Poetic Design

• Uncanny Transformation:Familiar Futures - Clover Robin - 2009

Material and illustrative experiments challenging our cultural perception of home

• Sustainable Shadows - Emmie Joseph - 2009

Use of shadow as impermanent and illustrative decoration

• Smoke and mirrors - Solenne Morigeaud - 2009

A collection of mirrors, glass and wall coverings exploring how magical thinking can inform interactive design for home

• SHHH... - Berit Greinke - 2009

Sound in textiles - A collection of noisy patterns

• Ferro-Fabric - Jenny Leary - 2008

A collection of innovative magnetic fabrics that focus on experimentation and transformation

• Ultimate Craft - Seo Yoon Choi - 2008

A collection of textiles exploring how craft can be concerned in contemporary fashion concept

• Woven Light - Kathy Schicker - 2008

a collection of colour changing textiles that respond to light, for interiors and furnishing

• Indu Choraria - 2007

a collection of knitwear co-designed by the consumer

• Move Your Body - Lidia Muro - 2007

a collection of ready to wear shape changing clothes

• Chairs in Conversation - Rebecca Otero - 2007

a collection of smart chairs that explore emaotions through their reaction to the users posture and interactions

• Memories Revealed - Marion Piffaut - 2007

a collection of scarves textile revealed different designs over time through being washed

• Urban Fabrication - Seetal Solanki - 2007

a collection of outdoor textiles that interact and respond to the weather pattern, creating a second skin to a building

• Souffrez Pour Moi - Ninette Van Kamp - 2007

a collection of embroidered textiles that explore concepts of beauty by marking the body

• Veronica Wunderlin - 2007

a collection of garments that explore can light redefine textiles both literary and metaphorically

• Genetic Fashion - Yu Chu Amanda Yuen - 2007

a fashion collection that explores using the principles of biology as a new methodology to create new garments

• Peace Invitation - Setareh Arefi 2006

a textile collection that uses craft skills and new design approaches to bring an attractive and modern look for homes green

The poetics of textile futures

by Stephen Hayward

This paper draws its theoretical inspiration from phenomenology. By unpacking the cultural significance of everyday experiences, writers like Gaston Bachelard (1969) and Georges Perec (1999) encourage us to rethink the assumptions that frame different design practices. By looking at the metaphorical aspects of fabrics I hope to do something similar for textile futures.

The Information Society

Let me start with a context. What does it means to be modern in the 21st century? This is the sense of the future seen in aspirational advertising, science fiction films and our interactions with state of the art technologies. Looking at the icons of the moment - the Ipod, the mobile phone cum camera cum MP3 player - progress would seem to be based on emotional intimacy, the freedom to roam, the priority of personal tastes and uninterrupted access to information and memories. Now while we have seen aspects of this package before in the Polaroid camera, the Filofax, the Sony Walkman, the sense in which these functions speak to each other, are ready to hand and easy to share is new.

Like many technological revolutions the digital culture has been driven by commercial opportunism, consumer desire, and following normalisation, social necessity. Can anyone now operate without a mobile phone? More distinctive though is how the ‘empowerment’ throws into relief the deficiencies of the public realm. It points to a time when politicians are no longer trusted; when communities based on place are threatened by globalisation and when national beliefs and religions have fragmented into numerous, usually web-based interest groups.

Designers have contributed to these times as the developers of hard and software and, more interestingly perhaps, as the mediators of its more prominent ideologies. A bag for life, for example, demonstrates that in a consumer society, ethical products may be one of the most practicable ways of saving the planet. From an historical perspective, design-led attempts to ‘change the world for a fiver’ or to encourage sustainable communities (see references), can be related to the modernist conception of functionality, in that the aim is to achieve more, in the way of energy efficiency and social cohesion, with less. Rather different is the Post-modern design trend that seeks to emphasise the ‘complexities and contradictions’ of everyday objects. Poetic design owes more to the readymade and the Surrealist found object than the Bauhaus and yet in an age of self-reflection it can be said to have practical value. An ambient lighting system or an excitable vacuum cleaner does offer a kind of emotional therapy.

