The tacit-turn: textile design in design research Elaine Igoe elaine.igoe@network.rca.ac.uk Royal College of Art, Department of Textiles, Kensington Gore, London SW7 23U and University of Portsmouth, School of Art, Design and Media, Winston Churchill Avenue, Portsmouth PO1 2DJ Summary of contribution: This paper introduces some of the key topics of my PhD thesis, supervised at the Royal College of Art in the department of textiles, which seeks to conceptualise textiles to elucidate design thinking in the field. This paper aims to situate the textile design discipline into the broader remit of design research, identifying specific contexts for textile design research.
Questions about the nature of design began to emerge in the late 1950s as a result of research into creativity, decision-making and management as well as advances in computer technology and artificial intelligence for problem solving. The academic discipline of ‘Design Research’ developed as it became accepted that design involved a very specific and distinctive type of knowledge. Bruce Archer was a leading exponent of this view and was fundamental in the inception of the Design Studies Journal and academic design research in general. In the debut issue published in July 1979, Archer presents a paper entitled ‘Design as Discipline’ which prompts these questions from the editor, Sydney Gregory: “Can design be a discipline in its own right? If so, what are its distinguishing features? (What are the kinds of features that distinguish any discipline?) To what questions should the discipline address itself — in both research and teaching? What methodology does it use? What results — what applications — should it be trying to achieve?” (Archer 1979) Over the decades, these questions have been studied from the perspective of different sectors of design, most prominently in architecture, industrial design and engineering, the results of which have formed the basis of design research knowledge and still lead the academic discourse in this area. ‘Design Studies’ remains one of the leading journals on design thinking and process but is heavily biased towards industrial and engineering design, as is the more recent ‘The Design Journal’ published since 1998. Nigel Cross has been a key research figure in the area of design thinking and his 2007 book ‘Designerly Ways of Knowing’ is collated as a summary of decades of his research. The book includes a chapter entitled ‘Studies of Outstanding Designers’ (Cross 2007:85), the three expert designers he studies approach design from an industrial or engineering perspective. Although Cross mentions that these designers are from different disciplines he does not acknowledge the similarities between those particular areas of design. Equally he does not explicitly recognise the variety of experience that may have been garnered from studying, for example, a leading ceramic designer, fashion designer or textile designer.
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In relation to textile design, the context for disseminating research in the field is less developed. ‘Textile; The Journal of Cloth and Culture’ published since 2003 focuses on issues of materiality, and cultural and historical studies and therefore is not well placed to kindle the discourse on textiles as a design discipline. The paucity of academic writing concerned with the idiosyncrasies of the textile design discipline marks it out as a taciturn in comparison to those disciplines of design that have been instrumental in the emergence of design research over the past five decades. Peter Dormer (Dormer 1994:15) uses the word ‘taciturn’ as he describes the doer and maker who cannot adequately articulate their knowledge. Anni Albers (Albers 1944) states that the inability to give words to the experience of making and designing is not symptomatic of a lack of intelligence but an indication of an intelligence that expresses itself via alternative means; a type of internal intelligence that can be described as awareness, intuition or tacit knowledge. Albers values the internality of knowledge and argues that its’ artistic or designerly outcomes provide us with a means of verifying this knowledge. Dormer agrees and notes that this practical (tacit) knowledge is difficult to articulate but can be demonstrated and that it is possible for it to be judged. He warns of the dangers of reliance on tacit knowledge and the importance of questioning it. To question the tacit, requires the ability to begin to objectify, articulate and challenge assumptions. As the principles of design research are so rooted within specific design disciplines from which it was developed, can we presume that they are wholly applicable to textile design research? I will use the questions posed by Gregory in 1979 to begin an enquiry into the notion of textile design as a sub-discipline of design with specific methodologies, tacit knowledge and modes of behaviour. In this brief paper, I hope to explore some of the inadequacies of our epistemological understanding of textile design, and identify opportunities for a more integrated relationship between textile design and design research. As Gregory ponders on how it might be possible to define a ‘discipline’ let us begin here too. Seminal author on tacit knowledge, Michael Polanyi (1958) provides a religious analogy that may help to explain and describe the collective mindset that drives individuals who call themselves ‘designers’. He uses Christianity as an example of “…a heuristic vision which is accepted for the sake of its unresolvable tension. It is like an obsession with a problem known to be insoluble, which yet, unswervingly, the heuristic commands; ‘Look at the unknown!’ Christianity sedulously fosters, and in a sense permanently satisfies, man’s craving for mental dissatisfaction by offering him the comfort of a crucified God.” (Polanyi 1958:212) In this analogy we can compare the tacitly experienced and communicated nature of religion with its collective vision of an all-encompassing and compelling unsolvable problem, to design. To profess to design also requires a shared view and an experience of a tension and a permanent dissatisfaction; one that considers that the world requires continual
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transformation through the creation of new objects. When judged in this way, design could be seen as a ‘broad church’, structured through sub-disciplines or denominations that deliver teachings, which are largely similar but yet with some significant deviations. A ‘discipline’ requires disciples; individuals who feel drawn to a particular set of teachings, tacitly learn and adopt the rules and rituals associated with the discipline allowing them to guide their thoughts and behaviours. Disciples follow and embrace the teachings, which may be explicit and written down or implicitly communicated. They will take comfort in knowing they share their fundamental beliefs, thoughts, and behaviours with others. Essentially the disciple has a tacit relationship with the discipline, which is both internal and personal and external in relation to other disciples across time and location. In a paper exploring the notion of the ‘discipline’ in design, Salustri and Rogers (2008:299/7) state that, “Once we have learned to do something in a certain way, we will tend to do that thing the same way forever, or until a “better” way presents itself (and sometimes, not even then). In this way, we will tend to not try other ways to do a thing because we have learned one way of doing it.” So once indoctrinated in a discipline, it can remain with us almost indefinitely. This supports the notion of a quasi-religious design discipline. If we do accept that the compulsion to design as well as other activities and experiences associated with designing are universal then we must also ask why most designers specialise within one area or sub-discipline of design? In a recent paper referring to Kuhn’s 1962 book ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, Wang and Ilhan (2009:5) “propose a sociological distinctiveness to the design professions which, is really their key distinguishing signature.” They oppose the notion that individual design professions hold specific knowledge (and note that there are social, historical and market-led reasons for this concept being maintained in academic writing) but rather that they are all centred round the ‘creative act’. They describe a ‘sociological wrapping’ around the ‘creative act’ and proceed in their investigation by questioning what a profession is. Wang and Ilhan advise that in order to define a design profession one must decipher what it does “(with any general knowledge that assists in the creative act) in a sociological process of defining itself to the larger culture.” (Wang & Ilhan 2009:7) The textile design discipline appears to attract a broad range of disciples. The term ‘textile practitioner’ can at once describe students, artists, craftspeople, hobbyists and designers of various levels of expertise, approaches and experience all with markedly different approaches to following and embracing the ‘teachings’ of the discipline. Certain traits in objects, behaviours or even people may be considered ‘textiley’ amongst textile practitioners, a word that is difficult to define but easily understood within the discipline. Textile design encompasses teachings from the broader disciplines of design, technology, art and craft, indicating that textile design disciples have formed both a personal and collective tacit understanding of a specific blend of knowledge. What remains to be examined is whether this
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knowledge and its associated methodologies serve as, in Wang and Ilhan’s terms, a general knowledge contributing to a more generalised creative act or design process or whether it may offer a new paradigm for design research. If sociological wrapping defines the public and professional identity of a profession or discipline, how is textiles wrapped, who has contributed to its wrapping and why so and does it need to be modified or updated? I suggest that to begin to understand this, it is useful to consider the textile design discipline as an entity; including textile designers, designed textile objects and the textile design process. When seen in this way it is possible to identify certain traits that allow us to characterise textiles. Below, I propose particular embodiments of the character of textiles. I use the word ‘Textiles’ to denote an entity once again. I have selected feminine archetypes on which to explore the sociological wrapping of textiles. These roles have been selected as they draw attention to the complex and dichotomous epistemology of textiles. Textiles as an entity may at one time subscribe to all of these archetypes. Textiles is a mother. It is universally fundamental in its ability to enable other objects to come into existence. It is a fertile ground that invites (and requires) partners to participate in realising new creations, a site of origination. Textiles implicitly relates, adapts, communicates and gives continuously and changeably on a physical level. Textiles is a geisha. It must use all its performative, decorative and seductive characteristics in order to communicate its exquisiteness to patrons. Patrons are courted ritually and continuously and once a relationship has been organised, the patron receives a particular level of control over the behaviour of Textiles, who responds by expressing the potential of sensory pleasure. Textiles communicates a submissive character, which belies the reverence given to its highly accomplished and wide-ranging skills. This relationship is difficult for those from particular social cultures to understand properly, however the indigenous social perspective provides alternative readings of the situation. Textiles is a spinster. Textiles is considered simple, naïve and uncomplicated not forthcoming or interested in articulating what makes it special or unique. Its muteness has impeded its ability to forge relationships. Textiles can be intelligent and interesting but may be overlooked by those looking, merely, for beauty. In response Textiles sometimes opts out, preferring to remain academic, free to pursue its own interests and out of the reach of potential suitors. These labels carry significant meaning and can be more deeply explored not least from a feminist perspective. They are gendered because textiles as a designed object, a way of
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thinking and a way of being, exhibits traits that are considered characteristically feminine. The description of each archetype explains the centrality of relationality to textiles. Designed textile objects are innately highly relational, a quality of which textile designers are aware. At the same time, textile designers must regularly court manufacturers and other types of designers who are looking for textiles to help them realise their own design ideas. Most commonly, textile designs need to be bought and given an application before they can interact with the larger society. To do this textile designers often produce a wide range of designs made to address and satisfy the market requirements as far as possible. A large proportion of perfectly acceptable textile designs will never be sold or put into production. There is of course a contingent of the most innovative textile designers who do not wish to participate in this courtship of commerce. They are encouraged by and operating within academic institutions.
Some, but few, are successful in achieving both academic and
commercial acclaim. The descriptions also allude to the pleasure-giving qualities of textiles, which may be subtle and tactile or decorative and sensorial. They also point to the unspoken nature of textile design, it may be or taken for granted, disregarded or unrecognised for their input in the design process and the resulting designed object. This muteness has resulted in textiles accepting a considerably less active role in the pertinent debates of design research today. If these labels help us to understand how textiles, as a design discipline and designed object, presents itself in the larger culture, they can also be used to uncover design thinking and methodologies for textile design. Within my continued research, I seek to explore how a this sociological understanding of textiles may help in articulating the form of the ‘creative act’ (Wang & Ilhan 2009) for textiles. Returning to the quotation from Gregory, he goes on to ask what kinds of questions a discipline should address itself it to, and so let us apply his query to textiles. Their primary roles as designed objects are to provide shelter and modesty but also to deliver a tactile and visual experience. Of course textiles also have functions connected with their roles, for example as filters, carrying devices or to respond to heat or light.
In this paper, I want to
focus on textiles’ role as agent of tactile and visual experience, specifically its decorative characteristics.
David Brett provides an explanation of decoration and identifies and
legitimises it as transformative, alluding to its visual and tactile qualities and its role in sensory perception and social function (Brett 2005). Brett uses examples from textile design to help form his definition of ‘the decorative’: “ I begin to see what decoration is for. It completes. It brings buildings, objects and artefacts to completion in and for perception, by making them easier to see, more finished, more easily focussed upon. It completes in and for social use by making them into signs and symbols for
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our endeavours and beliefs. It completes in and for pleasure by inviting the eye to dwell and the hand to caress.
It completes in and for thought by making objects memorable.
Decoration, by completing our world, completes those who live in it….” Brett (2005:264) He continuously talks of the role of decoration for providing pleasure, but textiles can be earnestly functional and elaborately decorative at the same time, yet the multifarious qualities of textiles can often be unseen, forgotten or unspoken: “…in many or most cases we have got so used to this ornament that we look upon it as if had grown of itself, and note it of no more than mosses on the dry sticks with which we light our fires.” (Morris 1877)
Jane Graves extends Brett and Morris’s inclusion of textiles as a form/mode of decoration by closely associating textiles with pattern. She gives a psychoanalytical account of pattern (Schoeser & Boydell 2002:45) in which she describes how decoration is converted through repetition into pattern. She suggests that textile is pattern, whether or not pattern is woven in as a design, as the natural texture resultant from weaving or knitting or as printed onto a textile surface. This approach to ‘disentangling textiles’ (Schoeser & Boydell 2002) allows a deeper conceptualisation of not only the outcomes of textile design as designed objects but also the intentions, behaviours and thinking of the textile designer. Similarly to Brett and Morris, she correlates textiles (pattern as textiles) with pleasure and describes how, in particular the printed textile designer, is free to play with the powerful qualities of pattern and uses Freudian concepts to describe how the unconscious is drawn to pattern for it’s addictive and disorientating qualities. So, textiles as designed decorative objects can be seen as sometimes imperceptible yet tacitly addictive, emotive and pleasurable but how are these ‘meta-functions’ of textiles understood within the discipline and how does it affect the issues to which textiles, as a design discipline, addresses itself? The nature of the ill-defined design problems that textile designers address have not yet been adequately explored or critiqued and subsequently there are no clear debates that could begin to offer answers. Archer and Gregory (1979) also prompt an exploration of the methodology of design. Tacit knowledge is embodied in the designed outcomes of textile design and exhibited in the textile designer’s approach to design thinking and the behaviours and activities they undertake within their design process. Can a textiles orientated approach to design be correlated with a more concrete methodology within the broader remit of design research? Design research is currently seen to encompass four main areas. These are outlined by Sanders and Stappers (2008) in the diagram below as; critical design, participatory design, user-centred design and design and emotion.
