Marnie Gartrell, Darcy Fraser Macdonald, Evan Marnoch, Matthew McFetrick, Gregory Rubin, Amanda Yakiwchuk, and I took part in the Acadia conference held in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Marnie Gartrell, Evan Marnoch, Matthew McFetrick, Amanda Yakiwchuk, and myself choose to be a part of the Metabolic Network sensory CDRN workshop. Darcy Fraser Macdonald choose Future Wood / Three Frontiers CDRN workshop and Gregory Rubin choose Activated Ceramics CDRN Workshop.
There was an amazing mixx of people who took part in the Metabolic Network sensory CDRN workshop. I am still in awe over the great people I had the opportunity to work with and learn from. Below are a few images of peoples work who attended the conference. Robert Gorbet and Philip Beesly : Hylozoic Soil Control System, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen : Metabolistic Architecture - Strange Metabolisms, Vivisection, "the life wall" by Nancy diniz and "the material is the machine" by Mathias Gmachl and Rachel Wingfield.
All the above images are from the book Responsive Textile Environments which is edited by Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine Macy. The book includes The Next Textile Revolution - Carole Collect, Auspicious Tangents - Mathias Gmachl, Metabolistic Architectures - Mette Ramsgard Thomen, Hylozoic Soil Control System - Robert Gorbet and Philip Beesley, and Architecture, Interaction, Systems - Usman Haque.
The Metabolic Network sensory CDRN workshop was located at Dalhousie Architecture building. When we walked into the workshop there were 20ft ropes, wires, and fiber glass strings hanging from the roof. The rope was supplied by Rainbow Net and Rigging limited located in Dartmouth. Once introductions had taken place and the overall concept was voiced we broke out into three groups: material, movement, and mechanical. I choose to work with the movement group in which we were further broken down into subgroups: grafting, pulse, and flex. My interpretation of the movement group was to start to create life throughout the instillation by actuators that allowed for connections between the parts to make a whole. The actuators created were: the clam, infinity, swerving, and sway. Servo motors that had the capability to move 180 degrees were used to move parts of the instillation. One important discovery we made with the servo motors were they were very limited in the amount of weight they could move therefore, we focused on making simple gestures on lighter materials or broken down materials. (Fiber glass rope and frayed rope worked best). Allan Macy increased the pulse of the instillation by attaching a ADC motor to the mezzanine floor guard rail and then strung ropes that were attached to the rigging to the motor. By doing this a constant movement occurred throughout the instillation.
On Wednesday Darcy and I took a 30min taxi drive to Dartmouth to go check out Rainbow Net and Rigging limited. I was so amazed with the company and the products that I could not even talk - Darcy had to explain to Paul what I was doing. Thanks again Darcy. The netting I brought back to Winnipeg has properties that I intend to play with for the upcoming weeks. It was great to see how the nets were made and how they vary. I have posted a few scans of the netting I am fascinated with down below (first image is my favorite netting). The netting is able to expand and contract with little to no effort, it is very light, strong, and picks up the light in a intriguing and some what memorizing matter.
When we first arrived in Halifax the group of us went to Economy Shoe Shop and picked up some "chowder" - yummy anyways on the way we passed by a knitting store. Darcy and I ended up going back to the knitting store on Wednesday were I picked up an assortment of hand knitting tools and materials. Through a discussion at The Loop Craft Store it came to my attention that the body creates the right amount of tension in order to knit whereas the knitting machine has to be programmed to do so. This lead me to realize many things one of which was how maybe the reason I can not seem to get my knitting machine to work was because of the incorrect amount of tension. also the yarn that I have been using in my experimenting process has not had the right amount of memory; each material that you use has a unique embodied memory. The yarn I have been using has had too much give or too little give.
After I left the store with two sets of knitting needles, knitting essentials dvd -Lucy Neatby, two balls of yarn, and a book on how to knit for beginners I picked up my knitting needles and did not put them down until I ran out of yarn. The scarf that I have started to knit has a story embedded into each knit, a time line, a history.... this is one aspect of textiles that intrigues me. As well as the knitting machine as an extension of your body - the body is the perfect knitting machine. Is this true?
2 comments:
Hey Candace! I really liked your text and pics on the installation! How´s the knitting coming along? xxx
Hey! it is going well. I am getting a little closer to hacking my knitting machine. I just have to play around a little more with the tension. At the moment there is too much tension being applied to the yarn so the fibers keep breaking. I am hoping to figure it out by the end of the week. Also I am going to start to tension fish line that will be hung vertically and horizontally in my studio space. I need to create a frame work in order to start experimenting a little more. How is your work going?
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