Carole Collet

Position and Contact Details

Course Director MA Textile Futures Associate Director Textile Futures Research Unit,
Project Manager, Nobel Textiles, kindly sponsored by the MRC, UK

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
University of the Arts
Southampton Row
London WC1B 4AP, UK
c.collet@csm.arts.ac.uk

Bio

Carole Collet MA Carole Collet (MA) is Course Director, MA Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins College. Carole is a textile Designer and consultant in the area of textile print, R&D, trend forecasting, sustainable design, and intelligent textiles. Her consultancy work has included clients such as DMC, Boussac, Koji Tatsuno, Hoechst, Global consultants, Ian Ritchie architects.

Research Projects

Nobel Textiles 2007

This project is supported by the Epigenome Network (http:///epigenome.eu) and the Medical Research Council (http://www.csc.mrc.ac.uk)

"Tactile Shadows", "Touch Me, Design and Sensation", Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2005

Photo: Peter Kellner, V&A Photo Studio

Photo: Carole Collet

“Tactile shadows” originated as part of my on-going research into innovative textiles and products for the domestic sphere. The focus of this particular work was to interrogate the emotional values of materials and how to design a tactile interface which challenge our perception of domestic textiles. This piece was commissioned by the V&A based on my previous work (“Remote Home” and “Toile de Hackney”). As in my other work, this textile design aimed at subverting stereotypical domestic textiles associations, in this case the traditional theme of “floral design” was deviated by the concept of shadows as well as by the use of atypical materials and print processes. By rendering material the immaterial (shadows) the hanging teased the traditional notion of floral representation in furnishings. By exploiting binary opposites in relation to touch this research allowed for a new vocabulary to evolve, one that combines both a visual and a tactile language. Exhibitors were actively encouraged to touch and interact with the piece and to explore the contrast between what “looks” soft and what “feels” soft.

" Toile De Hackney", Surface Design Exhibition, London 2004

Photo: Carole Collet

"Red Toile": As you move near the toile, it will start to animate and change colour.

Toile de Hackney" is a collection of interactive textile hangings which combines both intelligent textile technology and traditional hand screen printing. This is inspired by the classic French "toile de Jouy" textiles which were originally produced at Jouy en Josas (France) in the late 18th century. This collection emerged from the main direction of my research quest into poetic textiles for smart homes.
Three “toiles’ were commissioned by the Design Laboratory to be exhibited in the “Sensory Gateway”, a group exhibition featuring innovation in surface design as part of the Surface Design Show in March 2005.
Toile de Hackney is in effect a collection of intelligent animated textiles which depict daily scenes of Hackney in London. Using ethnographic visual research which aims at mapping the cultural and visual characteristic of the area, a design narrative is constructed in reference to the traditional “toile de Jouy”, a classic design in domestic textiles. Once again the reference to tradition aims at challenging our perception of domestic textiles, this time by using smart technologies. The toiles can be “on” or “off”. When swiched on, the imagery gradually changes color and reveal new hidden stories.

"Tie Dye Latex Toile"

"Intricate, Innovate, Fabricate", Curator for the Royal Society of Arts, London, 2004

"Remote Home, One Home, Two Cities", Science Museum, London,2003

“Remote Home, One Home Two cities” is an interactive live instalation which took place simultaneously at The Science Museum (London) and the Raumlabor Gallery (Berlin) in May 2003 as part of a collaborative project between Carole Collet and Tobi Schneidler from the Smart Studio at the Interactive Institute in Sweden. This project was commissioned by Tricia Austin, co-curator of the “user_mode, Emotion and Intuition in Design” symposium organised across Tate Modern and the Science Museum.

Major research projects in the field of “Future Homes”, such as the House_n at MIT, or the Philips and Orange proposals foster a technologically-led approach to design innovation. In reaction to this context, “Remote Home” aimed at enabling intelligent technologies to tease and nurture human emotions through a material and design–led approach. For the first time in the arena of interactive design, the project investigated the notion of flat-sharing at a distance across two cities and two countries and challenged preconceived boundaries and conventional definitions of “home”. In an increasingly global context where long distance relationships have become more common, this project explored the interaction between architecture and emotions at a remote distance. The main focus was to design unspoken communication codes through exploring the potential of textiles, not only as an intelligent interface,but as a carrier of emotional values. The final live installation staged two conceptual flats embedded with intelligent technologies so as to respond to the presence and movement of their inhabitants across London and Berlin. The furniture and wall-coverings in the London “flat” physically transformed themselves in a symbiotic fashion to signify that someone was “home” in Berlin, and vice versa. This included furnishings changing shape and colour in reaction to people sitting or walking in either flat.

The project evolved from creative brainstorming sessions with the smart studio team, to an iterative process between engineering and design development. The final live event at the Science Museum allowed for evaluation and testing of the experiment. Following the launch, the project was invited to e-culturefair in Amsterdam in October 2003.

Project team:
Smart Studio/Interactive Institute:
Tobi Schneidler, Architect and Project Manager
Magnus Jonsson , Engineer Fredrik Petersson, Engineer
Erik Grönvall, Programmer,
Stefanie Schneidler, Fashion designer Adam Somlai Fischer, Architect

*Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London*
Carole Collet, Textile Designer, Course Director, MA Textile Futures
Tricia Austin, co-curator, user_mode Symposium

With special thanks to:
Jane Rapley (OBE),Jonathan Barratt,Kevin Bolger, and Amy Plant from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Dave Pattern and Joe Cutting from the Science Museum, London.
Marcus Bader, from Raumlabor, Berlin

Using Internet gateway technology, two prototype apartments were remotely designed and connected to respond to the presence and movement of their inhabitants. The furniture and wall coverings physically transformed themselves in a symbiotic fashion and reacted to the absence or presence of their inhabitants.

The project focused on physical and emotional interactions as opposed to visual interfaces and connections. It aimed at creating a sense of poetics; where “home” is alive and comes to life only through the actions and rituals of its inhabitants. The domestic space becomes an extension of the body. Both flats were fitted with sensory and kinetic devices which enabled their inhabitants to share a sense of being together, connected beyond geographical boundaries.

The Busy Bench The “Busy bench” is reacting to someone sitting down on the connected bench in Berlin. The bench changes shape to signal that someone is already using the bench, even though it is in the Berlin Home. Therefore one cannot sit down in London. This design effectively demonstrates possible interactions between remote flatmates.

Bench in mouvement

“Remote Home” is an interactive architectural proposal marrying textiles and new technologies to trigger a more emotive design response. The choice of materials and shapes reflects the desire to enhance a human and sensual exchange. From hand-knitted textiles to smart fabrics, the textile furniture explores the semiotic values of tactility, craft and the “hand-made” to counterbalance the symbolic values of high technologies and cyber-aesthetics. The sense of touch is highlighted both in the knitted cloth and the screen- printed wall panels.

Detail of hand printed textiles produced for the kinetic walls

The Kinetic Wall

This wall bulges outwards and inwards in reaction to movements occurring in each apartment. The wall becomes more or less agitated depending on the scale of activity in the “Remote Home”.

Web link

• http://www.carolecollet.com
• http://www.textilefutures.co.uk
• http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk
• http://www.tfrg.org.uk