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(Sanders & Stappers 2008)
Further research into textile design from a design research and philosophy of design approach will allow for specific sites in the topography to emerge as suitable for textiles. For example, the work of Anne-Louise Bang, based at Kolding School of Design in Denmark is exploring user-centred design in woven textiles and researchers in the Textiles Environment Design (TED) group at Chelsea College of Art & Design, UK are using participatory design methods to create more sustainable textile and fashion products. ‘Design and emotion’ is represented as the smallest field within this ‘topography of design research’ (Sanders 2006). It has been charted but is yet unmapped; it does not feature any distinctive research methods, tools or smaller fields of research within it. However it is this centrally located field that seems to lend itself most to the characteristics of the entity of the textiles discipline. Seeing ‘design and emotion’ through textiles could also allow for a better understanding and more overlaps with the other fields of design research. Currently, the overlap with ‘user-centred design’ describes the role of industrial design (including interaction design and product design) within ‘design and emotion’ as promoted by The Design and Emotion Society. ‘Design and emotion’ is placed almost at the central axis of design thinking; led by design, led by research, with the user as subject and / or partner. If it is agreed that ‘design and emotion’ is a field ripe for input from the textile design discipline, how might this input reshape the field or vice versa? ‘Design and emotion’ is situated closer to design than
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research; if textiles were to adopt a more research focussed approach, what effect would this have on the nature of the textiles discipline and how it is perceived? In recent years there has been a phenomenal growth in innovative textile design work dealing with sophisticatedly complex problems concerned with sensory perception, aesthetic and haptic pleasure and social function; for example textile designers are applying their knowledge and thinking to design for architectural, healthcare and wellbeing and automotive applications. They are working with material scientists, engineers, chemists and industrial designers; the innovative work of Jenny Tillotson and Rachel Wingfield serve as good examples. These relationships are forming because each party recognises and values a particular quality of knowledge that they wish to access in one another in order to develop and further their practice in their field. Kavanagh (2004) and Kavanagh, Matthews & Tyrer (2008) give several case studies that attest to this.
The rapid growth of this type of
interdisciplinary work at the cutting edge of textiles is serving to highlight its particular ‘designerly ways of knowing’ (Cross 2007). The activities of these textile designers will start to enlarge and stretch the ‘design and emotion’ methodology until more detail emerges and overlap with the other design research fields occur, and will be where the specificities of textile design thinking and knowledge will be found. Whilst it may be true that within academia, textile design is turning ‘smart’ and looking towards innovative interdisciplinarity, it is also true that this type of work has only a small immediate impact on the majority of textile designs that consumers wear and decorate their homes with. What links textile designers working within the commercial sector with those more concerned with innovation is that both activities require the utilisation of a tacit knowledge of textiles to make items aesthetic and/or haptic; abilities and knowledge which have not been given adequate attention, value or gravitas. Undergraduate and postgraduate textile design students are working and playing with wood, metal, sound, animation, plastics, glass as well as fabric, thread and yarn within their textile design process. It is during their education when textile designers most tangibly feel the breadth of the methodology of textile design and discover the function and meta-functions of textiles. It is only when they come into contact with industry or other fields of design do they start to tacitly understand what distinguishes the textile discipline. And it is when they see their designs in context or in use do they begin to acknowledge the relational, emotive and communicative qualities of the textiles they have designed. This knowledge continues to be implicitly communicated from designer to designer, tutor to pupil, but not explicitly articulated out towards industry or other fields of design. They tacitly synthesise this information, and therefore it remains inadequately critically evaluated in any explicit way useful for design research academia. This then creates a disjuncture between a textile designer’s tacit concept of textile design and the understanding of it outside of the discipline. Many graduates of textile
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design degrees find that what was happily accepted and even lauded as textile design within the educational setting is inappropriate or misunderstood in industrial or commercial settings. This disjuncture seems to be largely accepted within the textile design discipline itself, although a handful of authors have sought to address it by examining the knowledge and processes of textile design. Alison Shreeve opens up the conversation about tacit knowledge in textiles in ‘Material Girls; Tacit Knowledge in Textile Crafts’ (Johnson 1998) and in doing so emphasises the need for more extended research in this area. James Moxey in ‘The Representation of Concepts in Textile Design’ (Moxey 2000) also studies textile design students. His study focuses on describing the outcomes of textile design thinking, such as moodboards and samples. These two studies focus on how the knowledge that textile designers share is communicated or displayed in an educational setting. Rachel Studd (2002) provides a detailed overview of the textile design process in a variety of industrial contexts as a way of defining a model and subsequently provides some insight into textile knowledge and thinking. Referring back to Gregory’s questions about design as a discipline and applying them to textiles shows that there is still some ground to gain before textiles is more broadly understood, and not simply practised as, a form of design. One challenge to overcome when attempting to discover the distinguishing features of the textile design sub-discipline is the requirement to make explicit the tacit knowledge closely shared amongst the textile ‘disciples’. Gale and Kaur’s ‘The Textile Book’ (2002:190) recognises that, “In the absence of a significant interest from the chattier academic disciplines, the task of establishing such a discourse rests quite clearly with the textile community itself.” In returning to both the title and structure of this paper it is evident that the entity of textiles, including the discipline, the designed object and the designer, is traditionally taciturn. Textiles, as a sub-discipline of design is not so much ‘sociologically wrapped’ (Wang & Ilhan 2009) as ‘sociologically swaddled’, resulting in a lack of activity in the wider discourse of design research. This paper aims to illustrate that there are clear areas in the existing design research discourse in which textile design, could provide a unique perspective and a new voice amongst the historically ‘chattier disciplines’.
References 1. Albers, A (1959) Anni Albers: On Designing. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press 2. Archer, B (1979) ‘Design as a Discipline; Whatever became of Design Methodology?’ in Design Studies Vol 1 No 1, IPC Business Press pp.17-20
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3. Bang, A (nd) http://www.dcdr.dk/uk/Menu/Research/Researchers/Kolding+School+of+Design/Anne +Louise+Bang [First accessed 05/05/10] 4. Brett, D (2005) Rethinking Decoration. Cambridge University Press. USA 5. Cross, N (2007) Designerly Ways of Knowing. Basel/Boston/Berlin: Birkhauser Verlag AG 6. Dormer, P (1994) The Art of the Maker. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd 7. Gale, C & Kaur, J (2002) The Textile Book. Oxford. Berg 8. Graves, J (2002) ‘Symbol, Pattern and the Unconscious’ in Schoeser, M & Boydell, C (eds)(2002) Disentangling Textiles: Techniques for the study of designed objects. London: Middlesex University Press 9. Jones, J. C (1980) Design Methods: Seeds of human futures. 1980 ed. London: John Wiley & Sons 10. Kavanagh, T (2004) ‘Designers Managing Technology’ in Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management, Vol 4 Iss 1. North Carolina State University. USA 11. Kavanagh, T, Matthews, J & Tyrer, J (2008) ‘ An Inter-Disciplinary Search for Innovation in Textile Design’ 12. Morris, W (1877) The Decorative Arts, their relation to modern life and progress. [internet] Available at: http://www.morrissociety.org/writings.html [Accessed 4 December 2009] 13. Morris, W (1882) The Lesser Art of Life. [e-book] London: Electric Book Company. Available at: http://www.port.ac.uk/library/ [Accessed 4 December 2009] 14. Moxey, J (2000) ‘The representation of concepts in textile design’ in Point: Art and Design Journal, No.9, Spring/Summer 2000 pp 50 – 58 15. Polanyi, M (1958) Personal Knowledge. London; Routledge & Kegan Paul 16. Salustri, F & Rogers, D (2008) ‘Some Thoughts on Terminology and Discipline in Design’ in Undisciplined! Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference 2008 Sheffield, UK. July 2008 pp 299/1 – 299/10 17. Sanders, E & Stappers, P (2008) ‘Co-creation and the New Landscapes of Design’ [internet] Available at http://www.maketools.com/ [Accessed 11 December 2009] 18. Sanders, E (2006) ‘Design Research in 2006’ in Design Research Quarterly September 2006. [internet] Available at http://www.maketools.com/ [Accessed 11 December 2009] 19. Shreeve, A (1998) ‘Material Girls – Tacit Knowledge in Textile Crafts’ in Johnson, P (ed)(1998) Ideas in the Making; Practice in Theory. London: Crafts Council 20. Studd, R (2002) ‘The Textile Design Process’ in The Design Journal Vol 3, Iss 2 pp 35 – 49. Oxford. Berg 21. TED Research Group at Chelsea College of Art and Design (nd) http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/22072.htm [First accessed 05/05/10]
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22. Wang, D & Ilhan, A (2009) ‘Holding Creativity Together: A Sociological Theory of the Design Professions’ in Design Issues, Vol 25 No 1; MIT Journals
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DUCK – Journal for Research in Textiles and Textile Design Call for contributions: ‘What is textile design research?’ Submitted: 22nd January 2010
Title of contribution:
Physical tools for textile creativity and invention Elisabeth Heimdal and Torben Lenau
Summary: Two textile research projects (one completed and one ongoing) are described, where physical inspirational tools are developed and tested with the aim of stimulating textile creativity and invention, i.e. the use of textile materials in new kinds of products, thus bringing textiles into new contexts. The first research project (completed) concerns how textile designers use new responsive materials and technologies, whereas the second (ongoing) concerns how architects and design engineers can use textile materials. In both projects, the developed inspirational tool is tested through workshops with the mentioned stakeholders. In these workshops, new ways of disseminating the results from research in textiles and textile design are experimented with. The submitted contribution therefore mainly addresses the role of interdisciplinarity in textile design research as well as the impact of new materials and technologies on directions and approaches in textile design research. It presents one example of what textile design research is.
Author affiliations: Elisabeth J. Heimdal, BSc in Textile Engineering, MSc in Design & Innovation, currently PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Department of Management Engineering, Section for Innovation & Sustainability. The working title of her PhD project is Integrated Innovation with Textile Materials. E-mail address: ehei@man.dtu.dk. Torben Lenau, PhD, Coordinator of the MSc program in Design and Innovation, Associate Professor at the Department of Management Engineering at DTU, Section for Innovation & Sustainability. Email address: lenau@man.dtu.dk.
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Textiles – an interdisciplinary field From we are born and until we die, we are surrounded by textiles that are directly in contact with our skin as clothing, part of the interior environment in our homes, at work, in hospitals, in cars and in public transportation, or part of the outdoor environment as geo-textiles. Most of these textiles are designed based on both aesthetic and functional requirements. The field of textiles is thus interdisciplinary in its very nature. (Heimdal, 2009) Compared to most other (stiff) materials, textiles have unique properties: they are stretchable and flexible; this partially explains the versatility of applications where they are used. Furthermore, depending on the fibres that have been used, how these have been spun, how the textile structure has been constructed, coloured, pre- or post treated, the resulting textile will be suitable for a defined application. In each of these steps choices are made that have an impact on the final textile. The inherent interdisciplinary nature of textile design is well integrated in the textile design profession. In fact, Wiberg (1996), who has studied the formation of the textile design profession in Finland, defines the following two aspects of the work of a textile designer: on the one hand the artistic-intuitive and on the other hand the scientific-technological. She further states that the intertwining of these two aspects is what characterizes the industrial textile designer’s work. Even though scientific-technological aspects are part a textile designer’s work, it can according to Berglin (2008) be stated that when textiles are designed mainly for aesthetic performance, it is considered to be textile design, whereas textiles designed mainly for technical performance are seen as belonging to the field of textile engineering. However, recent advances in material and textile technology, as well as the miniaturizing of electronics blur the traditional border between the two professions (Berglin, 2008). Furthermore, the nature of textiles is changing, as they are given new properties and functionalities, which expand their areas of application (Braddock & O’Mahony, 1998, 2005) (Lee, 2005) (McQuaid, 2005). Many responsive materials and textiles have in fact been developed since the 1970s, mainly for applications such as aerospace and the military. This has an influence on both professions, in the sense that textile designers tend to look more into technical and technological issues than earlier, and that textile engineers are given new possibilities when it comes to functionalizing textiles. The emergence of new application fields for textiles based on non-textile technologies (in addition to the textile technologies) thus also has to be included in the design process. These developments make new kinds of cooperation with experts from other fields necessary, outside the traditional textile professions. Important aspects of any product design process are the physical materials and technologies that are worked with – this statement is particularly valid for textile design, and becomes even more important as the materials that are worked with change radically. Using new materials is in fact a challenge and one of the situations when interdisciplinary cooperation can be particularly fruitful (Heimdal et al. 2009). The next section presents the results from such cooperation.
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The first project: an inspirational tool for responsive textiles In an interdisciplinary practice based research project with the aim of communicating some of the possibilities within responsive textiles to textile designers, an inspirational tool consisting of two responsive textiles was developed and tested. Collaboration partners were apart from the two authors of this text, an art historian (Hanne-Louise Johannesen), an architect (Michel Guglielmi), a textile designer (Priya Mani), a medialogist (Marija Andonovska) and an electrical technician (Asbjørn Holland Christensen). Responsive textiles A responsive textile is defined as a structure consisting of a textile material as well as eventual add-ons that as a whole is able to give a certain response to a given stimuli. The fact that the developed textiles are responsive differentiates them from traditional textiles, which do not to the same extent respond to stimuli in their environment. One could nevertheless argue a material such as wool is also a responsive material, because of its self-rinsing abilities, and its suitability for low as well as high temperatures. However, this response is much more subtle than the one provided by the responsive textiles constituting the inspirational tool. In fact, these will give responses that are very easily sensed (primarily visually) by the person interacting with them. The adjectives “smart” or “intelligent” are today commonly used to describe responsive materials and textiles of different kinds. Some use these two words almost interchangeably, whereas others draw clear distinctions between the two (Addington & Schodek, 2005). However, these adjectives are an exaggeration of the capabilities of the materials. In fact, the textiles are not able to think, in a smart or intelligent manner, they are only able to give a certain response to a given input or stimulus. That is why the adjective “responsive” is preferred. The developed inspirational tool consists of two responsive textiles, described in the following.
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Prototype 1: the textile that can move When the user (e.g. a textile designer) touches certain areas on the textile, it moves, and changes shape. Depending on which area of the textile he/she touches, different shape memory wires are activated; their contraction makes the textile move and change shape. Different shape changes can in theory be made, depending on the fabric and the way the wire is attached to it: the chosen way to do this is to cut lines in a flat fabric that are opened and pulled apart when the shape memory wire contracts, to reveal an underlying material.
Figure 1 Sequence showing how the top fabric gradually opens up.
Figure 2 Experimenting with the shape.
Figure 4 The wires are not contracted.
Figure 3 The wires are contracted, revealing the underlying 4 fabric.
Prototype 2: the textile that has eyes and blinks back to you Using a torch, the user lights on the textile, this responds with different light patterns, depending on which solar cells the torch is pointed (Figure 5 and 7). The solar cells work in two ways: on the one hand they transform the light from the UV torch into power and on the other hand they work as light sensors, connected to a microcontroller (a LilyPad Arduino). For each solar cell, three dynamic light patterns have been programmed.
Figure 6 Solar cells, LEDs and LilyPad connected in a soft circuit by conductive embroidery thread.
Figure 5 A light pattern is activated by pointing a torch on one of the solar cells.
Figure 7 Light pattern with lilac fabric.
Figure 8 A lilac fabric is covering the black bottom fabric. Optical fibres cover some of the LEDs.
Figure 9 Detail: a flexible solar cell and a bundle of optical fibres.
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Workshops In order to test the inspirational qualities of the responsive textiles as well as intermediary materials and to understand how they could be part of a design process, they were tested at three occasions. The term “intermediary materials� refers to functional parts of a given responsive textile. This can e.g. be a textile button, which is a part of the textile that can move, or the conductive embroidery thread, which is a part of the the textile that has eyes and blinks back to you. The inspirational tool was tested at the following three occasions. - A weeklong workshop for architect, design and art students in Strasbourg, France (Figure 10, 11, 12 and 13). - A workshop for third year textile design students at The Danish Design School in Copenhagen (Figure 14 and 15). - At the international textile fair TechTextil in Frankfurt, Germany (Figure 16).
Figure 11 Workshop participants playing with the responsive textile.
Figure 13 Demonstrating an intermediary material: the soft switch.
Figure 10 Looking underneath the top layer.
Figure 12 Idea developed by architecture student: a tent with solar cells and LEDs.
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Figure 14 Workshop with textile design students.
Figure 15 Idea from workshop with textile designers. A shape changing curtain.
Figure 16 Demonstrating the responsive textiles at TechTextil.
Findings The workshop with the textile design students clearly showed that the two developed responsive textiles are efficient idea triggers, when staged in a context-directed brainstorming. Together with the insights gained in Strasbourg, this workshop as well as the participation at TechTextil give a systematic image of how physical objects can be used as inspirational tools in a textile design process (see flow chart on the next page, made after Berglin, 2008). The two responsive textiles together with a range of intermediary materials constitute an inspirational tool, which can act as: - Trigger for idea generation – i.e. as a starting point for a design process. This is most efficient when there is a clearly defined use context for the developed idea. For this, both simple demonstration materials and fully developed prototypes are efficient. The latter give rise to more concentrated but realizable ideas, whereas the first gives rise to wide associations, which however seem more difficult to realize. - Solution proposal in an ongoing design process – i.e. where the problem to be solved has already been defined. For this, materials without a defined context and that have simple functionality seem most appropriate. As solution proposals, the physical objects can be given functionalities and applications that were not thought of when they were developed: the idea to use the shape memory wires to create ventilation is an example of this; it is an unexpected consequence of the chosen cut-out pattern, which was chosen for its aesthetic qualities. 7
Inspirational tool as idea trigger
Inspirational tool as solution proposal
Use Function
Textile Fibres and Technology Required Performance
Textile Fabric Structure
Context
Aesthetics
Economy Divergence
Transformation
Convergence
In addition to revealing how physical objects can be used as inspirational tools the testing of the responsive textiles also revealed the importance of the meaning designers give physical objects, i.e. the semantic meaning of the physical object. The word ‘semantic’ can be defined as the science of the meaning of words. The term ‘semantic properties’ in fact describes how we can describe the impressions objects give us in words (Lenau & Boelskifte, 2004). Figure 17 displays all the words chosen by the textile designers to describe the textile that has eyes
and blinks back to you - the bigger the font, the more persons chose the word. A discussion during the workshop revealed that it was very important to them that the materials were “textile”, not just add-ons. They meant that it would be much better if the solar cells could be printed right onto the textile; instead of integrated by sewing the way it was now. This seems to indicate that the semantic meanings read from the responsive textiles were of a limiting character. That a given material or technology is new and unknown to a designer could contribute to make it interesting at first glance, but the physical object and its properties also have a meaning in addition to that – this is due to its semantic properties.
Figure 17 All the words used by the textile design students to describe the textile that has eyes and blinks back to you. The bigger the word, the more persons chose to use it. The words were chosen from a list containing 77 words.
8
In order for the semantic meaning to be read by the designer, the physical existence of object is necessary: the designer needs to see the object, not just hear a description of it. In fact, a physical object possesses a number of semantic properties associated with the meaning we read from its form, colour, texture or other properties. For the technical properties there exists a welldeveloped and commonly accepted terminology that can be used for product search and materials selection (Ashby, 1996). This is however not the case for the semantic properties (Lenau & Boelskifte, 2004). The importance of textiles’ semantic properties learned from this project is planned to be investigated further in the ongoing research project presented hereunder. The second project: a textile design kit for architects and design engineers Why is it mainly textiles designers and textile engineers that work with textile materials? If other professions such as architects and design engineers to a larger extent used textiles it is possible that new application areas for these would emerge. The subject of the presented project is the development of a tool that facilitates the communication, exploration and development of textile potentials by architects and design engineers. The goal is to explore how persons not normally working with textile materials can become interested to do so, and how they can integrate the textile materials in their design process. Project idea The first part of the project consists of an initial investigation of the design process and material selection process as carried out by architects and design engineers. This investigation will be based on qualitative interviews with practitioners who have an interest in and experience with the use of textile materials. Practitioners who have little or no experience with this will also be interviewed. The results will be used for the development of a textile design kit, which makes it possible for architects and design engineers to visualize form giving possibilities offered by textile materials. Initial experiments have been made with fibre and textile composites, since such materials could be well suited as a part of the textile design kit. Fibre and textile composites (Figure 18, 19 and 20) are considered as an extension to textile materials since they represent a kind of transition material between stiff materials and soft textiles. They possess advantages from both kinds of materials; it is possible to make a double curvature surface thanks to the flexibility of the textile, but also to create bending stiffness, which normally is not a property of textile materials.
Figure 18 Double curvature fibre composite made of glass fibres and polypropylene.
Figure 19 Mould used to manufacture double curvature fibre composites, at the Material Research Division at Risø DTU.
9
Figure 20 By making a sandwich structure consisting of fabrics and biopolymer film that is melted, a textile composite that can subsequently be shaped can be made. Courtesy of the Materials Research Division at Risø DTU.
Textiles are perceived through their relationship with something, or someone else – they do not exist in a vacuum. This relationship is crucial for the way textiles are considered and used in different contexts. An important issue is thus to understand which properties and qualities that define a material as a textile for an architect or a design engineer and how it is justified. In understanding this, the semantic properties of the textiles, i.e. the meanings that are read from them are expected to be of importance. In order to look into this issue, the developed textile design kit will be staged at collaborative workshops with the mentioned stakeholders as participants. Physical tools help innovation Ezio Manzini states that: “Every object made by man is the embodiment of what is once thinkable and possible. Something that someone was able to both think of and physically create. ” (1986, p.17) Concerning textile materials, many things are possible – in the sense that it is possible to create something physically, but is it thinkable? It is physically possible to create a textile wall (Figure 21), but is it thinkable for an architect to do that? If it is not thinkable, how can it be made thinkable? Is it thinkable to combine textiles and concrete to create outdoor furniture (Figure 22)? The goal of the textile design kit is to extend the limits of what is thinkable. In Manzini’s citation lies a precodified understanding of knowledge as being processed in a specific order: first we think, and then we create. Does it need to be that way? The developed textile design game should function as a kind of prototyping tool, making a physical visualization and creative experimentation with textiles possible. Creation could thus precede thinking. 10
Figure 21 Textile wall developed in a joint project involving students from DTU, the School of Architecture in Copenhagen and North Carolina State University investigating the possibilities in using textiles for new purposes within buildings.
Figure 22 Range of prototypes developed by students at DTU and the School of Architecture in Copenhagen investigating the possibilities in using textiles and flexible membranes as moulds for casting outdoor furniture.
11
Vallgårda & Bendixen state that: “There is a material side of design that we cannot address through the studies of use and social practice – the properties and potentials of materials, forms, and structures must be explored through another kind of studies. How we can operationalize material objects by engaging them in situations that give us access to their properties and enable us to explore their potential.“ (2009, p.1) This kind of situations is at the core of the project, which in fact focuses on tools that facilitate the operationalization of textiles by architects and design engineers in order to explore new ways of using them. The collaborative workshops, as well as the development of the textile design kit, should be situations where textiles are operationalized. Bendixen & Vallgårda describe a dilemma, and evoke both the problem and its solution. One could ask whether there is a way to perceive and understand textiles which is less good than others. Persons with a textile educational or practical background tend to perceive textiles differently than those who don’t. Furthermore, the cultural coding of what textiles are is very strong, and this can be a limiting factor when new patterns are attempted created. Nature of textile design research Different types of textile and textile design research can seem difficult to categorize, because they cover historical, technical, scientific, commercial and aesthetic disciplines, and theory- as well as practice-based research. Kane, Matthews and Moriarty (from the DUCK website) suggest an overall distinction between 1) research into textiles and textile design, 2) research through textile designing and making or 3) research for textiles and textile design. This proves useful when reflecting upon the nature of the described research. The two described research projects in fact provide one example of what textile design research is. In this view textile design research is research through and for textiles; through textiles because experimental design processes are carried out and studied, and for textiles because the ultimate aim is to contribute to the creation of textile artefacts which embody results from advances in textile materials research. With roots in textile engineering and engineering design, the second research project tries to bring textile materials in the hands of practitioners outside the textile professions, such as architects and design engineers. This is done by developing physical tools to facilitate visualisation and experimentation with the possibilities offered by textiles. Ultimately, this could for example result in textile materials being used to create new kinds of buildings. Conclusion The first project shows how an inspirational tool for responsive textiles can be used as a trigger for idea generation early on in a design process. It also reveals the importance of the semantic meanings different stakeholders read in physical objects, and that this has an influence on the inspirational effect of the given physical object. The focus in the first project was mainly on textile designers. In the second project, the stakeholders do not belong to the textile professions. One research questions is thus which effect this will have on the requirements for the textile design kit. The making and staging of the kit should facilitate the exploration of textile material characteristics on all of the following three levels: 12
-
-
Property: A property is valid no matter the context in which the material is placed; it is an intrinsic, sharp definition. For a woven upholstery fabric, it could be its area weight or its fibrous composition. Function: A function requires a relationship, a use context. For the same upholstery fabric, it could be its flammability or its shapeability. Meaning: A meaning is an interpretation of what one finds important, a symbolic expression. For the sofa covered with the mentioned fabric, it could be the associations it generates as a person looks at it.
It is however likely that the function and the meaning will be the prevailing levels as the textile materials will be seen in relation to some product or architecture concepts. Crucial to the success of the textile design kit is that it fits into the design process of the concerned stakeholders (the architects or the design engineers). Special attention will thus be paid to understanding this design process, mainly through interviews and workshops. Both projects encompass and explore two complementary dimensions. A process dimension related to the understanding of how an inspirational textile tool can be used in collaborative workshops in order to facilitate textile creativity and invention by different stakeholders. A product (outcome) dimension related to the understanding and exploration of the textiles themselves, their properties, functionalities, meanings. This dimension is explored in the development of the inspirational tools, but also through the concrete outcomes of the collaborative workshops.
13
References Addington, D.M. & Schodeck, D.L. 2005, Smart materials and technologies: for the architecture and design professions, Architectural press, Oxford. Ashby, M. F. 1996, Materials Selection in Mechanical Design, Butterworth Heinemann. Berglin, L.T.H. 2008, Interactive Textile Structures - Creating Multifunctional Textiles based on Smart Materials, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Braddock Clarke, S. E. and O’Mahony M. 1998, Techno Textiles – revolutionary fabrics for fashion and design, Thames & Hudson, London. Braddock Clarke, S. E. and O’Mahony M. 2005, Techno Textiles 2 – revolutionary fabrics for fashion and design, Thames & Hudson, London. Heimdal, E., Lenau, T., Johannesen, H.-L., Guglielmi, M., 2009, Interactive Sample Book (ISB) – An Inspirational Tool for Smart Textiles, working paper for the Nordcode seminar. Heimdal, E. 2009, Interactive Inspirational Tool for Responsive Textiles, dissertation for the MSc in Design & Innovation, Technical University of Denmark, Department of Management Engineering, Lyngby, Denmark. Lee, S. 2005, Fashioning the future – tomorrow’s wardrobe, Thames & Hudson, London. Lenau, T. & Boelskifte, P. 2004, Communication of Semantic Properties, working paper for the 3rd Nordcode seminar. Manzini, E. 1986, The Material of Invention, the MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. McQuaid, M. 2005, Extreme Textiles – designing for high performance, Thames & Hudson, London. Vallgårda, A. and Bendixen, C. 2009, Developing Knowledge for Design by Operationalizing Materials, In the Proceedings of the Nordic Design Research Conference, Oslo, Norway. Wiberg, M. 1996, The Textile Designer and the Art of Design – on the formation of a profession in Finland, University of Art and Design Helsinki, Helsinki. All photographs have been taken by the authors.
Links: http://polynet.dk/textil/tex_arch.htm to read more about the Textiles in architecture and design project. http://polynet.dk/textilbeton/index.html to read more about the potential of materials – concrete textiles project.
14
Multi- and interdisciplinary nature of textile design research of linseed fibres Tiina Härkäsalmi* and Ilpo Koskinen** Aalto-University, School of Art and Design, Department of Design Hämeentie 135 C, 00560 Helsinki, Finland *e-mail: tiina.harkasalmi@aalto.fi **e-mail: ilpo.koskinen@aalto.fi
Abstract: In the future there will be an increasing need for renewable, recyclable and environmentally safety fibres, which are compatible with existing, cotton-based textile manufacturing technologies and are competitive on price and quality. In this study as a raw material the linseed fibres are used, which is almost an unexploited resource for high value end uses. This paper describes a multidisciplinary design study that consisted of three parts, a microbiological study that developed a Fusart®-method for cottonizing linseed fibres, a production model study aimed at showing how the fibres could be processed in an industrial scale, and a fibre quality evaluation study. In practise it means that lustrous and soft fibres, light coloured can be produced cost-efficiently and environmentally-consciously for textiles and potential for producing high-quality bio-based material with tailored properties.
Keywords: design research, material research, fungus, textile design
1.
Introduction The objective of this study is to explore the suitability of linseed elementary fibres in new textile
and technical applications and creating prerequisites for product design and productization. The study is based on a multidisciplinary approach to the use of flax elementary fibres where, rather than traditional long-linen textile processing technology, short-fibre methods are employed. Special attention was paid to the quality requirements of rotor spinning. This means that the fibre characteristics such as fineness, length, elongation at break and extension at break should be modified to be similar to cotton. One important task is to remove noncellulosic substances such as pectins and lignin without damaging the fibre cellulose. In this study product-development-oriented design research was combined with several product design perspectives including creativity, wide-ranging investigations and design using tangible models. The study was a holistic approach, which had a typical characteristic in the interaction between science, design practices and technology. The main aims were to create a method for producing high
quality linseed fibres in industrial scale; to evaluate this method for design purposes; and to suggest a few application areas, like using knitted and weaved textiles for composites.
2.
Linseed Fibre: From Environmental Problem to Design Resource There is a long tradition in producing flax fibres for textiles. People could twist fibres and make
coloured textiles of wild flax already more than 30 thousand years (Kvavadze et al. 2009). Generally, only fibre varieties have been cultivated for textile applications. Traditional long-line linen processing technologies are based on long fibre bundles. With these methods, fibres are suitable in a rather small number of different end uses: mainly, they are suitable for use in conventional woven fabrics with plain or damask weaves and dyed as a yarn or fabric. The flax industry is focused on high value linen textiles. The problem is that the market is very dependent on fashion trends and its cyclical periods (Dam et al. 1994). Flax has high utilitarian and ecological values, because it’s absorbent, hygroscopic, and protective against UV radiation. The thermal and electrostatic properties are good for apparels because of cool handling and comfort of linen textiles. Also flax is being considered as an environmentally oriented alternative to synthetics fibres in fibre-reinforced polymer composites. The disadvantages are the stiffness and the bending rigidity of the fibres, low extensibility of flax yarns and the high creasability and relative poor abrasion resistance of linen fabrics (Akin et al. 2000; Salmon-Minotte & Franck 2005). A cultivation area of fibre flax has decreased dramatically and instead cultivation of linseed has been growing. Linseed flax is grown only for seeds that are used as functional aids in foods, in paints, feed etc. Large amounts of linseed flax straw occur as a by-product of the linseed cultivation. The straw from linseed is nowadays mainly unexploited and it constitutes a major environmental problem for disposal. After harvesting the straw must be disposed of before the field can be ploughed. This is done either by burning or by removing the straw from the field and handling it as waste. Comparing the amount of fibre per hectare is rather low comparing with fibre flax yields, but in the world cultivation area of linseed in the year 2005 was 3.1 million hectares and has a potential raw fibre of more than 500 million tons1. Cultivation of linseed requires less fertiliser and weed control than cotton. It’s a good rotation crop. It grows also in temperate climates (Akin et al. 2000; Härkäsalmi 2008; SalmonMinotte & Franck 2005). Linseed fibres are generally considered too short, highly lignified and less uniform than fibres from fibre cultivars. Also it’s counted coarser than required for high quality textiles, but is an option for production of technical-grade fibre for composites. Further it has been proposed that the fibre to be
1
The estimated yield is based on 1800 kg straw per hectare with the fibre content of 10 % (Härkäsalmi 2008).
used for cottonization should be as fine as possible so that the technical quality and appearance of the yarn would be satisfactory (Akin, Himmelsbach & Morrison 2000; Dam et al. 1994; Salmon-Minotte & Franck 2005). But the fact is that there is not much scientific data of linseed fibres. After all linseed fibres consist of elementary fibres and their qualities are close to cotton, like fineness and length. The usability of linseed fibres should be increased with developing processing methods starting from harvesting. How can one turn linseed fibres into a usable resource for textile design? This paper describes a multidisciplinary design study that consisted of three parts, a microbiological study that developed a method for cottonizing linseed fibres with a mould from the Fusarium family, a production model study aimed at showing how the fibres could be processed in an industrial scale, and a fibre quality evaluation study. Each step was done by a designer, who collaborated with various experts from other disciplines.
3.
Cottonization with Fusart®-method In textile applications flax fibres should be modified to elementary fibres with cottonization that
is a multistage mechanical and chemical process where the pectinous glues between the bundles are removed. Last decades it has been many attempts, for example enzymatic treatments and steam explosion, but until now without commercialized application in industrial scale (Wang et al. 2003). In this study a new Fusart®-method for cottonizing flax fibres was created (PCT/FI2009/050059). This method can be used in for retting, smoothening and cottonizing linseed fibres and for removal of lignin. Cleaned and carded fibre will be degraded to elementary fibres with the method and thus washing, cottonization, bleaching and dyeing of fibres can all be done in the same wetprocess (Figure 1). It’s based on the textile designer’s aesthetical perception made in the winter-retted hemp field in the spring 2001. Here and there were stalks with reddish barks, but the fibres underneath where almost white and cottonized. They were contaminated by mould Fusarium. This microbiological finding led to a development process of cottonization method. Developing this method preceded many phases. First the designer isolated the fungus with the help of plant patholoFigure 1. The principle of Fusart®-method
gist. The identification of fungal mono-
culture was done in CBS (Centralbureau voor Schimmelcultures, Utrecht, the Netherlands) In CBS the fungus was identified to be Fusarium sambucinum Fuckel var. sambucinum. The mechanism by which the fungus modifies flax fibres is so far non-explored. In the beginning the designer did all the cultivations and treatments at home. After first accepted patent application, it was easier to find co-operators, and the fungus was cultivated in the laboratory with standard methods. To find optimal treatment conditions hundreds of tests with different circumstances. Finally, on the basis of visual appearance and softness of the fibres two different treatment methods, mechanical stirring and static retting were studied more extensively. The effects of treatments to the elementary fibre characters were measured. When this treatment is combined with dyeing of fibres novel ingrain yarns of flax will be obtained (usually bast fibres are dyed as yarn or fabric). This whole process can be performed with normal fibre dyeing techniques. These yarns are also suitable for knitting. 100 % flax yarns spun with traditional methods are relative rigid and therefore do not bend well enough around knitting needles. Physical and chemical treatments are needed to soften the yarns to facilitate knitting (Dam et. al. 1994; Salmon-Minotte & Franck 2005). Fibre that has been cottonized this way is raw material, whose composition and degree of purity can be defined, and is ready for yarn making with cotton spinning methods, non woven industry, or other technical applications. Recently, the use of bast fibres as an alternative material in composites has been considered, but the problem with it is the high cost of refining, fibre stiffness, and the high percentage of unnecessary particles (e.g. pectin and lignin), which restrict the adhesion of fibres to the plastic or other matrices.
4.
The Production Model Study Processing textile fibres is a linear process where the material processing technology determines
the quality and the price of the end product. Changes in processing technology leads normally required changes in the whole production chain, because each step of fibre extraction and processing alters the properties of the material decisively. Thus, the technical quality management must include characterisation of the raw material, characterisation during fibre extraction and processing and characterisation of the final fibre respective product. In every production step has to be designed according to the quality of the incoming material and final quality which is specified by the application. In this study a production concept based on "total fibre" lines was created, including the following phases: linseed harvesting, refining processes (like scutching, carding), cottonizing with Fusart速method and rotor spinning. Various material experiments were designed and fabricated with different
processing techniques, such as knitting, weaving, needle-felting, moulding and wet-laying (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The production model of linseed fibres
In production model the stability of the production chain minimizing process-stages and negative environmental effects were increased compared to the traditional long-line flax processing technology. This study showed that short-fibre methods give an impetus of linseed fibres in new application fields. Also the negative impacts on the environment can be reduced through the reduction of energy use and increase in material efficiency (Härkäsalmi 2008). 4.1.
Primary Production
The field trials were carried out in the research farm of the University of Helsinki in Siuntio in southern Finland in the years 2003 and 2005. The cultivar Laser was used, because in previous trials the yields and quality of seeds had been advantageous. Because the processing methods are based on short fibre, thus the harvesting can be done with normal farm machinery and by baling all the straw together randomly orientated. According to a study done in the University of Helsinki, Department of Agrotechnology, the baling and removal of straw from the field increases the required work time two hours per hectare. The unretted crop was harvested when the capsules were ripe and the straw was mature, thus the fibres are easily mechanically separated from wooden parts of the plant. In harvesting seeds the straw was reaped and cut up to the field. The straw was round baled on the next day of harvesting when the retting process hasn’t started. Because the fibre content of bales is only 20 %, in trashing the linseeds the straw was reaped and cut up to the field with chopper as a pre-decorticating. If the straw is decorticate during the harvest part of the shives are left on the field to loosen the ground. At the same time the fraction of fibre in the bale increases and the cubic weight of the bale grow since the cut up straw can be baled more tightly. Thus, the volume of the cut straw material to be transported is markedly less than the volume of the
uncut straw material. The volume of the decorticated straw material was 7.3 m3 per hectare while the volume of uncut straw material was 18 m3 per hectare. In the year 2003 the fibre yield of cultivar Laser was 390 kg per hectare (Härkäsalmi 2008). 4.2.
Pre-treatments
With traditional methods the entire crop has to be retted and dried for storage although the amount of useful fibre in it is relatively low. Energy consumption of drying flax it is 0.91-2.7 kWh/kg evaporated water. In this study the wood like material was cost efficiently mechanically removed from the straw beforehand with a mechanical braking and scutching –machine for short-fibre. This way the expenses of drying will be directed only to the fibre fraction. After that fibres were carded to remove most of the shives with needle-felt carding engine for flax fibres. Carded raw material was in form of bundles in length of 40–300 mm each of bundles consisted of 8–50 elementary fibres. (Härkäsalmi 2008.) 4.3.
Cottonization with the Fusart®-method
The samples were treated with above mentioned supernatant of fungus Fusarium which was grown 28 days in constant light. Mycelia were grown in flasks into which sterilized culture liquid has been added. After this the fungal culture was filtrated e.g. through Miracloth in order to separate the mycelium from the culture liquid. Ammonium sulphate was added to the culture liquid gradually until the percentage of ammonium sulphate is 70. Ammonium sulphate lowers the pH of the liquid by 1.5 units. The solution was mixed for one hour in +4 °C after which it will be centrifuged for 30 minutes in +5 °C with 10 000 rpm. The precipitate formed contains the proteins of the culture liquid. Supernatant is collected and used for fibre treatments (Härkäsalmi et al.2008). For further studies mechanical stirring with Linitest-testdying apparatus and static retting was compared. The basic variants were amount of fungus, time and temperature of the liquid. The liquid to fibre ratio was 1/20 and 10 g of salt per litre was added. In stirred tests 14 ml culture liquid per gram fibre was used and the treatment time was two or four hours. In static retting 0.5 ml/g fibre culture liquid was added gradually every six or eight hours. The total treatment time varied from 12 to 24 hours. Three parallel samples of treatments were done and they were repeated at least three times. The linear density, breaking tenacity and elongation at break was measured from controls and from three Fusart®-treated samples. The linear density of the elementary fibres varied 3.47–4.31 dtex, breaking tenacity 21.2–42.3 cN/tex and elongation at break 2.1–2.9 % (Table 1). Table 1. Effects of Fusart®-treatments to the linear density, breaking tenacity and elongation at break of the fibres
Sample
1
Temperature [C°]
Mechanical
57
Treatment time and the intervals of adding fungus [h/h] 2
Total amount of fungus [ml/g]
Linear density [dtex]
Breaking tenacity [cN/tex]
Elongation at break [%]
14
3.74
42.3
2.6
stirring Static retting 3 Static retting 4 Control 1: washed raw fibre 5 Control 2: carded raw fibre Cotton* *Franck 2005 2
4.4.
20
18/6
1.5
3.69
40.2
2.6
20
24/8
1.5
4.31
41.1
2.9
57
2
0
4.35
40.9
2.1
0
4.57
52.9
2.5
1–4
15–50
4.8–9.3
Spinning
The appearance, strength and texture of the fabrics depend on the nature of the fibres and the way in which they have been spun to the yarns. Instead of traditional wet or dry spinning cotton system and rotor spinning was used. The reason for that was to reduce the costs by increased productivity and to increase the versatility of yarns. Rotor spinning is widespread and is a major spinning method for short staple yarns (Lord 2003, 185–186). Cottonized (affined) fibre flax fibres have been used blended together with e.g. cotton or polyester. The percentage of flax in ring spun yarn (50 Tex) is 40 % and in 22-66 tex rotor spun yarns 25-50 % (Cierpucha et al. 2006; Salmon-Minotte & Franck 2005). The yarn manufacture experiments were carried out with rotor spinning at the Tampere University of Technology. The treatment included carding the lap and sliver and rotor spinning. The carding machines were not set especially for flax instead settings for cotton was used. In the spinning experiments were tested samples that have been treated with fungus Fusarium by static retting in the room temperature (20 ºC) 18 or 24 for hours. 0.5 ml/g supernatant of fungus was added three times so that the total amount of fungus was 1.5 ml per fibre gram. Spinning with 100 % flax there was a problem with sliver formation. To help fibres twist easier together pre-treated cotton fibre was added to batches, so that the portion of cottonized flax was 80–90 %. With these propositions yarn formations succeeded. The average tex-value of the slivers was measured of five parallel samples (1 m), (Table 2). Table 2. The results of spinning experiments using static retting
Total time [h] – intervals of adding fungus [h] 18 - 6
Total amount of supernatant [ml/g]
Amount of flax [%]
Sliver [tex]
Spinning
1.5
24 – 8
1.5
90 100 80 90 100
3560 2220* 2740 -
+++ +++ -
* the average is measured of 4 m sliver - not succeeded
5.
Handle an Visual Appearance Because industry relies on fibres on guaranteed and specified raw materials, attention was next
paid to the visual appearance and softness of fibres. The production model described above shows that lustrous and soft fibres can be produced with lower costs and environmentally-friendly for textiles, and linseed fibres have a potential for producing high-quality bio-based material with tailored properties. The next question is the aesthetic and physiological look and feel of the fibres thus produced. In textile applications garment has to be comfortable in aesthetic and physiological sense. From the users point of view the important product properties are comfort, appearance retention, safety, strength, biological resistance, environmental resistance and care (Lindfors 2002). The comfort of textile is composed mainly of the handle, thermal insulation and moisture absorbance of the raw material. In order to find a method for the comfort evaluation of textiles, the concept “fabric hand/handleâ€? is commonly used method for assessing fabric/material quality and prospective performance in end use in particular: this notion refers to the total sensations experienced when fabric/material is touched in the fingers and it is often the fundamental aspect that determines the success or failure of a textile product. By sensory evaluation, one gets to know properties of the material, such as flexibility, compressibility, elasticity, resilience, density, surface contour (roughness, smoothness), surface friction and thermal characters. The comfort sensation of a raw material has multidimensional attributes and is impossible to quantify through a single physical property. Fabric handle is a generic term for tactile sensations associated with fabrics that influence consumer preferences (Bishop, D.P. 1996; Hui, C.L. et al. 2004; Mäkinen et al. 2005). The consumers made the decisions by touching, through their own experience. Subjective handle evaluation of fibres was made by five textile design expert judges. The assessment was done by sensory evaluation with touch and sight together. Seven samples were to be put in order according to opposite characteristics: soft-hard; smooth-coarse; glossy-dull; light-dark and general impression of the best sample was given in words. Six of the samples were treated with the fungus Fusarium and one sample was washed raw fibre. The evaluators were almost unanimous in their evaluation and they found it difficult to order the three softest samples. According to evaluators the softest sample was the static retted sample which was treated 18 hours in room temperature. The supernatant of fungus was added three times (0.5 ml/g) every six hours. The total amount of supernatant was 1.5 g per fibre gram. All the best samples were characterized as being silky, warm, glossy, and because of their pleasing touch suitable for clothing. The washed raw fibre was distinguished from the other samples for being the coarsest, hardest, darkest and dullest. The softest samples had the best spinning capabilities. The linkage between softness and the spinability is obvious. Because this study had practical goals in change in handle and visuality of raw material there was also a phase, in which designer made material experiments to explore the tactility of the materials and their usefulness for textile design. As raw materials were used flax and hemp plants to compare the
fibre characters of these materials. The artefacts were made in ball-form (Ă˜ some 16 cm in diameter) to disrupt the current conventions of two dimensional surface of textiles and open new ways of seeing the material (Figure 3). The subjective material experiments were essential to find new solutions for fibre processing and enlarged the understanding of raw materials, the differences between materials and nuances of the fibres. These artefacts worked as a playground for testing ideas and the experiments were free from predominated methods. The artefacts were also a tool for concretise the ideas that have their basic in intuition and in tacit knowledge. And after all they work as note pad for further studies. For example, under-retted needle-felt can also be cottonized or this fungus can be also used for dying the fibres.
