Crafting Textiles in the Digital Age

Nithikul Nimkulrat, Faith Kane, Kerry Walton, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Faith Kane, Kerry Walton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781474286206
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

In an era of increasingly available digital resources, many textile designers and makers find themselves at an interesting juncture between traditional craft processes and newer digital technologies. Highly specialized craft/design practitioners may now elect to make use of digital processes in their work, but often choose not to abandon craft skills fundamental to their practice, and aim to balance the complex connection between craft and digital processes. The essays collected here consider this transition from the viewpoint of aesthetic opportunity arising in the textile designer's hands-on experimentation with material and digital technologies available in the present. Craft provides the foundations for thinking within the design and production of textiles, and as such may provide some clues in the transition to creative and thoughtful use of current and future digital technologies. Within the framework of current challenges relating to sustainable development, globalization, and economic constraints it is important to interrogate and question how we might go about using established and emerging technologies in textiles in a positive manner.

1

INTRODUCTION

Faith Kane, Nithikul Nimkulrat, and Kerry Walton

Textile designers and makers have traditionally operated in a complex environment where craft and technology, structure, process, and materials interact, interrelate, and interchange on many levels. In an era of digital technology, many textile designers and makers find themselves at an interesting juncture. Knowledge and experience of traditional craft processes have, within the current generation, been supplemented by opportunities offered by digital technologies, presenting them with a rich variety of options for consideration. Highly specialized craft and design practitioners may now elect to make use of digital processes in their work, but often choose not to abandon craft skills fundamental to their practice, aiming to balance the complex connection between craft and digital processes. Craft still provides the foundation for thinking within the design and production of textiles, and as such may offer some clues in the transition to creative and thoughtful use of current and future digital technologies. Considering craft, as Glenn Adamson suggests, “in a simple but open-ended manner as the application of skill and materials-based knowledge to relatively small-scale production”1 enables us to draw connections with digital processes and to understand the implications of this approach across various forms of cultural production2 relating to textiles. Within the framework of current challenges pertaining to sustainability, globalization, social concerns, and economic constraints, it is important to interrogate and question how the integration of both established and emerging digital technologies in textile practices might contribute in a positive manner. It is also essential to address ideas around how textile designers and makers utilize and advance craft knowledge in the creation of their work, given the scope and potential of rapidly expanding and increasingly prevalent digital technologies.

Making the digital tangible relies upon a connection with the material world.3 The emergent integration of digital technologies within the creative field of textiles requires contemporary textile designers and makers to adopt new visual and material languages in order to communicate something of relevance.4 Current digital textile technologies including digital embroidery, digital printing, jacquard weaving, laser processing, and rapid prototyping have provided new opportunities for designers while enhancing the manufacture of textiles. For example, the advance of digital jacquard handlooms TC-1 and TC-2, cleverly integrating computer functionality into an essentially traditional hand-operated machine, has enabled textile designers to gain access to digital weaving. These handlooms facilitate more sophisticated and complex results outside of the manufacturing context and at an affordable cost. The digital thread controller permits warp ends to be lifted independently from each other, allowing the weaver to more freely create patterns with large or no repeat and to sample jacquard woven textiles more easily than on an industrial jacquard loom.5

As creative tools, however, these technologies may limit, restrict, or exclude a degree of creative spontaneity and intuition in terms of materials and production due to the “distance” that technology creates between the maker and the designed artifact. By adopting a digital tool as a mediator between the material artifact in progress and the designer’s hand, the design process can become easier and faster but may lack character or the unique touch of the designer. It could arguably lead to a more superficial approach to the origination of the designs and artifacts, inhibiting conceptual content and promoting mechanical and uniform characteristics. Irregularity and subtle variety may then be less evident in the final textile outcomes if the digital tool dominates and controls the process of designing. Therefore, it would appear that it is crucial for textile designers to consider adjusting an approach, which might be described as “designing through making” and a “designerly way of knowing,”6 to accommodate and handle technology with caution, so that their individual creativity can be maintained in the process and evident in the product.

In contrast, characteristics and irregularities arising from human inconsistency within traditionally produced artifacts have the potential to be understood and promoted as positive qualities, by embedding a degree of uniqueness into the textiles. Serendipity—the “happy accident”—is well known as a contributing factor where innovation comes about through hands-on experimentation, and is often at the root of new thinking and approaches. If craft is understood as “a way of thinking through practices of all kinds”7 and as “a dynamic process of learning and understanding through material experience,”8 handling digital tools in a textile design process can be considered craft, and learning through experience. The designer not only designs through making but also learns how making is a way of thinking innovatively through the practice of textile design with digital tools, the result of which is an unexpected outcome. The unexpected can contribute a visual and conceptual depth that is exciting and potentially unique.

Within this context a craft approach to textiles has acquired a new value and respect in recent years: bespoke and handmade products that acknowledge their craft origins have become increasingly sought after. It is the consideration of this broader context where textile practitioners are working from diverse perspectives, often rooted in traditional approaches to making and embellishing textiles—printing, knitting, weaving, and embroidery—that provides new insight into the current position regarding the integration of digital techniques.

