Conductive Material Project Part 1

Research question

How can a visualization and materialisation of the usually hidden electrical system influence the view and interactice behaviour with the material and place?

Context and background

The initial approach for this project was the idea of a conductive wallpaper that replace the use of sockets. Sockets are always at the wrong places, hard to find, there are never enough and children need to be protected with supplementary devices. Sockets cause cable spaghetti and unflexible rearranging. My idea was to design a wallpaper on which electrical devices can be attached wherever needed and wanted. The aim of the project opened during the sampling process. The poetical aspect of the inside out function became more and more relevant. I researched about artists and designers who work with the insight and/or flexibility of architecture like Do-Ho Su, a korean artist based in New York who sews architecture out of semitransparent Nylon, or Gordon Matta-Clark, who is slicing and cleaving houses.

The innovation project I see as a chance to first explore the asthetics of wire as potential conductors in combination with other materials like paper, textiles, plastics. Wire is the most common way to channel electricity in all sorts of electrical devices. Usually the cables are hidden in nontransparent plastics and inside of walls. I want them to become visible and to let the user see where the electric leads actually lead to. My imagery are line drawings that look like, or actually are the wiring.

Gordon Matta-Clark:
http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/4/ Do-Ho Su:
http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/David_Winton_Bell_Gallery/suh.html

Inspirations

The line drawings are inspired by wires, paper clips and circuit symbols. I draw familiar and unknown symbols, and invent new symbols that seem to have a function. For the translation into materials, photos which I took of knocked down houses, holed and scrapped walls gave me an idea about the layering of walls and their inner life. The roughness of the raw surfaces of architecture is the basis for evolving into a delicate and transparent looking.

drawings:

photos taken in East London:

Colours and Materials

Basic colour is a concrete grey which shifts into browns, blacks, whites and blues. These are combined with the „natural“ colour of wire: In this case I used copper and steel wire. The dense and massive materials of usual walls I tried to translate into more delicate and transparent materials like thin paper

Materials and Techniques

I researched about conductive materials like metals, carbon and conductive polymers in terms of textile applications. Techniques like photolithography, metalspinning or electroforming, which are usually used for product design I tried to apply on textiles. In the sampling process I experimented with the combination of screenprint, heatpress, stitching, wiring and drawing. Primarily I used thin japanese papers and bondaweb as basic materials and combined them with plastic tubing and coated and uncoated wires.

sampling:

digital printed wallpaper:

Prospective Aims

Ideally I want the materials to become hybrids of design, art, technic and/or science. They should be functional within an interactive sound application. We orientate mostly visually and aurally. What happens if our movements and touch of the walls is combined with sound changes?