Sweets for Luisa

The last of my work for this project was looking at how the social groups would connect. The first model was cubic so I made cardboard cubes and piled them up. As I was making the cubes, the star/flower shapes just happened.



From this project I have found a new direction for my own studio practice. I wonder if I would have thought the thoughts I have, if I hadn't been involved in this project. It is interesting to begin to take on and adapt to other peoples creative energy. To know which ideas I wanted/was able to take on, and which were more of a struggle to integrate, though not necessarily less valid for that. 

And this is a link to Amy Congdon who gave us a lecture before Christmas last year. 

http://www.amycongdon.com/#!symbiotica_research/cz0o

I think for this project my imagination is taking us towards a genetic fusion of human/mushroom/plant cells with our "chip". Making our story, our future textile a real possibility maybe. 

And here's another one

The Ted talks are such an amazing digital library of great thinkers speaking about loads of subjects. I came across this one by Jae Rhim Lee talking about her mushroom burial suit, it was one of "Bjorks top 6". Listen and learn.

TRANSITION videos

the visual idea of how you would interpret the black and white world through your goggles...

multi image films.

becca's video manipulated

Our Goggles

Design development

Luisa does this, magic roundabout, connect with your trees and landscapes ? 

Within the images are associated smells, textures and feelings. So the blackberry image makes me remember the smell of the glue that I used to stick the cardboard strips together, the taste of blackberries, sweet or sharp, the feel of them in my mouth, late summer sunshine, and the fungus evokes the damp mushroom smell of  a wood pile left too long. You catch my drift. Textiles are more than colours on a piece of cloth.      

 And some some fungi, some blackberries and a basket have become this.

So my memory of a feather, a peony and a darned tablecloth have become this.

I decided to look up textile to make sure that our project is fitting in with the brief "Future Textiles"

tex·tile  

/ˈtekstīl/

Noun A type of cloth or woven fabric.

Adjective Of or relating to fabric or weaving: "the textile industry".

Synonyms fabric - cloth - material - web - tissue

I like the noun, a type of cloth, yes our ideas are a type of cloth. Life is a woven fabric, a type of cloth, paths cross, ideas matt together, parts of us are worn away, or open to let in light or to reveal hidden layers. The adjective; of or relating to fabric or weaving: "the textile industry".

This is where the politics of our project come in. Perhaps within the goggles there is a dial, a kind of moral compass. It is set to link to our thought patterns. This is the point where our vision of ourselves may wander away from that which is seen by the outside world.

In our present day, children, most often in third world countries, die for lack of water. People work in unsanitary, unsafe conditions in order to provide their richer neighbours with a constant supply of cheap goods to satisfy our weary appetites. Do we within our chip have a code of conduct ? Do we continue to buy into the textiles industry or does the textiles industry have to adapt to changing attitudes ? It is a question that we are asking ourselves now. I wonder if the great desire in mankind to be the most, the best, supreme will remain in our alternative, "Black and White World", in which the only currency is the thoughts that we ourselves generate or allow to become a part of us.

The synonyms are all lovely. I particularly like tissue. I am thinking of human tissue, are our chips are related to our own genetic code ? If so then we, as chips, are imprinted with all the memories and experience that our parents and grandparents, and so on, held. We have a bank of recall, hence our ability to know things that belong in the past but which may no longer exist. The architecture, landscape, textures, sounds, smells, are embedded in our psyche. It is the psyche that generates our thought patterns. Our thought patterns in a digital age are like our ancestors hand prints on cave walls. 

Team M+N Future Textiles retrieve sensory experiences. Within our virtual future these experiences may amalgamate or distort to create "An Other World". 

  

"Goggle Vision" into our worlds

What can we make design be?

" I believe that if we see design as a way of shaping the future of our world, it should be as exciting and thrilling as a great film or book. At the same time, it should communicate not only who we are, but also how we would ideally like our world to be. "

- Tord Boontje
Bourg-Argental, November 2006

Projections into the future

Lasers will let Google Glass project a keyboard onto your palm

"While there’s sure to be lots of data coming out of Google Glass, the big question is how users are going to get information into the device.

So far, Google’s answer has been “voice recognition”, but a recent patent the company filed points to something slightly more interesting: lasers.

The “Methods and Systems for a Virtual Input Device” patent that Google filed last year describes a system wherein a combination of projector and camera are used to create and detect inputs. In theory, this could allow Google Glass to make up for its lack of a keyboard by making the whole world its keyboard.

The idea itself isn’t particularly new. Researchers at Microsoft have been working on a similar concept, dubbed “OmniTouch,” since at least 2011. Like Google’s patent, OmniTouch lets users interact with their devices using ad hoc input interfaces projected onto their hands, arms, and environment.

Google’s patent, however, pushes the concept a bit further. Because Glass comes with a built-in display, the technology also lets users make inputs solely using gestures, which the camera can pick up an interpret. As a result, there are many use cases where the device won’t need to project a keyboard at all." - Ricardo Bilton

http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/17/google-glass-input-projector/#HDqkyzGgtXFGRuiZ.99

And the structure at night in artificial light. 

A short film of the shadows cast by the structure I made.

We talked about social groups like the ones found on face book. The square represents a social group, contained within are "chips" that are exchanging ideas. The world is made up of millions of groups.

This is a very simple 3d model representing one of these social/interest groups.

A Story Line.

So I've been thinking. Imagine that we as people are not people but like computer chips or single cells. We imagine as those cells that we are people and we are wearing the goggles. However we are more like a blank sheet of paper, except we are not a blank sheet of paper, we are the sum of our mother and father chips and all the impressions we have received since our conception. Each chip has a memory, like your phone chip, but more, it remembers touch, taste, sound, smell, sight. As it accesses this memory it is able to extend, using imagination, into it's own dream world. 

There may be interaction between chips(figs 1,2,3,above). The chip may have open spaces that allows it to see beyond itself into the blank white space that belongs to another chip. If the open spaces meet, there may be interchange, a passage of light may pass through and cast light on to another blank space. 

If we imagine we are human, we may imagine how we dress, how we live. We can imagine ourselves back or forward in time. Or in the present day. What is the present day ? We may be who we like. We may be what we like.

The goggles however influence how we are seen. Are we seen as we want to be seen, or do the other people within the goggles see us as they want to see us. 

Our existence hangs on a thread. Like fairies or father christmas we only if exist in this life if we believe.

Therefore imagination in this black and white world is our currency, for it is the source of our life, it gives us the capacity to experience the world as beings with senses intact. Without it our chip becomes a wall within the system unable to interact and as the walls build up our options are progressively closed down.

Therefore imagination also becomes a currency worth sharing for without it the last spark of humanity dies and the machine takes over the world. 

imagination

clothing visuals... how to adapt imagined surface into clothing.

crazy room visuals. 

imagined room.

trippy vids.

Reference

As I mentioned today, this film looks at using 'time' as a currency and as a way of keeping alive. The more time you have, the longer you live.

Favourite things

The North coast of Cornwall is the loveliest place I like to be and I think there is no where else in the world quite like it's beauty of rugged cliffs, dramatic waves and interesting wildlife. 

I love these things where you bung your food in and it comes out cooked and hot. Where would I be with an oven/agar I do not know...