Aim and approach of this book

The essays collected in this volume reflect on what might be considered a transitional phase in textile practice, predominantly from the viewpoint of aesthetic opportunity given by digital technologies. While this is the focus, it is acknowledged that this transitional phase not only involves aesthetics but also economic, social, and environmental implications for the way in which textile designing and making is practiced. In particular the impact of the digital movement more broadly on the communication and accessibility of textile knowledge, for example the rise of open-source design and the contribution of communities of practice often facilitated by social media, is seen as an important consideration in understanding the future direction of textiles.

The collation of the essays was first conceived as a result of the Textile Research in Practice (TRIP) symposium held at Loughborough University in November 2011. The symposium brought together textile designers, makers, and researchers from across the globe, not only from the UK but also from other European countries and the USA, to consider the value of traditional textile processes within the context of evolving digitization. The chapters are the result of ideas emerging through the symposium, and their content represents reflections on various forms of production in textiles.

The book is structured into three parts: (1) Digital Technologies Informing Craft, (2) Craft Intervention in Digital Process, and (3) Craft Thinking in a Digital Age. Each part consists of four chapters that present leading-edge research and practice relating to the value of craft in textile design processes and production. At a time of increasing digitization and the proliferation of digital textile technologies, many of the chapters evidence and describe the latest implementation of digital technologies within creative contexts. These are presented alongside reflective and theoretical accounts of practice which provide insight into collaborative and hybrid working methods and diverse creative approaches.

Part One: Digital Technologies Informing Craft

Part One considers the transference and integration of textile knowledge within digital design and production. It asserts the need for prior knowledge of textile materials and processes to develop an intimate understanding of the potential of digital textile technologies within different creative contexts. In Cathy Treadaway’s chapter, “Crafted Textiles in the Digital Age: Printed Textiles,” developments in digital print technology are traced from their early availability to textile designers in the 1970s to the present, in terms of software, process, and design practice. Her discussion provides several important insights gained from a long association with printed textile design practice, and specifically digital printing. What is of particular significance in Treadaway’s contribution is her identification of the potential of digital technologies to inform and even direct the creative process. Highlighting the creative practices of Casey Reas, Ben Fry, Hilary Carlisle, and Gail Kenning, Treadaway explores the notion that approaching digital printing via the designers’ engagement with software development, programming, and the language of computer code provides a greater sense of intimacy with the digital as a medium.

The materiality of textiles requires, however, more than a visual and computational understanding of digital working to achieve crafted objects. As in emerging architectural practices that involve algorithmic methodologies, close connections between computational design and the materialization processes are needed.9 This interplay between computation and materials, as Treadaway concludes, provides a future site for interdisciplinary innovation within digital printing. This section begins to touch upon the notion of active materials,10 emerging in Part Two, that form a rich dynamic with digital processes and a further dimension to the creative and functional potential of textiles that can themselves become programmable. This presents the opportunity for smart and responsive textile design propositions.

Moving away from digital printing, “Digital Embroidery Practice” by Tina Downes, Donna Rumble Smith, and Tessa Acti provides in-depth case studies of creative practice to explore the acquisition and application of tacit knowledge within digital embroidery. As discussed in relation to digital printing and laser processing, central to their study is a probing of the pivotal relationship between human engagement, machines, tools, and materials. In turn, they interrogate the role that prior knowledge of the machine and the materials in question plays in the realization of creative design outcomes. In ...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Contributors
• Foreword J. R. Campbell
• 1 Introduction Faith Kane, Nithikul Nimkulrat, and Kerry Walton
• Part One Digital Technologies Informing Craft
• 2 Crafting Textiles in the Digital Age: Printed Textiles Cathy Treadaway
• 3 Digital Embroidery Practice Tina Downes, Tessa Acti, and Donna Rumble-Smith
• 4 Textile Illusions—Patterns of Light and the Woven White Screen Anne Louise Bang, Helle Trolle, and Anne Mette Larsen
• 5 The Intelligence of the Hand Monika Auch
• Part Two Craft Intervention in Digital Process
• 6 The Digital Print Room—A Bespoke Approach to Print Technology Helen Ryall and Penny Macbeth
• 7 Maintaining the Human Touch—Exploring “Crafted Control” within an Advanced Textile Production Interface Martin Woolley and Robert Huddleston
• 8 Garment ID: Textile Patterning Techniques for Hybrid Functional Clothing Kerri Akiwowo
• 9 Processes within Digitally Printed Textile Design Susan Carden
• Part Three Craft Thinking in a Digital Age
• 10 Hand Knitting in a Digital Era Josephine Steed
• 11 Hidden Values and Human Inconsistencies in Hand Stitching Processes Emma Shercliff
• 12 Perspectives on Making and Viewing: Generating Meaning through Textiles Sonja Andrew
• 13 Closely Held Secrets: Embodied Knowledge in Digitally Crafted Textiles Katherine Townsend
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright