Materials and Materiality by https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24 In many contemporary approaches to objects, the materials an object is actually made from seems to be less important than its ‘materiality’ – the way it looks and/or feels. This lecture will encourage you to question if this is the case. We will examine and handle different materials and consider how their meanings and associations have developed through use and over time. We will also begin to think about how the materials we use in our practice might be interpreted. en-us 2017-10-10 09:46:18 UTC 2023-04-11 15:10:56 UTC hello@padlet.com Borinquen Gallo rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195504953 Like a Jungle Orchid for a Lovestruck Bee
Burning in Water Gallery New York 2017
https://youtu.be/zOQL8ydJloE
Focus on materials that are considered unimportant.

What do the materials represent?

Artifice and Nature
]]> 2017-10-10 09:47:36 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195504953 Questions:- rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195513366 How do materials gain and carry meanings?-       
What part do materials play in contemporary society?-  Do materials matter in design?      

Do the materials you use in your studio practice matter?]]> 2017-10-10 10:23:46 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195513366 http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/ rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195514578 The institute of Making]]> 2017-10-10 10:29:13 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195514578 MATERIAL SCIENCE rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195515835 How many materials do we come into contact with on a daily basis?

What is your materials diary?

How much do we understand about those materials?
]]> 2017-10-10 10:34:13 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195515835 From Essential Reading - Hemming, J. (2010) ‘Material Meaning’, Wasafiri, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 38-46. rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195518265 "The textile may not be the central motivation of these artists’ practices, but consideration of the messages the textile conveys is crucial to a fuller appreciation of the content of their work."

What do the materials we use convey to a wider audience? 

What does it mean to be a textile artist?]]> 2017-10-10 10:44:03 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195518265 From Essential Reading rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195535671 Okore states that - " The media couldn't engage with the conversation about the concept or relate to the materials. Why would I use paper? Who would collect it? How could it be preserved? Ironically, all the questions that tend to plague art created using textile materials, wherever in the world that may be..."

How and why do we decide which materials are more valuable and which aren't. Should we re-think how we consume and understand a materials qualities?]]> 2017-10-10 11:55:08 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195535671 What is design? Petra Blaisse from Inside Outside rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195565334 Blaisse's company straddle across the disciplines of design with a focus on working with the right materials and their unique qualities.
https://youtu.be/ZHnHDMlpSNY   24:18 minutes - 27.24

"Design is the way usable objects are shaped or constructed."]]> 2017-10-10 13:02:43 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195565334 Each material has its own individual qualities… Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh… It should keep its hard tense stoniness” (Henry Moore, 1934) rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195966999 2017-10-11 11:42:00 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195966999 ‘…every material has, as a matter of objective fact, a specific nature, a fixed set of inherent properties, which can be expressed or supressed when it is used.’ (Pye, 1968: 86) (from lecture) rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195967270 ‘The truth is that what we want to do is, not to express the properties of materials, but to express their qualities. The properties of materials are objective and measurable. They are out there. The qualities on the other hand are subjective: they are in here: in our heads. They are ideas of ours. They are part of that private view of the world which artists each have within them. We each have our own idea about what stoniness is.’ (Pye, 1968: 88) ]]> 2017-10-11 11:42:48 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195967270 When you think of a fabric or material (e.g. silk, wool, cotton, wood, steel, aluminum) do you see a picture in your head? Or do you think of the way it feels, the noise it makes when it moves or bangs together, or the way you can manipulate it? rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195967827  Our sensory encounters are with the ‘materiality’ of things. 

]]> 2017-10-11 11:44:27 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195967827 Silk rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195968651 Essential Reading: Andrew, S. (2008) ‘Fabric Tactility as Communication’, pp. 39-41, excerpt from ‘Textile Semantics: considering a communication based reading of textiles’, in Textile: the journal of cloth and culture, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 32-65.   

‘Responses to fabric look and handle … suggests that responses to many fabrics are not inherent but “culturally learned”.’ (p. 39) •  ‘The word “silk,” rather than the fabric itself, elicited a learned cultural response about the qualities of the fabric from the viewer, i.e. that silk was more expensive and luxurious’. (p. 40) 

‘Silky’ = about Materiality (but it doesn’t have to be about silk!) 

]]> 2017-10-11 11:47:27 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195968651 Do we know how and where the materials we use come from? Should we know? rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195970063 Eg., leather, silk, paper, plastic

Victimless Leather – a prototype of a stitch-less jacket, grown from cell cultures into a layer of tissue supported by a coat shaped polymer layer.

This is a sub-project of the Tissue Culture and Art Project where the artists are growing a leather jacket without killing any animals. Growing the victimless leather problematises the concept of garment by making it semi-living. This artistic grown garment is intended to confront people with the moral implications of wearing parts of dead animals for protective and aesthetic reasons and confronts notions of relationships with manipulated living systems.
]]> 2017-10-11 11:52:12 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195970063 Philip Howes and Zoe Laughlin (2012) ‘Introduction’, in Material Matters: New Materials in Design, Black Dog: London, p.15 rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195971908 ‘…materials are for making. The practical applications of materials is what brings them alive: It is what turns plastic into prosthetic limbs, stone into sculpture, and metal in machinery … the design and making phase is what really turns [new materials] from standalone curiosities into revolutionary new ideas, objects and products.']]> 2017-10-11 11:58:19 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195971908 rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195972239 So materiality can be: 
  …the ‘essence’ or qualities of  materials… 
  …the human experience of  connecting with materials… and/or the inbetweenness, where the  human mind meets and crafts the matter  of materials… unfixed in a state of flux that changes  over time… influenced as much by immaterial  concepts (like memories and  experiences) as by ideas about materials.]]> 2017-10-11 11:59:36 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195972239 Group Task rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195972382 What is the material? 
What does it look or feel like? 
How is it made? 
How does this influence its look/feel? 
Does it carry any associated meaning/s?  If so, how did you learn what it means? 
Do you like this material?]]> 2017-10-11 12:00:08 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195972382 Artist Susan Collis rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195973251 http://www.seventeengallery.com/artists/susan-collis/

