New Media
28cm x 17cm x 12cm
Description
Two-tiered plastic (Bakelite?) sewing box, filled with various plastic needlework paraphernalia: cotton reels, knitting needles, crochet hooks, needle threader, thimble, belt buckle; doll’s eye.
Themes, Comments and Storylines
New materials = new media. The visual (and practical) appeal of the ‘artificial’. The lightness and colourfulness of the new. Visual cultures.
Plastic has transformed our material culture and pervades the modern history of textile making, both in tools and materials.
New Media workers:
Alicia Felberbaum
Holes Linings Threads (1998)
“The project explores the relationship between women's history in the textile industry of West Yorkshire and the advancement of information and technology, which has given birth to computer-powered textile production…..Bringing together text, voices and images from the past and future to create a new narrative network between text and town.” http://www.aliciafelber.com/
Barbara Layne
Destinations (1993)
“A tiny box of falling stars promises an infinity of destinations. Navigating through the hypertext and the hype, my right hand points to unimaginable sites. As I race through this new world, the pattern of the seat cushion becomes embossed on the back of my motionless legs. My body stiffens like a forgotten textile that longs to be opened and folded along new lines. Moving from the terminal to the mound of cloth, I begin to sort, smooth, count, fold and stack. Time slows down. My left hand pauses on the image of a double-headed bird in the corner of a well-worn cloth. I am once again connected to a place where all other places exist.” (Barbara Layne in Koumis, Matthew ed., 2003. Portfolio Vol.19: Barbara Layne. Winchester: Telos Art Publishing, p.36)
Travel Cases (2002)
“Diagrams from the Workwoman’s Guide, published at the end of the 19th century, provide an entrance to the work. These images are blueprints for the construction of hand-sewn objects used to protect and transport everyday items: a shoebag, a book cover, a sewing box etc. Each object links to a contemporary story…” (ibid, p.26)
“The travelling cases – those imagined and those remembered – mark time through difference: the difference between generations and places, between ideas and reality, plans and their actualisation.” (ibid:p.41)
Helen Whitehead
Web Warp & Weft: Exploring the Resonances between the Making of Textiles and the Making of the Web (2000/2001)
“This aimed to explore the ways in which women and men have woven their own stories with yarn and thread, with rugs and quilts and textiles. The website was designed to thread the ideas together and work the threads [stories] into a hypertext with pictures, sound and animation, to create a bigger picture, an overall story….
There are surprising and unusual resonances within the creation of what might on the surface seem very different products: both are concerned with frames, print, pattern, layers, colour, nomenclature, technology, narratives, commerce, leisure and much more.” (Helen Whitehead, http://webwarpweft.com/)
Jen Southern and Jen Hamilton
Distance Made Good: Flow Lines (2004)
“A place is both real and imagined, but also symbolic. Global positioning System (GPS) devices tell us where we are on the surface of the earth in terms of latitude, longitude and altitude but they cannot tell us about a cultural sense of place. Hamilton and Southern have worked with local people to make a new map of Lancaster and Morecambe, based on the lives of the people and the places. 34 walks were recorded using a GPS device. These routes have been made into a physical installation in the gallery that uses unwanted fabric collected from local people to transform data into a shape of local experience.” http://www.theportable.tv/folly/index.html
Running Stitch (2006)
“Running Stitch sews together our routes to work, to the sea, and our walks for exercise or shopping with the meandering and more personal journeys we might take within the fabric of the city.” (http://www.fabrica.org.uk/whatson_rs.htm)
Sharon Boggon
The Shareware Project (2001)
“The 'Shareware Project' aims to explore the tension between the original 'real' artefact and the simulated digital image. In the process it also explores aspects of the textile community on the internet… In the past explorers used beads as a means of exchange in order to open new trading routes just as the development of the silicon chip has opened up a means of exchange in the "information" age. A section of this site provides a collection of embroidery stitches. I requested that people who use this resource send me a piece of fabric, or a button, or some lace or ribbon. I also asked that if items have a story associated with them to please tell me. I have used these objects in a work to provoke ideas about the slippery exchange between the virtual and the real.”http://inaminuteago.com/exhibitions/share.html
Janis Jefferies & Barbara Layne
Wearable Absence (ongoing)
"WAb uses garments to recreate memories based on the physical experiences of the wearer.
WAb is a wearable device embedded in garments that uses biofeedback to send information to a mobile application. The prototype garments incorporate wireless technologies and bio-sensing devices to activate a database of digital memories previously created by the person to be remembered."
A project by Subtela Studio, Hexagram Institute, Montreal, and Goldsmiths Digital Studios, University of London. Available at: http://www.wearableabsence.com/#/home