In the remainder of this essay I want to investigate some of the poetic possibilities of textiles. For clarity I have organised my analysis around metaphors, inspired by Lakoff and Johnson’s work (1980) on the thought patterns that underlie everyday behaviours and turns of phrase. The selection is only a starting point, as a basic tenet of phenomenology is that the kind of overarching cultural meanings found in myths, stereotypes and rituals, are continually renegotiated in everyday practice.

The tool

Imagine the textile as a tool. This is comparatively easy as it evokes those ‘high performance’ materials that have played a leading role in some of the most memorable - and silly - design manifestations of the 20th century: the house of the future. In the mid-century version, for example, the plastics and push button interfaces, which may or may not have originated in the space programme, became emblematic of an ultra hygienic, efficient, leisured future. Looking beyond the styling, one is struck by the naivety and conservatism of these dream worlds. As Jacques Tati illustrates most brilliantly in his satire on post-war Americanisation Mon Oncle (1956), the ‘ideal home’ is often an absurd amalgam of unremitting Fordism crossed with bourgeois pretensions.

Ritualistic fabrics

Reflect on the underlying cultural significance of the prayer rug, altar cloth, tablecloth or a picnic blanket. These are textiles that operate as framing devices, separating the disordered and possibly threatening from the ritualistic and symbolically charged. In the context of my reading of uncertain times they represent sanctuary and renewal. More generally they might be allied to the objectives of the slow movement. This is the Italian inspired counterblast to globalisation that has been advocating the social and psychological benefits of local markets, pedestrian friendly cities, home-prepared food and convivial eating since the 1980 s (Parkins and Craig 2006). As part of this agenda slow textiles might seek to reduce stress by facilitating ritual.

The quilt and craft communities

There are precedents of course, as in the North American quilting party where the shared practice of a traditional craft brings a sense of purpose and community. This therapeutic element can be explored further by reference to the ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In his influential self-help book Flow (1990), the secret of human happiness lies in the state of immersion that comes from the exercise of skill and improvisation in the face of irregular feedback. Typical flow experiences include computer games, playing a musical instrument and, of course, responding to materials as part of the craft making process.

Embodiment and the second skin

When an object has been crafted there is a sense in which it embodies the personality of the maker. Something similar happens with ordinary possessions, as anyone will become aware when disposing of the effects of a dead relative. There is a kind of emotional sliding scale, where gifts and items related to rights of passage or worn close to the body are especially evocative. The feeling is deep seated and on a cultural level may explain the miraculous power of religious relics, like the Turin shroud or, in modern medicine, the placebo effect of the doctor’s white coat.

Embodiment or ‘sympathetic magic’ has many design applications. Most characteristic perhaps is the tendency to use nostalgia to reassure in risky situations. The early ocean liners were kitted out with fireplaces and this strategy of domestication continues when rendering hospitals and libraries ‘user friendly’. That said the rise of poetic design and branding offer a less clichéd form of communication. Here the meaning of a product or service is more open ended, the consumer being regarded as an existential curator or co-producer. The process parallels my reading of the new portable technology. Observations are uploaded, exchanged and fed into a social network. Downsides can include civic disengagement and the difficulty of distinguishing between the trivial and the profound in a world without storage limits.

For textiles the poetic turn points in several directions: the craft idea of self discovery through making; smart environments which stimulate, respond and remember; and garments that communicate less in terms of social stereotypes than the opinions and experiences that constitute personality.

References

Bachelard, G (1969) The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, Boston. Csikszentmihalyi, M (1990) Flow. The Psychology of optimal experience. Harper and Row, New York. Lakoff, G and Johnson, M (1980) Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Parkins, W and Craig, G (2006) Slow Living. Berg, London. Perec, G (1999) Species of Spaces and other pieces. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Websites

www.wearewhatwedo.org

www.sustainable-everyday.net

-- CaroleCollet - 07 May 2008