Those Who Affected Me

Gothenburg Museum of Art
Malin Bobek
Dates: December 5 2015 – February 21 2016

Those Who Affected Me is an interactive light emitting textile art installation. Suspended in mid air, over 1,5 meters tall, and 2,5 meter diameter, the four winged structure invites the audience to gently touch the textile and reacts by sending colorful ripples up and down the intricate fabric.

The custom designed jacquard textile is using optical fibers connected to about 500 individually programmable color LEDs, connected to a microcomputer. Thin, electrically conducting copper threads are woven in to create touch sensitive areas inside the fabric. The 11 meters of fabric are mounted with steel rods around a steel cylinder.

The sculpture is exhibited in an small room with tilted mirror walls, creating a distorted universe where the sculpture is multiplied in infinity. The project started off in winter 2015 as an idea of making an interactive fabric.

Continue reading →

Dates: 3 October 2015 until 7 February 2016 at the TextielMuseum, Tilburg, The Netherlands.

This autumn the TextielMuseum presents ‘Fiber Futures | Art from Japan’, a showcase of 30 Japanese artists at the cutting edge of the fiber art scene. Covering wall hangings, sculptures, monumental installations, video and architecture, the works on display provide an understated but at times exuberant picture of contemporary Japanese fiber art.

All the featured artists, who include both newcomers and established names such as Jun’ichi Arai, Naomi Kobayashi and Reiko Sudō, use flexible materials that range from silk, washi paper, jute and hemp to steel wire, synthetic fibre and even recycled cocoons. Their methods show a deep respect for tradition as well as an openness to the latest weaving and dying technology.

Tradition & innovation As the Japanese saying oshime kara uchÅ« kaihatsu made – ‘from diapers to the Space Age’ – so wonderfully illustrates, textiles provide for the most basic human needs while also being integral to technical developments in industries such as aerospace. Continue reading →

Tangible Impressions
physical presence in the digital world

One thing is clear; the uneasy balance between physical and digital will be one of the greatest struggles of the next generation. Tom Vavik

‘Tactile’ is becoming a buzzword for designers, journalists, technologists, and futurists alike. In today’s hyper-digitalised world we appear fascinated with the ‘real’: fetishizing the touching of physical materials and surfaces. Tactile is very much in fashion.

Tangible Impressions is a research project exploring this emerging trend; focusing on how, why and what we touch. Through photography, mark making and weaving Stephanie explores these issues and questioned: Whether textiles can record and represent physical presence in our digital world?

Like a hand print in concrete, a dropped programmatic tracking cookie on your browser or in imprint in a memory foam mattress; can textiles be part of a permanent or transient conversation between humans and physical surfaces?

Stephanie Rolph’s practise focuses on material research through practical experimentation, innovation and adaptation of traditional processes. Through weave she has created a collection of textiles that change and evolve through human interaction. Pulling, twisting, brushing, scrapping and stroking captured in highly tactile, conceptual pieces complimented by the quieter, graceful and intriguing pieces. Continue reading →