers are at the same temperature and the color is the same in the whole surface of the felt.

Conclusions/Reflections at the end of the process

Tech + Crafts Mixing tech and crafts was not that difficult at the end. According to the Oxford Dictionary Technology could be any use of scientific knowledge for practical purpose.

With this, the understanding of the dyeing process and the application of this for the development of a new technique is in fact, technology.

During this project, the understanding of the whole process was the key to develop new knowledge, is possible to appreciate how every exploration brought new ideas leading the way to new explorations.

At the end of the process the selection of the best solution due to clear advantages over the other ones was possible thanks to the evaluation based in the experience and results obtained from this one.

Personal Development as a Designer: Regarding this subject, what I started to understand was my way of designing, following a process and being completely responsible for it makes me realize of the steps that I take in order to design.

Many times I tried to plan my process but it never works, this is because I tried to follow a too strict path, instead of that, in this process I planned goals, giving me more freedom at the time of making mistakes, which at the end result in a positive source of information.

Understanding mistakes has helped me many times to take advantage of them generating new ideas, taking them as possibilities of development instead of fails. Is just know, that I clearly understand the importance of these mistakes in my design process, I need them as I need to make decisions to go a step further.

Competency Areas Involved: Design and Research Processes: As mentioned before, following the whole design process and take record of it was a way of developing my research skills, having the whole picture in front of me makes easier to understand my process and how did I get at the end.

Social and Cultural Awareness: The understanding of the craftsmanship, how it works, for me was a way of be aware of this part of society, we still use this method to develop ourselves, and the best communities are the ones who share information to each other.

Form and Senses: Working directly with materials, and get familiar with the way they behave was a way to understand the possibilities in shapes and sharpness of the results with the new technique.

Ideas and Concepts: Once again, the understanding of what am I doing is involved in this competency area, paying attention to signs given by the material and mistakes allowed me to generate new ideas of explorations, and from these ones mix and go further.

Integrating Technology: More than integrating, understanding the meaning of it, technology could be any scientific knowledge applied. In this case the use of this knowledge leaded me to develop a new technique.

Descriptive and Mathematical Modeling: In prototyping the use of different software as adobe Illustrator and Autodesk Inventor made the work easier. Regarding to generating new ideas, the use of diagrams to have the whole picture helped to make the decisions that led to take one more step in the process.

Self-Directed and Continuous Learning: The whole process was about learning based on personal discoveries, as well as from others and readings. Also I consider that learn about my own design process is going to be really useful for my future projects due to the way in which I managed to present it. I easier for me to understand in a graphic way than reading it.