A Digital Soiree
We popped along to the first Digital Soiree at the Central St Martins Innovation Centre last week and had a thoroughly good time. There was a fascinating presentation from Microsoft Research that among other things focused on the relationship between social networking and memory. Arguably best of all though was a mini-exhibition from a handful of the university’s graduates who combine technology with craft. And below is some of the work on display.
Evelin Kasikov’s CMYK cross-stitch is a hand-made printing process. In the first instance an image is converted into its four primary printing colours – cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Then its dot screen is transformed into a cross-stitch screen, printed on paper and marked for embroidery. Kasikov uses cotton threads in CMYK colours to finish the piece.
Mike Kann’s Chesterfield is a chest of draws that plays games with its user. On first inspection the studded surface appears to have no handles at all, however, as your hand approaches it triggers a sensor and a ‘true’ handle pops out from the surface, allowing you to open the drawer…
...ta da!
Berit Greinke works with sound and textiles. With CHROME (live) she prints on to paper or fabric before soaking the piece in water.
During the process the prints diffuse into their constituent parts creating new images, which are monitored by a web camera and then synthesized through a processing code that converts the printed and diffused images into RGB values.
Each colour is given a note and according to the quantity of red, green, and blue pixels, different sounds can be heard. All of which means you can both look at and listen to the piece.
The motifs from these textiles designed by Nadia-Anne Ricketts were created by running music through a piece of software, which picks up on the bassline and beat to create a pattern. This pattern was then woven on a jacquard loom.
Last but by no means least, Elaine Ng Yan Ling uses shape-memory materials in her work that allows her textile pieces to move but I don’t want to say too much because you can read much more about her in the next issue of Crafts out on 3 March.