Figure 3. The material experiments of linseed, winter-retted fibre flax, oil hemp and winter-retted fibre hemp
6.
Conclusions There is still strong supposition that the textile designers task is to decorate the fabric, or in other
words to wrap nicely the existing yarns to the fabric. The textiles are a combination of the complicated technological processes in making fibres for textile products. The processes effect to the material and end-use properties will be evaluated from the consumers’ point of view. In companies textile designer’s task is to combine the demands of the used technology and marketing sector. So, in practice the designer is a user of yarn that has been developed by fibre technologists. But after all, textiles have
to satisfy the user. The designer researcher has to have knowledge of every phase of the production chain to development novel raw materials. After all, fibres are the fundament of textiles. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I suggest that we call textile design research of fibres for fibralogy (lat. fibra + logos). There is an analogy with the fibre art as synonym for textile art. Design research often has a very multidisciplinary nature and it is combined more or less with user studies, design-driven practices and art history. This study differs from that, because natural sciences and especially microbiology and agro-technology played a big role. It shows that textile designers can conduct multidisciplinary research even with material scientists and microbiologists, and can even take the lead in such research processes after learning some facts about science. Such cooperation gives designers new types of tools for creating innovations like the Fusart®- method developed in this study. The method is still under development and deeper knowledge for fibre modification is needed. The result of this preliminary study of fungus Fusarium indicate that the Fusart®- method can upgrade the application areas of linseed fibres. This paper was written in chronological order starting from cultivation. In fact there were many iterative circles to achieve the final product model. In this case was it very important to understand the whole production chain. Starting from the discovery of the fungus, which enabled new direction of linseed fibre applications. Literally it meant fieldwork. How does the bast fibres grow, what the quality of the material when harvested, restoring, pre-treatment, conventional manufacturing methods and machines. The fieldwork was not only perception but also participation in every phase of fibre processing. In this study many professionals from different fields were consulted: among others agrotechnician, microbiologist, plant pathologist, textile engineer and economist. One is missing: the sociologist. He had a role as a responsible professor to spar and spur the designer researcher into getting outcomes and after all as a co-writer.
References Akin, D.E., Himmelsbach, D.S. & Morrison III, W. H. (2000) Biobased Fiber Production: Enzyme retting for Flax/Linen Fibers. Journal of Polymers and the Environment 8(3), pp. 103–109. Akin, D.E., Dodd, R.B., Perkins, W., Henriksson, G. & Eriksson, K-E (2002) Spray Enzymatic Retting: A New Method for Processing Flax Fibers. Textile Research Journal 70(6), pp. 486–494. Bishop, D.P. (1996) Fabrics: Sensory and Mechanical Properties. Textile Progress 26(3), pp. 1–62. Cierpucha, W., Czaplicki, Z., Mańkowski, J., Kołodziej, J., Zaręba, S. & Szporek, J. (2006) Blended RotorSpun Yarns with a High Proportion of Flax. FIBRES & TEXTILES in Eastern Europe January/December Vol. 14, No 5(59), pp. 80–83. Dam, J.E.G. van, Vilsteren, G.E.T. van, Zomers, F.H.A., Hamilton, I.T. & Shannon, B. (1994) Industrial Fibre Crops. Study on increased application of domestically produced plant fibres in textiles, pulp and paper production and composite materials. European Commission: (EC DGXII - EUR 16101 EN).
Franck, Robert, R. (2005) Overview. In Bast and other plant fibres. (Ed. Robert R. Franck), Woodhead, Cambridge, pp. 1–23. Hui, C.L., Lau, T.W.,- Ng, S.F. & Chan, K.C.C. 2004. Neural Network Prediction of Human Psychological Perceptions of Fabric Hand. Textile Research Journal 74(5), pp. 375–383. Härkäsalmi, T. (2008) Runkokuituja lyhytkuitumenetelmin - kohti pellavan ja hampun ympäristömyötäistä tuotteistamista [Bast fibres by short-fibre methods – towards an environmentally-conscious productization of flax and hemp]. Taideteollisen korkeakoulun julkaisusarja A 90, Helsinki. Academic dissertation. (in Finnish) Härkäsalmi, T., Maijala, P., Galkin, S. Hatakka, A. & Nykter, M. (2008) Method for retting, smoothening and cottonizing bast fibers, and for removal of lignin of plant origin. International patent application no PCT/FI/2009/050059, published 20.07.2009 under No. WO2009/092865. ISO/TR 14062:fi (2002) Environmental management. Integrating environmental aspects into product design and development. Technical report. Helsinki: Finnish standards Association SFS. Kvavadze, E., Bar-yosef, O., Belfer-Cohen, A., Boaretto, E., Jakeli, N., Matskevich, Z. & Meshveliani, T. (2009) 30.000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers. Science vol. 325, pp. 1359. Lindfors, E. (2002). Tekstiilituotteen teknologiset ominaisuudet. Tekstiilituotteen käyttö- ja hoitoominaisuuksien tarkastelu kuluttajan näkökulmasta. Joensuun yliopisto. Kasvatustieteellisiä julkaisuja n:o 77. Academic dissertation. Mäkinen, M., Meinander, H., Luible, C. & Magnenat-Thalmann, N. (2005) Influence of Physical Parameters on Fabric Hand. HAP05, Workshop on Haptic and Tactile Perception of Deformable Objects 1.12.2005, 8– 16. Available at <ftp://ftp.gdv.uni-hannover.de/papers/haptex05/12.pdf> [Accessed 25 June 2007] Salmon-Minotte, J. & Franck, R.R. (2005) Flax. In Bast and other plant fibres. (Ed. Robert R. Franck), Woodhead, Cambridge, pp. 94–175. Wang, H.M., Postle, R., Kessler, R.W. & Kessler, W. (2003) Removing Pectin and Lignin During Chemical Processing of Hemp for Textile Applications. Textile Research Journal 73(8), pp. 664–669.
Functional Styling - Exploring a textile design space Anna Persson and Linda Worbin1 The Swedish School of Textiles, University of BorĂĽs Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology
INTRODUCTION As interactive materials enter the world of textile design, a new area is defined. From an interaction design perspective, interactive (or smart) textiles obviously differ from, for example, a computer game or a word processing program in various ways. One difference is that interactive textiles are experienced as physical materials and are not pixels changing colour on a computer display. But the main difference lies in the diverse aesthetical values; computer software and hardware are related to advanced technology, hard material and functionality whereas textiles are familiar, tactile, flexible and touchable. Still, textiles can build on of advanced technology. Functional aspects of interactive textiles have been thoroughly explored through for example health-monitoring devices (cf. for example [Lymberis and De Rossi, 2004]) and wearable electronics (cf. for example [Tao, 2005]). Other research includes interactive textile interfaces such as Super Celia Skin [Raffle, et al., 2004] and Sprout I/0. [Coelho and Maes, 2008]. The Smart Carpet is a large-area sensor network integrated into a carpet able to, for example, detect if someone has fallen on the floor [Glaser, et al., 2005]. Similar carpets, capable of detecting footsteps and the presence of a person, are available on the market [Future Shape, 2010]. To be able to understand the full potential of interactive textiles, we need to consider them as something new, designed in the intersection between textile design and interaction design. The experimental approach taken in the Functional Styling project is inspired by the work made at the Interactive Institute within the IT+textiles design program [RedstrĂśm, et al., 2005; 1
In a collaboration with designers and technicians at Kasthall
Worbin, 2010] where a series of experiments and design examples were made in the field of interactive textiles, exploring the aesthetics and emerging expressions of smart textiles rather than technical functionality (cf. [Hallnäs and Redström, 2006, 2008]). This paper reports on a collaboration between the Smart Textiles Design Lab at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, and designers and technicians at Kasthall, a company with a long tradition in producing hand tufted and woven high-class quality carpets [Kasthall, 2010]. By taking the approach of a practise-based design research method, experiments and design examples are meant to explore the expressive potential of interactive textiles. The aim of this paper is to describe the Functional Styling project where three full-scale interactive carpets have been designed. The carpets are meant to exemplify various interactive textile expressions and could serve as inspiration for designers that aim to work within the field of expressive sensing and reacting textiles. The main part of the paper describes the results and design processes of the carpets Spår (Traces), Dimma (Foggy) and Glöd (Spark) – design examples of carpets with dynamic textile patterns. Secondly, the paper discusses how the making of the carpets is a way to explore a new design space in the intersection of textile design and interaction design. The paper also discusses how the carpets can serve as inspirational examples for textile designers and how interactive textile design brings new challenges to the area of textile design.
THREE DESIGN EXAMPLES The three carpets serve as design examples of interactive textiles with heat, light, colourchanging and sensing properties. They are experimental, designed in the intersection of textile and interaction design, with inherent flexible properties manifesting themselves as dynamic patterns. As the environment changes, the carpets respond and react by changes in patterns. In what way and how much environmental conditions affect the carpets’ expressions, differ in the three examples. Following pages describe the result and the design processes of the three design examples respectively.
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SPÅR (TRACES)
As a person walks on Spår, the footsteps leave traces as white and turquoise light stripes in the carpet. Spår looks like an ordinary woven carpet but is able to show that someone is, or has been, walking by lately.
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Result, Spår Spår is a woven carpet able to light up in a certain way as a person walks on it. Together with wool yarns, light threads (electroluminescent wire) are weaved into the carpet. The light threads light up in a white and turquoise striped pattern where a footstep is placed. Three light threads light up by a footstep, and as a person walks by the carpet the light stripes turn off with a delay, one at a time behind him/her. In this way, Spår is able to give information that a person recently has passed by; the light pattern has both a decorative and functional meaning. The size of Spår is 90 x 200 cm. It is provided with five different sensing areas within the range of a footstep. The five sensing areas are provided with pure conductive yarn, knitted as meshes and embroidered on the back of the carpet. Six capacitive integrated circuits, capable of detecting near-proximity and touch, are each connected to the conductive areas so that the carpet is able to sense where a person places his/her foot. The electronics connected to Spår are placed a meter beside the carpet. In this way, Spår looks like a “traditional” woven carpet. The “traces” from a person’s footsteps, visualized as light stripes, are only seen as a person passes by. Design Process, Spår For practical reasons, Kasthall’s existing warps, facilities and yarn qualities were used in the making of Spår. First, several woven samples were made to try out different colours (black and white), and materials (wool and reflective lurex). Also different materials for light emitting were evaluated. Trying out both electroluminescent wire and optical fibres as weft, the electroluminescent wire showed to be most suitable to use. Compared to optical fibres, the electroluminescent wires showed a more distinct pattern in the textile structure, and it also meant that no external light source was needed.
Try-outs for weaving the electroluminescent wires and optical fibres at Kasthall White wool was used as weft combined with two different electroluminescent wires changing colours from pink (when the light is off) to white light and from white (when the light is off) to blue-green light respectively. The expression of Spår is similar to that of a traditional Swedish woven rag-rug carpet which makes the light-pattern “hidden” as long as no one walks on it. The overall design choices aimed for a simple design to make the pattern-change distinct as to enhance the dynamic textile pattern. 4
In parallel processes, different pressure sensing principles for SpĂĽr were explored. The requirements included that the carpet should be able to sense both when and where a person stands or walks on it. First, a resistive sensing principle was explored, a construction of two layers of conductive textiles with a non-conductive layer in-between.
Testing sensing properties with layers and conductive knitted material This technique failed to be reliable since the glue that were used for the different layers seemed to insulate the conductive yarns. A capacitive sensing principle showed to be much more promising. Instead of using the weight of a person to mechanically press the conductive layers together, the capacitive sensing principle detects the near-proximity of a person. For this purpose, QT113 proximity sensors from Atmel [Atmel, 2010] were used. Spür has five sensing areas and the size in-between them is based on the size of a small step, ½ meter. Each step makes three electroluminescent wires light up at the same time and when the foot is lifted they fade away behind you, one at a time. The electroluminescent wires were all inserted by hand and had to be individually connected by wires to the electronics external to the carpet. When this was done, several ways of programming the relation between the input-signals (the footsteps) and the output-signals (the light pattern) could be explored. Different scenarios were designed such as; all light threads
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light up at the same time as someone steps anywhere on the carpet, light threads on the opposite side from where someone stands light up, etc. The proximity sensors and the electroluminescent wires are controlled by a BX-24 programmable microcontroller [BasicX, 2010]. The electronics are placed approximately one meter from Sp책r and are connected to the carpet with wires. To detect signals from the carpet, the wires are connected to the five knitted conductive yarn meshes embroidered on the back of Sp책r. Wires are also connected to the electroluminescent wires to provide electricity. Sp책r runs on 9 Volts.
Soldering and connecting the electronic circuits for Sp책r
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DIMMA (FOGGY)
Dimma is a tufted carpet combined with light sources. Due to surrounding light conditions, Dimma's light-pattern is able to change into three different states. The intensity of the surrounding light influences the ambience of the pattern into a range of different expressions.