Making ordinary objects out of precious materials in contrast to Gallo]]> 2017-10-11 12:03:01 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195973251 From "Stuff Matters" by Mark Miodownik a materials scientist, p3 rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195977242 Why does a razor blade cut while a paper clip bends? Why are metals shiny? Why is glass transparent? Why does everyone hate concrete but love diamonds? Why does chocolate taste so good?
So to understand materiality, we must necessarily journey away from the human scale of experience into the inner space of materials, on a microscopic scale, why some materials smell, why some last a thousand years and others crumble in the sun....thread is a man-made structure at the limit of our eyes sight that has allowed us to make ropes, blankets, carpets, but, most importantly clothes. Textiles are one of the earliest man-made materials. When we wear a pair of jeans or any other piece of clothing, we are wearing a miniature woven structure, the design of which is much older than Stonehenge. Clothes have kept us warm and protected throughout  all of recorded history, as well as being fashionable. But they are high tech-tech too. From space suits to artificial limbs made from solid textiles, stab-proof underwear from Kevlar, the evolution is ever-changing.]]> 2017-10-11 12:16:15 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195977242 Book Recommendation rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195984978 Searching the library catalogue:  Techno textiles (2): revolutionary fabrics for fashion and design
Braddock, Sarah; O'Mahony, Marie
The predictions of style gurus and top international designers are given concrete form in this exuberant celebration of the way new technology in the fabrics and fashion is bringing together art, design, engineering and science as never before.
]]> 2017-10-11 12:38:09 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195984978 Background image - Gary Greenberg, close up of grains of sand x 300 magnification rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195988102 2017-10-11 12:45:48 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/195988102 Bio-Fabrication rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111445 Synthetic leather made from collagen
http://www.modernmeadow.com/]]> 2017-10-15 13:29:00 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111445 Modern Materials rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111606 Pinatex - http://www.ananas-anam.com/pinatex/]]> 2017-10-15 13:31:00 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111606 Fashion Technology Lab rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111733 http://nyftlab.com/]]> 2017-10-15 13:32:34 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111733 Is Fashion Modern? rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111948 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/15/the-eco-guide-to-radical-materials

https://www.tizianoguardini.com/philosophy/ ]]> 2017-10-15 13:35:06 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/197111948 From Lecture.... rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211026707  …nothing is more likely to lead to a really living style than the consideration, first of all … of the suitable use of material … we [must] begin with considering what material lies about us, and how we are to use it, and the way to build it up in such a form as will really put us in the position of being architects, alive and practising to-day…’ William Morris (1891) ‘The Influence of Building Materials on Architecture’. Available online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/ 1891/building.htm]]> 2017-11-28 17:07:31 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211026707 The language of materials rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211031630 silky, satin, ]]> 2017-11-28 17:15:08 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211031630 "Textiles are closely connected with us as human beings and our surroundings. Indeed we rely on them to survive, for warmth and shelter. (and medically). The processes, materials and qualities of textiles provide metaphors to describe the society we’re in as well as symbolising and holding affinity with important life processes. Textiles as language can be explored through history, etymology and metaphor. The metaphors of spinning appear regularly in the ancient Hindu texts including the Vedas, Upanishads explained by Puntambekar and Varadachari in their book Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving (1926).‘ When the poet sings his invocation to Agni, he asks of the gods “to spin out the ancient thread”. The continuity of life itself and of the human race is compared to the continuity of a well-spun thread. “As fathers they have set their heritage on earth, their offspring, as a thread continuously spun out.” rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211031643 WRITING AS MAKING _ The word tantra which has become synonymous with eroticism and esotericism within western society, in Indian traditions applies to “text, theory, system, method, instrument, technique or practice.”  That the Sanskrit term translates to ‘weave, loom and warp’ suggests the interweaving of traditions and teachings as threads into a text, technique or practice. The Hindu God Vishnu is called tantuvardan or ‘weaver’ because he is said to have woven the rays of the sun into a garment for himself.
The metaphor of text as a woven fabric has been explored by philosophers Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva. Textiles and Text share the same latin origin: the verb texere which means ‘to weave’, and it is believed that textiles could have been a form of language before the advent of writing. Tim Ingold in his writings on Lines, reflects that ‘line began as a thread rather than a trace, so did “text” begin as a meshwork of interwoven threads rather than of inscribed surfaces’.

http://travelsintextiles.com/textiles-language-and-metaphor/]]> 2017-11-28 17:15:09 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211031643 Fulgurites are natural tubes or crusts of glass formed by the fusion of silica (quartz) sand or rock from a lightning strike. Their shape mimics the path of the lightning bolt as it disperses into the ground. All lightning strikes that hit the ground are capable of forming fulgurites. rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211051670 2017-11-28 17:46:07 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/211051670 Smart Gallery rachael_walker2 https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/213656539 2017-12-06 12:12:22 UTC https://padlet.com/rachael_walker2/p851wdioco24/wish/213656539