This book brings together contributors from multiple disciplines, such as crafts, design, art education, cognitive philosophy, and sociology, to discuss craft and design practice from an embodied ...perspective.
Through theoretical overviews of embodied cognition and research-based cases that involve the researchers' making experiences, different phenomena of human-material interaction are presented, analysed, and discussed. The practical cases exemplify ways in which embodied notions show up in action. Contributors examine topics such as the embodied basis of craft activities and material manipulation, experiential knowledge and skill learning, reflection in and on action, and material dialogues. Several chapters specifically discuss the hybrid forms of analogue and digital crafting that increasingly takes place in the field of crafts and design, and the changed notions of material engagement that this entails.
The book will appeal to scholars of crafts, design, art education, anthropology, and sociology.
In an era of increasingly available digital resources, many textile designers and makers find themselves at an interesting juncture between traditional craft processes and newer digital technologies. ...Highly specialized craft/design practitioners may now elect to make use of digital processes in their work, but often choose not to abandon craft skills fundamental to their practice, and aim to balance the complex connection between craft and digital processes. The essays collected here consider this transition from the viewpoint of aesthetic opportunity arising in the textile designer's hands-on experimentation with material and digital technologies available in the present.
Craft provides the foundations for thinking within the design and production of textiles, and as such may provide some clues in the transition to creative and thoughtful use of current and future digital technologies. Within the framework of current challenges relating to sustainable development, globalization, and economic constraints it is important to interrogate and question how we might go about using established and emerging technologies in textiles in a positive manner.
This pictorial illustrates the methodological tools for articulating the felt experience of chronic pain used for designing somaesthetic interactions. To do this, it presents the design process of a ...case study named Squeaky/Pain, a soma extension aiming to augment somaesthetic awareness of the pain involved in the appreciation of both pleasant and disturbing feelings and sensations. The soma extension is an interactive wearable that facilitates a sound-motion interaction to mimic the wearer’s pain experience, from agony to relief. The case study focuses on a less explored aspect of somaesthetic interactions which is the mediation of disturbing experiences for sensory awareness. Through the soma extension that mediates disturbing experiences, the study aims to improve people’s somatic knowledge and their lives as a result. The design process of Squeaky/Pain requires detailed accounts of lived bodily experiences to create somaesthetic interactions. To access a detailed articulation of felt experiences, various tools are employed to articulate the first- and second-person pain experience for design use. These are different types of body maps, video analysis, material and form explorations, journals, in-depth interviews and self-interviews. The ideation and the testing phases have proven that such tools complement one another to access the versatile aspects of felt experiences. In this pictorial, we demonstrate ways in which visual, verbal and written tools can be applied to reveal implicit bodily experiences to inform somaesthetic interaction design.
Practice-led research has been under debate for three decades. One of its major issues concerns how the researcher who is also the practitioner documents and reflects on her creative process in ...relation to a research topic. This article reviews and discusses documentation and reflection in practice-led research through three cases of doctoral dissertations that were completed at Aalto University in Finland. Through the cases the article examines the role the documentation and reflection of creative processes and products in these studies. In conclusion, documentation in the practice-led research context functions as conscious reflection on and in action. Any means of documentation, for example diary writing, photographing, or sketching, can serve as a mode of reflection.
This article aims to discuss the position of art and design artifacts, and their creation, in a practice-led research process. Two creative productions and exhibitions featuring my textile artifacts ...were intentionally carried out in order to tackle a specific research problem, and these will be examined here as case studies. These cases cover the production and exhibition of two sets of artworks, named Seeing Paper and Paper World, that were created as part of my completed doctoral research entitled Paperness: Expressive Material inTextile Art from an Artist’s Viewpoint. The study examined the relationship between a physical material and artistic expression in textile art and design. Both cases exemplify the roles of creative productions and artifacts situated in the process of inquiry. Throughout a practice-led research process, art and design artifacts can serve as inputs into knowledge production and as outputs for knowledge communication. As inputs, both art productions and artifacts can be the starting point of a research project from which the research question is formulated. They can also provide data for analysis from which knowledge is constructed. Asoutputs, artifacts can indicate whether the research problem requires reformulation, demonstrate the experiential knowledge of the creative process, and strengthen the findings articulated in the written output. Creative practice in a research context can contribute to generating or enhancing the knowledge which is embedded in the practice and embodied by the practitioner. This knowledge or insight can be obtained from the artist creating the artifact, the artifact created, the process of making it, and the culture in which it is produced and viewed or used, all taking place at different stages of a research process.
Textile craft media, such as crochet, needlework, and beadwork, have been utilized by mathematicians as a means of conveying abstract mathematical ideas with tangible objects. The use of textile ...objects facilitates the understanding of both mathematics and craft and provides textile practitioners with insights into the underlying mathematics. This article aims to shed light on ways in which textile knot practice can be influenced by mathematics and how novel knotted textiles can consequently be designed using mathematical concepts, in particular knot theory and tiling theory (Wang tiling and rhombille tiling).
Textile craft media, such as crochet, needlework, and beadwork, have been utilized by mathematicians as a means of conveying abstract mathematical ideas with tangible objects. The use of textile ...objects facilitates the understanding of both mathematics and craft and provides textile practitioners with insights into the underlying mathematics. This article aims to shed light on ways in which textile knot practice can be influenced by mathematics and how novel knotted textiles can consequently be designed using mathematical concepts, in particular knot theory and tiling theory (Wang tiling and rhombille tiling). The article presents collaborative artistic research between the author, who is a textile practitioner and researcher, and two mathematicians. Prior to the collaboration, the author’s textile knot practice had evolved around the material expression and form of knotted textile sculptures. All work had been created using one color, one pattern, and one structure. Although the author had wished to incorporate colors in her textile knot practice, she had not tried it. The task of determining what strands and in which combinations they should be used to achieve different color patterns seemed too difficult even for an experienced practitioner like her. Through the application of knot diagrams and tiling notations, a multitude of two-tone knotted patterns and two- and three-dimensional knotted structures are originated. The article concludes that mathematical diagrams and notations have the potential to reveal the nature of textile knots and to be used as design tools to create new knotted textiles.
Over the last two decades, craft practice has played a considerable role in practice-led design research, especially as the subject and the vehicle for theoretical inquiry. This article aims to ...reveal how craft as a way of thinking through material can be incorporated into practice-led design research. The author's completed dissertation exploring the expressivity of materials in textiles is used to demonstrate how craft can drive a practice-led research process and how research can enhance craft practice. The dissertation exemplifies how the author employed her own craft practice as the main method for design research. The method was utilized in relation to Merleau-Ponty's and Heidegger's phenomenology and the method of questioning viewers during two exhibitions featuring artifacts resulting from the author's craft practice. Positioning craft practice in a research context can facilitate the reflection and articulation of knowledge generated from within the researcher-practitioner's artistic experience, so that the knowledge becomes explicit as a written text or as a means of visual representation. Research can not only transform ways of designing or making artifacts, but also theoretically inform practice so that the practice can develop the practitioner's aesthetic intelligence, the results of which are craft objects that can be understood more easily by viewers. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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Practice-led research in the field of art and design usually involves a study of the interplay between a researcher-practitioner and her artistic work in process. This article seeks to illustrate ...that documentation of art practice can be a means to record that interplay and it can be used as relevant material in practice-led research. The article will present an account of documentation in practice-led research highlighting two principal aspects: phases of documentation and the role of documentation within the overall research process. The account will capture reflections of the author’s own practice-led research in fiber art, which investigates the relationship between materials and artistic expression, in the context of contemporary art.
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