Result, Dimma Dimma is an example of a tufted textile structure combined with an under-layer of electroluminescent films. Connected to a light sensor, the carpet is programmed to express three different modes corresponding to light conditions in a room at day, dawn/evening and night. Twenty-five rectangular light films are individually turned on and off which makes the pattern change over time. The light films are placed as a layer and shine through the tufted structure. Two different colours of light have been used, white and turquoise. 7
Mode 1: During daytime, the carpet changes between two interactive expressions so that a chess-pattern is pending between a white-light checked pattern and a turquoise-light checked pattern. Mode 2: At dawn and in the evening, three electroluminescent films light up at a time, forming a pattern that slowly moves around the carpet. As one light film is turned on, another one is turned off, making the pattern constantly change. Mode 3: At night, a calmer pattern is created, as just one light film is turned on at a time. After some seconds the light film is turned off and a neighbouring light film is turned on. Design Process, Dimma To explore how tufted textiles could be combined with light sources in a carpet, the work started by using already existing black and white coloured tufted samples from the Kasthall tufted range. As a first experiment, electroluminescent light films were placed under several tufted samples with cut out holes, to explore the expression of light shining through the tufted materials. After the first experimental exploration, some new qualities designed especially for certain light requirements, were made using special hand tufting machines. For example, samples with circular shaped holes for the light film to shine through were made together with thinner, more transparent qualities. Also after-glow yarns and optical fibres were tried out, but the material was too stiff to use in the tuft machines, so some of the yarns were instead stitched in by hand.
Tufted holes and the light film shining through To be able to turn the whole carpet into a potential light source, thinner and more transparent qualities were chosen. A range of thin samples in different sizes and qualities were tufted, both by using different amounts of material and different kinds of materials. The quality used in Dimma consists of rows of thick tuft combined with rows of no tuft at all, creating a slightly striped pattern that diffuses the light that shines through. In parallel, an external under-layer of electroluminescent light films were constructed. The layer was made of twenty-five electroluminescent light films, taped together into the same size as the final tufted carpet, 140 x 200 cm. Two different colours of light were used, 8
turquoise and white. The films were positioned next to each other in horizontal and vertical rows so that the two colours are arranged as a chess-pattern. Just like in Sp책r, a BX-24 programmable microcontroller is used for interaction. The electronics and power supply for Dimma are placed in a box beside the carpet. Compared to Sp책r, Dimma requires relatively high electricity (around 40 V) due to the twenty-five light films. For safety reasons, the box is closed (but transparent) and each light film is connected to the box with a wire and can be switched on and off individually. In this way it is possible to design for a very large range of different patterns.
The thinner tufted structure used for Dimma
Trying out programming possibilities with four electroluminescent films. The box with electronics is seen behind the light films.
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GLร D (SPARK)
Glรถd is a carpet functioning as a mobile heat-source for heating up cold floorings. The carpet changes pattern due to the amount of heat-elements turned on at the moment.
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Result, Glöd Glöd is a woven carpet printed with pink thermo-chromatic pigments. In a second layer, placed under the woven carpet, eighteen individually controlled heat-elements are integrated. The dynamic textile pattern visualizes the temperature generated from the carpet; when Glöd is striped (pink and red stripes) it means that it is “cold”. As the stripes dissolve into a pink and white checked pattern, heat is generated. There is no microcontroller used for Glöd, the heat elements are turned on and off by hand so that the pattern can change from striped to checked, symmetrical or asymmetrical in a range of variations. Each white rectangle that appears in the pink printed area, indicates that a certain heat element has been turned on. Each heat-element is connected to a box, placed beside the carpet, by a wire. The box is equipped with eighteen switches so that each heat-element is manually regulated and able to be turned on or off by hand. Glöd is meant to be used as a mobile carpet able to heat, for example, a cottage or a basement. Design Process, Glöd Glöd is based on the carpet "Polka", an existing white and red striped woven carpet from Kasthall’s range [Kasthall, 2010]. To enhance the carpet with a dynamic pattern when exposed to heat, the carpet was screen-printed with thermo-chromatic pigments. By placing different cut out papers on top of the carpet to visualise colour and form before printing, full-scale sketches could be made directly on Polka. To achieve the same red colour used as weft in Polka, the possibility to mix a red thermochromatic colour was considered. But to achieve the same red intensity for the thermochromatic pigments showed to be impossible. Instead, other colour combinations were tried out. The first printing test was made with a turquoise thermo-chromatic pigment printed as squares on the white parts of the carpet. The thermo-chromatic pigments are supposed to be completely transparent when heated, and the plan was that only the warm red colour of Polka would show. But instead of disappearing completely, the turquoise pigment left a dull grey shade.
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To be able to sketch with full-scale colour-changes directly on Polka, cut out papers in different shapes were placed on top of the carpet.
To avoid the difference in shade due to the combination of unprinted white parts next to the thermo chromatic printing, stripes (instead of squares) were printed on the white areas. Before the final print was made, three different test prints were made on the back of the carpet to try out the pigment, the printing technique, the colours and at what temperature the print reacts. Parallel to the printing experiments, different ways of generating heat in textiles were explored. Both methods for integrating heat directly into a textile structure and to use heat elements as separate layers, were considered. As a first experiment, knitted structures constructed of wool and Bekaert HT steel yarn [Bekaert, 2010] printed with grey thermochromatic pigments were made. By parallel-connections, the structures were connected to a power source to generate heat. The heat made the print gradually dissolve, first into stripes and then it became completely transparent. It turned out to be hard to achieve a stable temperature in the knitted heat-elements over a longer period of time. Following the device of the Functional Styling project - to make design examples that show new possibilities rather than solving technical details, special designed heat-elements were custom made. Eighteen heat-elements were made in a size and shape to fit Glรถd. The heat elements were fastened in an under-carpet to generate and direct the heat to the printed carpet on top. Due to the rather high power (40 Volts) needed for the heatelements, it was also convenient for safety reasons to place the heat-elements insulated as an external under-layer.
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When connected to a power supply, the thermo-chromatic print on the knitted fabric becomes warm as the heat is spreading through the fine lines of conductive yarn.
Before printing the electroluminescent pigments, the group had a look Lindaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colour maps, made in a previous project
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EXPLORING A NEW DESIGN SPACE By exemplifying and pointing out new expressions, functions and use for carpets, the design examples are meant to serve as openings towards further interactive textile design. With the ability to sense and react on external stimuli, the examples open for new possible use for carpets, where decorative aspects are part of how they behave and express themselves over time. Programming a dynamic textile pattern Textile designers are used to work with advanced textile technologies, maybe even to program weaving- or knitting machines. The process of designing a dynamic textile pattern might still be unfamiliar to him/her since it includes the programming of a pattern that changes over time. To program a microcontroller that controls an interactive textile pattern is to design the expression of the textile. The programming code is in this way not an objective line of numbers and letters only used for adding functions. On the contrary, the code is highly expressive and defines the textile’s expression. When working with Spår and Dimma, the programming code was written quite late in the design process, a fact that might have influenced the outcome since the coding opens for a huge range of design variables. Still, even late in the design process, there were plenty of options of how to program the carpets. The programming code dictates the expression of the interactive patterns, and the carpet can easily be reprogrammed. For example, it is easy to imagine how Spår could be reprogrammed to be used to show a visitor the way inside a complex building, a carpet for children to play hopscotch on, or to a carpet that could add some mystery in an office building by leaving traces of persons etc. In this way, the expression can be redesigned after a textile is produced, both with respect to functionality and with respect to aesthetics. Dealing with electronics Another issue that textile designers normally do not have to deal with, is electronic components and power supplies. For pedagogic reasons, the electronics designed for the design examples were deliberately exposed. The differences in size of the electronic parts vary for each design example; in Spår the electronics are not even mounted in a box, the rather small circuit board is placed right beside the carpet and is driven by a 9 Volts battery. In Dimma and Glöd, the electronics were mounted inside boxes for safety reasons since both Dimma and Glöd requires relatively high current. For the electronics connected to Dimma, a transparent box was used so that the electronic parts are seen through the plexiglass. For Glöd, the electronics are put inside a box equipped with switches to manually turn the heat-elements on or off. New Possibilities The project shows three carpets, designed in specific ways. The interactive expression of Dimma is programmed and designed so that the carpet responds to different light conditions in a room, and a specific series of pattern-changes are visualised. Dimma exemplify one way of using a textile layer combined with a programmable under-layer which in this case consists 14
of light films. By using another textile structure, another programming code, other kind of light sources and other types of input (for example sound-sensors, movement-detectors, etc.), the principle used for Dimma opens up for a huge number of new possibilities for designing interactive carpets in other forms and shapes. Also the principle of letting the proximity of a person build a dynamic pattern, (as in Spår), point out new use and new carpet expressions as the carpet is able to give information, show a direction or to give a clue about previous events. Handicraft Vs. Industrial methods Functional Styling deals with how to transform an experimental-craft process to fit production requirements within the textile industry. When bringing new materials into the textile design industry, both handicraft methods and industrial machines can be used. For example, by using old style weaving machines with shuttles, optical fibres and the electroluminescent wires in various sizes could be inserted as weft inlays, something that would be real hard to do with modern weaving machines since they cut the edges. Still, the machine had to be stopped during the weaving to make some inlays by hand in a process that can be considered a kind of industrial-crafts process. Since some of the tufting work at Kasthall already is made by hand, it was easy to manually test several materials in the hand tufting machines. Examples of materials that were tried out were different conductive yarns, optical fibres and glow-in-the-dark yarns, all combined with yarns already used at Kasthall. Stiff and strong materials, such as the conductive yarns and optical fibres, did not work in the hand-tufting machines since the machines were not able to cut them properly and it also led to wearing out the machine components. In one way, this project meant to take one step back to be able to take two steps forward when dealing with new interactive material, not yet adjusted to an industrial process.
DESIGN CHALLANGES As the carpet pattern is not static anymore it means that more, or at least other, design decisions related to how textiles express themselves over a period of time have to be considered. When interaction design and textile design start to merge, the appearance of a textile is the sum of all inherent building materials and constructions and in what way external environmental stimuli are able to influence its appearance (such as the presence of a person, light conditions in a room etc.). Through their physical form and temporal expression, the carpets are manifesting the expressional and subjective art of inherent physical materials and software. The dynamic pattern-expressions of Spår and Dimma are partly designed in the program code written for the microcontrollers connected to the carpets. In Glöd, the dynamic patternexpressions are mechanical and controlled by a person switching changeable elements on and off. The appearance of the carpets at a certain moment is strongly related to the interaction between the carpets and their surroundings; in Glöd, the pattern corresponds to the action of turning the heat elements on and off by hand while the pattern-change in Spår corresponds to someone walking on the carpet and Dimma’s interactive pattern responds to light conditions. 15
The changeable elements in the carpets (such as the light threads in Spår, the light films in Dimma) are, apart from the programming, of course also designed with physical materials. But, the change doesn’t manifest itself until the environment behaves in a certain way. This means, hypothetically, that a certain carpet pattern (in terms of a certain combination of changeable elements appearing at the same time and in a certain order) might never appear. We are able to design the physical material and the computer program, but the behaviour of the surrounding is often harder to predict. The design is in this sense open. A certain appearance of a carpet is affected both by properties inherent in the physical material and software, and also by external stimuli such as user interaction. The relation between the two varies. For example: when crossing the carpet Spår, at a specific moment a certain number of light threads light up as I put my foot down, creating a certain carpet expression. This specific appearance shows only when my body is near the carpet and I behave in a certain way. The light threads, electronics and computer program are all inside the carpet all the time, designed for potentially lighting up. However, they do not show their full potential until someone crosses the carpet.
EXPRESSION DIAGRAMS As an attempt to explore the relationship between how a certain interactive expression is created through internal (material, design and programming) and external (user interaction) properties, “expression diagrams” have been introduced [Persson 2009]. When reading the expression diagram, the notions of function and interaction and actions and reactions (cf. [Hallnäs 2004, Hallnäs and Redström 2006]) are essential. In this context, function refers to what a given thing does when we use it, whereas interaction refers to what a user does when using the given thing. Actions and reactions refer to the chain of actionsreactions that occur when an interactive expression (in this case dynamic textile pattern) appears. The chain of actions-reactions is depending on each other, and the degree of actionsreactions is directly related to a textile’s changing properties. Example: A person approaches Spår and step on the carpet the sensor detects the nearproximity of a person the microcontroller reads the signal the microcontroller sends a signal so that three light threads are turned on the foot is lifted from the area the sensor detects no near-proximity of a person the microcontroller sends a signal to the power supply and the light threads are turned off one at a time etc., etc. In the expression diagram, a textile’s initial design is seen at the lower left corner where the axes of the system intersect (the origin).
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Expression diagram where given initial design describes: - The degree of functional actions and reactions - The degree of interactional actions and reactions
Actions I Reactions
Expression A Interaction
Expression B Initial design Actions I Reactions Function
Expression A shows a specific expression appearing at a certain time due to the influence of a person. Expression B shows a specific expression appearing at a certain time due to the influence of the material, construction and programming. Following diagram shows some possible interactive expressions able to appear in Sp책r: Actions I Reactions
Expression B and C Interaction
Expression D and E
Expression A
Actions I Reactions Function
Expression A: The initial design: no light threads are turned on Expression B: All light threads are turned on Expression C: Three light threads on each side of the carpet are turned on Expression D: The light threads turn off one by one Expression E: The colours of the light are white and turquoise 17
For expression B to appear, someone might have run really fast over the carpet so that all light threads are turned on. Another possibility is that that several persons are standing on the carpet at the same time. Either way, expression B is related to one or several personsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; influence. The same goes for expression C, where either a person has taken a leap on the carpet, or two persons are standing on each side of the carpet. Hence, both the expressions are placed close to the interactional-axis. Expression D and E are closely related to the material, construction and programming design. Therefore, the expressions are placed close to the function-axis in the diagram. But for the light to appear at all, a person has to interact in some way. Hence, the expressions can not be placed directly on the function-axis, but a little bit upwards. Following diagram shows some possible interactive expressions able to appear in GlĂśd: Actions I Reactions
Expression C Interaction
Expression B
Expression D and E
Expression A
Actions I Reactions Function
Expression A: The initial design: the carpet is all striped Expression B: One pink area has partly turned white Expression C: All pink areas have dissolved into pink and white checks Expression D: The colours of the checks are pink and white Expression E: The shape of a check is rectangular For expression B to be seen, a person has just turned one switch on. The corresponding heatelement heats a pink area that gradually changes colour into white. Expression C appears as all switches on the box are turned on. Both expressions relate to the action of a person. Expression D and E relate to the material, textile construction and programming design and are placed close to the function-axis.
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Designing an interactive textile means to work with both passive material (here meaning material such as cotton, wool etc.) and active material (here meaning material such as conductive yarns, light threads, thermo-chromic colours, etc.). As in all designs, it is hard to foresee the outcome of a design process, and by adding interactive features, such as software, the final design is even more difficult to predict. Smart textiles in general tend to be more associated to functional rather than to aesthetical issues, and the expressive possibilities of software design are sometimes overlooked. Just like any other design decision, decisions related to software need to be carefully considered. The integration of computer technology brings new design possibilities to the area of textile design. By enhancing a textile with sensing and reacting qualities, a textileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expressional properties are extended. Computer enhanced textiles need to be seen as something new, that brings new aesthetical values to textile design. Expression diagrams could be a help to structure and control the design process in relation to a desired outcome. By visualizing relations of function-interaction and actions-reactions, the expression diagrams were developed as a tool to be able to foresee possible interactive textile expressions. By providing a language to describe and pinpoint a certain interactive expression, the diagrams can be used to explicitly map out a new design space located in the intersection of textile design and interaction design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to technical consultant Christian Mohr. Photography by Linda Worbin. The project was made within and financed by Smart Textiles [Smart Textiles, 2010], a Vinnväxt Vinnova initiative.
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REFERENCES Atmel. [Online] Available at: http://www.atmel.com [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Basic-X microcontrollers. [Online] Available at: http://www.basicx.com [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Bekaert. [Online] Available at: http://www.bekaert.com [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Coelho, M. and Maes, P. 2008. Sprout I/O: A Texturally Rich Interface. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI’08), Bonn, Germany, ACM Press. Future Shape. [Online] Available at: http://www.future-shape.com [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Glaser, R., Lauterbach, C., Savio, D., Schnell, M., Karadal, S., Weber, W., Kornely, S., Stöhr, A. Smart Carpet: A Textile-based Large-area Sensor Network. [Online] Available at: http://www.futureshape.de/publications_lauterbach/SmartFloor2005.pdf [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Hallnäs, L. and Redström, J. 2006. Interaction design: foundations, experiments. The Interactive Institute and the Swedish School of Textiles, University College of Borås, Sweden. ISBN: 91-6318554-7/978-91-631-8554-0. Hallnäs, L. and Redström, J. 2008. Textile Interaction Design. The Nordic Textile Journal, Smart textile special edition, pp 105-115. The Textile Research Centre, CTF. Kasthall Mattor och Golv AB. [Online] Available at: http://www.kasthall.com [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Lymberis, A. and De Rossi, DE. 2004. Wearable ehealth systems for personalised health management: state of the art and future challenges. IOS Press. ISBN: 978-1-58603-449-8 Persson, A. 2009. Knitted Circuits for Visual and Tactile Interactive Expressions. Thesis for the degree of Licentiate of Engineering, The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. Sweden. Raffle, H., Tichenor, J., Ishii, H. 2004. Super Cilia skin: A textural interface. Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, vol. 2, Issue 3, pp. 328–347, Berg Publishers. Redström, M., Redström, J., Mazé, R. 2005. IT + Textiles. IT Press/Edita Publishing. Smart Textiles. [Online] Available at: http://www.smarttextiles.se [Accessed 1 July 2010]. Tao, X. (ed.) 2005. Wearable electronics and photonics. Boca Raton, CRC Press, Cambridge, Woodhead Publishing. Worbin, L. 2010. Designing Dynamic Textile Patterns. PhD-thesis, The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. Sweden.
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THE TEXTILE FORM OF SOUND By Cecilie Bendixen, cand. Arch. Ph.D. candidate
Abstract
The aim of this article is to shed light on a small part of the research taking place in the textile field. The article describes an ongoing Ph.D. research project on textiles and sound, and outlines the project's two main questions: how sound can be shaped by textile and conversely how textiles can be shaped by sound. The Ph.D. project is a result of a common interest of the textile company Kvadrat, The Danish Design School and the Danish Ministry of Culture, which together have funded the research.
Building a textile-acoustic idiom
That textile is a good sound regulating material is a well known phenomenon. Part of this knowledge is also confirmed by scientific studies. This is primarily the part dealing with the acoustic properties of the flat textile (Persson et al., 2004 and Rindel, 1982). However, there is another very important factor which is determining the acoustic effect of the textile. This is the shape and location in space, this field is only sporadically studied scientifically (Tooming, K. 2007; Bodin, 2008).
Like the fabric, architecture has a long tradition of regulating sound. However, within the field of architecture exists a rich selection of examples of how both material and shape helps to regulate the sound, and over time a sophisticated acoustic idiom has developed (Long, 2006). The architecture shows clearly that it is possible both to regulate the sound, and at the same time use the sound for giving visual shape, of which Bagsvaerd Church by Jørn Utzon (1976) is an example. But while the materials of architecture most often are reflective, fabric is absorbent, and this fundamental difference requires a different idiom.
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Figure 1. Bagsvaerd Church by Jørn Utzon. The drawing shows the building's interaction with sound. (Utzon, 1976).
To start building up an idiom for sound regulating textiles is to expand the modernist tradition in architecture and design. One of the cornerstones of this tradition is that the form must follow the function (Sullivan, 1896). Still today, this is a fundamental design principle (Bek, 2001), and the beauty of the principle is quoted to consists of a promise of function (Pallasmaa, 2001). The shape and the narrative of the function is therefore a central part of modernism. Despite this, acoustic regulation materials available on the market today, in most cases makes an effort to be invisible when applied in spaces. This neglects sound as a possible shaping parameter (Pallasmaa, 2005). By exploring how textile can regulate sound through its shape and spatial position, it becomes possible to create sound regulation, which is not blurring the architecture, but continues the intention of articulating the architectural situation at the specific site.
This article briefly reviews the two main problems in building an idiom for textile sound regulation, namely: how can textile be shaped and positioned in a room to regulate sound and how can this shape and position at the same time visualize sound? The aim of the research project is to develop techniques for creating textiles for sound regulation and visualization and thereby initiate an idiom about textile and sound.
The article is divided into three sections. The first section describes the Ph.D project's first main issue, namely the acoustic properties of the textile. This subject is investigated by experiments in a laboratory. A few examples of findings are given. This section is followed by a description of important prerequisite for shaping the textiles. These are my own experiences with textile design and also the physics of sound. The last section is the description of the project's other main issue, which is the inquiry of how a textile form can visualize sound. The Ph.d. project is currently in preparation for this last study.
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The acoustic properties of textile
The acoustic properties of textiles are closely connected with sound physics. Sound is vibration in a medium f.ex. air. Sound makes the molecules in the media vibrate and spread from the sound source in all directions as a sphere of pressure waves. Graphically sound is often illustrated as waves. The length of the waves indicates the frequency of the sound, while the height of the wave indicates how loud the sound is (Petersen, 1984).
Figure 2. Sound is often pictured as a wave. The distance between the waves indicates the frequency, while the wave height indicates how loud the sound is (Petersen, 1984).
In order to regulate sound with textile, the fabric should be placed where the activity of the air molecules is most vigorous, which they are at the top of the wave. But where should the textiles be placed in a room to catch these points and how should it be shaped in order to curb the air molecules the most?
These questions defined the setting for the project's first inquiry. In a laboratory textiles were shaped and positioned in a variety of ways and the effect they had on the reverberation time were tested. Textiles were arranged so that a wide range of positions and shape options were tested. Examples of these setups is the importance of 1)distance from the textile to the wall, 2)the quantity of textiles in the room, 3)the position of the textile in relation to walls, windows, doors, etc. and in relation to the sound source, 4)draping and folding of the textile and 5)the number of textile layers. Moreover, it was crucial to find out in which manner textiles can regulate sound. Can textile both dampen and increase sound?
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The experiments showed that textiles always dampened the sound and never increased it. Moreover, it was clear that it was mostly very simple parameters, which determine if the textiles dampened the sound or not. To give an example of this, two sound experiments are described.
The graphs show the absorption coefficients of the textile, i.e. how much sound the textile absorbs in various shapes and positions. On the x-axis the frequencies are read. The higher the frequency, the brighter tone. The y-axis shows the absorption coefficient. The higher the number, the better the absorption coefficient. It is typical that textile absorb more high frequencies than low frequencies. As the focus of the experiments were the acoustic properties of the textileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s positions and shapes, and not the textile in itself, only two types of textile were tested. One textile was a plainly weaved cotton with a structured surface and a weight of 325g/m2. This type of textile has a very good absorption coefficient, with a specific flow resistance of approx. 750 Nsm-4 which is an almost optimal flow resistance of textiles for sound absorption. For investigation of the textiles ability to reflect sound, a textile with no flow resistance was tested. This textile was a plainly weaved rip stop nylon with a smooth surface and a weight of 60 g/m2. Both types of textiles were mounted in wooden frames of 5m2.
The following two graphs are results of experiments with the cotton weave. The first graph shows the importance of the distance from the textile to the wall. Five different distances, parallel to the wall were tested.
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Figure 3. The graph shows the importance of the distance from the textile to the wall. The photo shows one of the two frames with textile.
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The graph in figure 3 shows clearly that the position 2cm from the wall does not have as good of absorption as the other positions. In a similar set up, the importance of distances in the range 2 - 50cm from the wall was investigated. From these two studies, a rule of distance was derived: textile must be placed min. 50cm from the wall to obtain maximal absorption coefficient.
The second graph shows the importance of a draping of the textile. With draping means that the fabric is pushed up like a curtain. The 10m2 cotton canvas was first measured in plane mode, then draped to half width, and finally to quarter width.
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Figure 4. The graph shows the importance of the draping of the textile. The photo shows one of the two frames with textile.
The graph in figure 4 shows that the more the textile is draped the poorer its absorption coefficient gets. This result is obtained by calculating the absorption coefficient from the actual textile area (10m2). If, instead the calculation is done from the projected area after draping, it turns out, however, that a draped textile absorbs more sound than a not draped textile.
By examination of approx. 50 different set ups, nine rules were derived. The rules define the positions and shapes that influence the sound. The following two rules stem from the displayed graphs:
1. An optimal absorption is achieved by placing the textiles min. 50cm from the wall. 2. Textile is used most efficiently if it is completely unfolded and flat.
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Two important prerequisites for the shaping of textile
Two prerequisites are particularly important for the study of the project's second main question which is about how fabric can be given shape and thereby both regulate and visualize sound. The design of textile objects requires a thorough knowledge of textile processing techniques besides a position on what is the aesthetics of textile. Therefore, the author’s textile design practice, done previous to the research project described here, is used as a starting point for the research. Sound physics is another important prerequisite for the study. In aiming at getting to the core of the sound in the shaping of the textile, it is important to know the physics of sound.
My approach to textile design The author’s approach to textile design can broadly be described as architectural. The textiles ability to create space and spatial structures being in focus. Also, the interaction with the space surrounding the textiles is important in the textile design.
Especially one series of textile works may exemplify this approach to textile design. With three textile structures, it was investigated how textile could be shaped in a spatial structure, making it interact with the weather. This ended up to be three “weather-screens”, both exposing and shielding against sun, wind and rain. The three-dimensional structures of the weather-screens were constructed by respectively cutting, sewing and weaving.
The phenomenon of weather is, in this textile design, regarded as a three-dimensional geometry containing great poetry (fig. 5). The geometry of weather consists of sun, wind and rain directions coming from the atmosphere to the ground in more or less vertical angles or across the earth’s surface from all directions. Moreover, all three types of weather have certain characteristics in their contact with materials such as sunlight reflection, wind deflection and continuous, dripping raindrops.
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Figure 5. The directions of sun, wind and rain and their characteristics.
The cutted screen (fig. 6) was based solely on the technique of cutting. By cutting slits in a piece of rip-stop nylon the fabric could either be pulled to a relatively stiff shielding construction, hanging loose the lobes would flutter in the wind and play with the sunlight.
Figure 6. The cutted screen.
The sewed screen (fig. 7) consisted of approx. twenty layers of rip-stop nylon, sewn into channels which unfold when pulled. Due to the staggered layers and the slope of the construction, the rain runs into the channels, under the screen, and finally hangs like drops in the channel mouths.
Figure 7. The sewed screen.
The braided screen (fig. 8) was "braided" of straight, crossing strips. In this way the screen, viewed from the
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side, became a very spatial structure, while viewed form the front it was almost completely closed. This gave a special interaction with sunlight and streams of rain.
Figure 8. The braided screen viewed from the front and side.
The three weather-screens are examples of how functional requirements, textile techniques and spatial geometries can form a whole. This way of designing constitute the approach to the study of how textiles can be shaped to regulate and at the same time visualize sound.
Physics of sound Like the weather, sound is a spatial geometry. And like the weather, sound makes it possible to point out many different characteristics, depending on the quality of the sound intended. One obvious characteristic to point out in relation to sound regulation with textiles is the activity of air molecules at the top of the sound waves. It is these active molecules that the textile must curb to dampen the sound. The sound waves create a great variety of different geometries in space. The simplest may be the pattern of a clear tone, which spreads its regular oscillations in all directions with a wave front as a sphere (fig. 9, left). For multiple simultaneous sound sources in a room, the oscillation interfere with each other, and varying patterns will arise (fig. 9, right).
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Figure 9. A sound sphere spreading freely and two sound spheres interfering. Here it is made visible that geometry is changing depending on how far from the sound source the sound wave is. (Left: Russell, D., 2001. Right: Young, T., 1803).
While limiting the idea of sound to the varying activity of air molecules in sphere formations the geometry of sound is not becoming simple. There are several factors that determine this geometry. This is for example the way in which different frequencies interferer with each other. Light tones are short waved and low tones are long waved. A complex sound, composed of several frequencies, which is emitted simultaneously, will by this reason obtain a complex spatial interfering geometry (fig. 10, left). The oscillation of the sound can be mathematically described as a sine wave. Through this definition, as one of the trigonometric functions, sound wave geometry is related to a vast mathematical system closely connected to both plane and spherical geometry (fig. 10, right).
Figure 10. Interfering frequencies (mood-swinger scale) and the sine wave in relation to other trigonometric functions (Left: Yuri Landman, right: Alessio Damato) The sound can thus be described as a rich and complex geometry from which to shape the textiles.
How can sound be visualized in a textile form?
The investigation of how sound can be visualized in a textile form is a synthesis of the sound measurement experiments, the authors textile design practice and the physics of sound. The investigation is not yet complete, and is therefore full of uncertainties and gaps. Moreover, problems in this part are described as
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wicked problems, because they can not be defined completely in advance, which means that the questions to be answered are to be found in the process of solving them. Also, wicked problem does not offer any absolute answers as stated by Rittel (1973).
The question "how can sound be visualized in a textile form” is about both the technique and the finished forms, i.e. both about how to achieve the shapes and how shapes appear. This means that several types of knowledge are searched in the investigation. The question of how to achieve the shapes depends on the design technique used, while the question of how shapes appear depends on a subjective evaluation.
The solution to a wicked problem can not be said to be either true or false, the solution rather lies within the spectrum of good or bad (Rittel, 1973). To apply this way of evaluating two experiments are carried out: By performing two experiments a basis for a comparison and a formulation of the differences and similarities is established and a range of good and bad solutions can be pointed out. In addition, two experiments unfold a broader field of possible design techniques.
The first design principle focuses on the mathematics of sound. The sound unfolds in space following a series of physical principles, which may also be used in relation to design textiles. In the field of architecture and design an approach called emergence is used. Emergence can be defined as unexpected wholes that arise through simple interactions among individual parts. By tagging a textile sub-element with a simple code, borrowed from the mathematics of sound and then letting it interact with other tagged textile sub-elements, it might be possible to produce a textile whole which is a visualization of sound.
An example of this design principle is Alisa Andrasek´s fabric Creature (fig. 11). This work combines 1) algorithmically derived cuts between the layers, 2) the constraints of the laser cutting technique and 3) material properties. (Ednie-Brown, P., 2004).
Figure 11. Alisa Andrasek´s algorithmic work Creature. (Ednie-Brown, P., 2004).
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The second design principle focuses on the visual form of sound. To access this, the phenomenon of cymatics is studied. Cymatics is the study of visual sound and vibration. Here sound vibrations are visualized in a physical material, being solid, liquid, granular or other. The vibrations of the sound are applied to the material by an oscillator and appear as two and three dimensional patterns and shapes, depending on the material and the sound frequency.
An example is the Chladni figures (fig. 12) which was actually a study of how the frequency could be determined by the pattern formed on a metal plate with salt when a violin bow was swept over the edge (Chladni, 1817).
Figure 12. Metal sheet with salt showing four Chladni figures and a graphic system of Chladni figures (Left: MIT. Right: Chladni, 1817).
The shaping of the textile will in this experiment be an interaction between sketches of sound forms, as they appear in cymatics and practical experiments of how the textile can be shaped in relation to them.
Conclusion
The questions, treated in this article, as well as in the Ph.D. research project, was how a textile can be shaped and positioned in a room to regulate sound and how this shape and position at the same time can visualize sound. The first question turned out to be rather simple to answer. Textile forms and positions were tested in a
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laboratory, and the acoustic impact of this was measured with an instrument. The instrumentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s results were unambiguous and easy to understand: Textile should be placed at least 50cm from the wall to achieve an optimal sound absorption and also textile is used most efficiently if it is completely unfolded and flat. These kinds of results can be used directly by designers and architects for sound regulation in building projects. The other question, however, was more complicated. The formation of textile by sound was compared to the formation of textile by weather. Sound is a force which moves the molecules of the air, but the force is too weak to move the textile material and form it. In this respect, the formation of textile with sound cannot be compared to the formation of textile with weather. Sun, wind and rain have a visible physical interaction with the textile form as they create shadows, fluttering and dripping which almost form the textile by their own physical power. The creation of a textile form related to sound needs a human hand to f.ex. cut, sew or braid the textile. But even this human hand cannot, at least not by the use of a sound measure instrument, give rise to forms that sufficiently visualize sound. Sullivanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s statement form follows function do thus not apply to this field as the form following the most efficient acoustic form and placement is rather boring. A plain textile, placed 50cm from the wall do not visualize a regulation of sound. However, Chladnifigures and algorithmic patterns can be useful for this purpose. Even they do not have any direct connection with the regulation of sound, it might be possible to make them look like they do while the deep nature of these structures has similarities with the deep nature of sound. By conducting at least two experiments of how to visualize sound with f.ex. Chladnifigures and algorithmic patterns, it might be possible to identify and articulate in which way they do visualize sound and in which way they do not. By placing identified and articulated elements in a scale of good and bad as suggested by Rittel (Rittel, 1973), it might be possible to derive an operational knowledge about how textile can visualize sound.
In the end we will have two set of guidelines. One for forming and placing the textile in a room to regulate sound and one for forming and placing the textile in a room to visualize sound and a textile-acoustic idiom has taken its beginning.
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References
Bek, L., 2001. Modernismen mellem tradition og aktualitet – ideologi i æstetisk forklædning. In Hansen, J. S. & Bech-Danielsen, C., ed. Modernismens genkomst. En Antologi. København, Denmark: Arkitektens Forlag, p. 97-122.
Edni-Brown, P., 2004. All-Over, Over-All: biothing and Emergent Composition. Architectural Design, 96(4), pp. 72-81.
Chladni, E. F. F., 1817. Neue Beyträge zur Akustik. Anon.
Alessio Damato, 2007.
Long, M., 2006. Architectural Acoustics. Oxford, England: Elsevier Academic Press Pallasmaa, J., 2001. Funktionalitet og den eksistentielle funktion. In Hansen, J. S. & Bech-Danielsen, C., ed. Modernismens genkomst. En Antologi. København, Denmark: Arkitektens Forlag, p. 157-172. Pallasmaa, J., 2005. The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses. 4th Edition. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Persson, E. & Svensson, E., 2004. Textilier i bullrig miljö. Technical Report. Borås, Sweden: Högskolan i Borås. Petersen, J., 1984. Rumakustik. SBI-anvisning 137. København, Denmark: Statens Byggeforskningsinstitut. Rindel, J. H., 1982. Sound Absorbers, Technical Report, note 4210. Copenhagen, Denmark: Danmarks Teknologiske Universitet (DTU). Rittel, H. W. J., Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, 4 (1973), pp.155-169. Sullivan, Louis H., 1896. The tall office building artistically considered. Lippincott's Magazine, March 1896. MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://www.mit.edu Tooming, K., 2007. Toward a Poetics of Fiber Art and Design: Aesthetic and Acoustic Qualities of Hand-tufted Materials in Interior Spatial Design. Ph.D. Göteborg, Sweden: Göteborg Universitet. Bodin, U., 2008. Cullus – from idea to patent. The Nordic Textile Journal, Special Edition Smart Textiles, 2008, pp.30-51. Utzon, J., 1976. Bagsværd Kirke. Bagsværd, Denmark: Bagsværd Sogns Menighedsråd. Yuri Landman, 2007. Moodswingerscale, own work Young, T., 1803. Two-slit diffraction, Royal Society
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The Benefit of Textile Design Research to the Textile Designer. Abstract If Textile Designers do not embark on and utilise textile research we will be left in a ‘sole less’ vacuum. The following article aims to show the benefit of textile design research to the textile designer. Textile design is increasingly complex, and influenced by a number of factors such as ethical textiles, sustainability, fast versus slow fashion, new digital technology and science. It is therefore necessary for increased research by the textile designer into these areas in order to understand and gain knowledge that can be incorporated into the vast textile industry so that we produce the most relevant cloth and fabrics that satisfies both consumer and ethical requirements. “Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when its composed, an architectonic stage when its built and textile stage when its woven” Walter Benjamin 1892-1940 [1] Key words Fibres, science, innovation, cross -discipline, slow fashion, research and technology. Summary In this article I intend to look at how textile design research is vital to the textile designer, and how the textile mills, which are investing in textile research and science, have the prospect a brighter future. I will also highlight that more support is required for eco friendly textiles and fashion if we are going to absorb the amount of clothing and textiles being produced in today’s consumer market.
The Benefit of Textile Design Research to the Textile Designer. At times it seems that textiles and textile Designers are worlds apart in their thought processes, aims and ideals. Textile designers are experimenting with fibre engineering using textile technology and sensory functions while traditional textiles still seems content on producing woollen and worsted cloth to the same historical specification, yet it is in fact imperative that they are interactive and remain so. Historically, we only have to take ‘Worsted cloth’ to see the link between textile design and textile research. This cloth which is used by tailors to make men’s suits and sold internationally takes its name from the village of Worsted in the English county of Norfolk, which has been a centre for the production of yarns and cloth since the weavers fleeing from the hundred years war arrived in the United Kingdom from Flanders in 1337. Worsted cloths woven by textile designers are very much at the forefront of International menswear designer collections today designed by brands such as Burberry, Gieves and Hawkes, and Ralph Lauren. Regency Dandy and sartorial advisor to King George IV Beau Brummell set the mood by promoting textiles through his stylish wardrobe. His attitude inspired other more contemporary Dandy’s such as Sebastian Flyte the Oxford aesthete in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited [1945][2] and contemporary fashion writer Hamish Bowles, whose flamboyant and stylish images have helped, keep British menswear at the forefront of fashion for centuries. In the last fifty years UK Textile Industry has suffered greatly with increased competition from abroad and rising labour costs. Situated mainly in Huddersfield and the Scottish borders the Textile industry unlike clothing manufacturing [which has all gone off shore] remains intact. Although greatly reduced in numbers the UK mills still show in reasonable numbers at Premier vision in Paris
and other global trade cloth fairs. It’s interesting to note that the mills with the brightest future are those that have spent time working with textile designers and garment designers researching and innovating new yarns and creating new cloths. The result is that from a basic resource such as wool its possible to develop a variety of wool blends. Each has its own character and qualities but more importantly this innovation allows the designers to give the consumer a greater choice of texture, handle and performance in these new cloths. Softer finishing [Finishing is the mechanical and chemical processes used to improve the aesthetic, feel and performance of a cloth once it is woven] can change a cloth or fabric, fine super 150’s and super 180’s yarn counts have resulted in manufacturing shifts as a refined quality of make is required for these finer yarns. Interestingly prediction guru Li Edelkoort has predicted at the November 2009 International Mohair Summit in South Africa [3] a mohair trend due to its performance quality. Will the textile designers grasp the opportunity? It has repeatedly been proved that when companies have invested in textile design they reap the benefits. Fox Brothers a cloth Mill based in Somerset exports its flannel worldwide particularly to the US and Japan used textile design to create the worlds lightest fine wool and cashmere flannel weighing 220gms. They were awarded the Queens Award to Industry in 2006 for the innovation. They also played a major part in the flannel trend that hit retail this winter [Collections Fall\ Winter 2009\10.] Richard Riley Managing Director of Reid and Taylor a woolen mill based in Langholm Scotland emphasized in an interview for Twist magazine in April 2010[4] that “sales of super luxury fabrics [super 180’s quality] to China and Hong Kong have never been better.” The cloth mill Clissold introduced new cloths woven in England and supported this with marketing around a buy British theme. The result was a rise in sales after exposure at ‘Unica’ a cloth trade fair in Milan in September 2009. While Halstead’s also from the Yorkshire region has become renowned internationally for designing and producing a luxury Mohair cloth. Complementing this has been the textile print sector. The ‘Text print’ group which shows the work of British print designers at Premier Vision in Paris and Shanghai, exhibiting a high standard of print work and weave ideas bought by textile designers from all parts of the globe, particularly Asia. The most creative and influential channel is when textile designers reflect on current textiles trends and after reflection work closely with textiles designers and cloth mills to produce yarns and cloth, which relate to the contemporary consumer and satisfy’s sustainable demands. We still need ideas, especially during a recession in order to generate business .We have an oversaturation of products on the market but do we yet understand the idea of slow fashion, slow food, and slow textiles? Can such a terminology exist, fashion is fast, constantly changing and moving forward with new ideas, yet in our eagerness to create the new we have also arrived at a point of over consumption, so its time to slow down. It is worth noting that textiles designers have played an important part in highlighting an ethical message, which textile mills have finally started to support. Globally we have become more concerned about ethical trading and the working conditions of those who make our clothing, and the impact of garment production on the world we live in? It started as a trend; a niche attitude based on concerns but has grown through communication in stature so that there are now large amounts of clothing that can be bought on desirability and which are also eco friendly. Yet have we gone far enough? Having travelled extensively recently from Helsinki in the north to Sri Lanka in the south I am still concerned that the vast majority of consumers are unperturbed about where or how their clothes are made, or for that matter how little they can be produced for. Interestingly Sri Lanka has worked with textile designers, and garment designers and undertakes great efforts to provide eco friendly yarns, manufacturing and put something back in to the surrounding communities and landscape. However there is a new breed of company flying the ethical flag in the west including ‘Pachacuti’ who make Panama hats from Ecuadorian co-operatives: they who guarantee a fair wage and are therefore proving it is a viable option. However there needs however to be a greater enforcement of ethical and sustainable fashion or textile standards .Are we transparent enough or does transparency need to be the ‘norm’ [e.g. supported by every high street store]. Are there enough natural resources available for the amount of garments being produced, and, will it be the textile designer’s responsibility to highlight the potential problem and encourage designers to make more ef-
ficient use of limited resources and utilise new fibres? The fashion cycles need to change, as in this new period of global warming they are less relevant. We no longer have such a defined winter and summer seasons. Textiles and fashion should adapt a strategy derived from the slow movement. Experiences and craft are the new modesties as luxury becomes vulgar rather than about high value. There is an opportunity to make something that more likely to appeal for its uniqueness. The craftsmanship of the product or textiles is then valued rather than its price tag. Labour intensive skills and experience are crucial to the process; so there is a definite shift in emphasis. It’s moving towards a more localised experience such as handcrafted textiles from Yorkshire as opposed to mass produced cloth in vast quantities from China. The future needs cross-discipline projects in order to expand and develop information sharing. The challenge will be our ability to utilise science into the textile industry. Science and technology are moving at such a pace that textiles can become full of sensory qualities. In design thinking terms it’s about ‘Think, ‘Touch’ ‘Reflect’ and ‘Analysis’. The ideas will come out of the research. If this is applied to textile research then new construction of yarns may arise. The textile cloth mills therefore need to listen to textile designers whose otherwise valid research will remain in the research vacuum leaving us with a ‘sole less’ future instead of a woven path to success.
References: 1.Walter Benjamin and the Arcades project by Beatrice Hanssen Continuum International publishing 2006. Chapter 7 PAGE 282, point 24. 2.Jocks and Nerds by Richard Martin and Harold Koda Published by Rizzoli 1989. The dandy page 188. 3. Twist magazines –World Textile publication Ltd article on International Mohair summit, December 2009 p18. 4.Twist magazine –World Textile publication Ltd. Article on Reid and Taylor, April 2010 p 36. Footnotes. Premier Vision-Twice yearly Fabric trade fair in Paris France. Unica Twice yearly Fabric trade fair Milan Italy. Texprint an organization whose aim is to link the best newly graduated textile designers with the textile and fashion industry. It is a non-profit making registered charity. Burberry is a British Luxury clothing and accessories brand with stores and franchises worldwide. Gieves and Hawkes is a bespoke garment maker situated on Savile Row London with a retail clothing collection. Fox Brothers is a wool and cashmere textile manufacturer Based in Somerset England. Reid and Taylor supply’s woolen and worsted luxury fabric to the leading fashion companies worldwide. Based in Langholm Scotland. Clissold is a textile mill based in Yorkshire England making fine British woolens and worsted cloth. William Halstead is a textile-weaving mill in Bradford Yorkshire Specializing in wool and Mohair cloth.
Pachacuti hat brand importing fair trade panama hats from Ecuador Hamish Bowles is the European editor at Large for Vogue Fashion magazine. He is a recognised authority on Fashion Design. Bruce Montgomery Professor in Design Craftsmanship Northumbria University