Get Physical

Finally getting to use the TC-2, we began to weave the two designs we created last week using ADACAD. The whole class’s designs were placed side by side on the file given to the TC-2, allowing us to weave them all at once.

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It was really interesting to work through this process. The weaving was much more tricky than I expecting, the shuttle kept getting stuck mid-way through, it definitely took some practice to get the hang of how hard to push it across. It also took much longer than I was expecting, but was really worth it after seeing the final product.

After we were done weaving, we cut the designs apart. The weaving on the left was woven with conductive thread and therefore needed its sides sewn with more conductive thread to re-connect the severed lines for a complete circuit.

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While waiting for the weavings to be completed, I used some conductive thread to do some finger weaving. I thought it would be interesting to test the electrical resistance because the structure dramatically changes when stretched. I crocheted the finger weaving after testing its original state.

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The finger weaving’s resistance in its expanded state tested out to .49 Ohms. It halved its resistance when stretched, coming out to .24 Ohms. Interestingly, crocheting it brought it back to .43 Ohms, almost as much as its expanded state.

Weaving

Our weaving workshop was one that greatly excited me and perfectly fit my interests. We started by learning about how weaving patterns are drafted, how patterns are created and followed, and how the floor loom is operated. Using a floor loom was something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I was impressed by how simple it was to operate yet entirely mind-consuming to focus on the correct order.

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We then moved onto digital weaving using grasshopper. Rather than working one row at a time and weaving over and under every strand, the grasshopper script subdivided the “warp” into evenly spaced points, horizontally (along the “weft”) spaced the points above or below the “warp” alternatingly, then connected the points to create the “woven” “weft.” By altering the input lists, we were able to experiment with different variations of the twill weave.

Last year I already experimented with this weaving script to create the respective pavilion and bus shelter shown below. Although I was unaware of the pattern variations I could input, I did do my own slight variation in which I made both “warp” and “weft” weave above and below each other.

Following these two projects I created a lifesize woven structure using reed, creating a more organic form and surface pattern. I really enjoyed these projects and therefor found this workshop extremely helpful in my process. It was a great refresher on how weaving scripts work and an expansion upon what I already knew.

Encoding Environment

In an exploration of moving between the physical and the digital, the 2D and the 3D, and the algorithmic and the analogue, we played with image and pixels.

We started by finding an image – we chose a close up of a leaf – that we brought into Grasshopper code that broke the image down into pixels by tone.

We then created our own vector-based based pixels that the Grasshopper code replaced in for the pixels by tone, effectively abstracting the image beyond recognition.

After plotting our new pixelated image out, we stretched fabric over the image and proceeded to trace over our lines with hot glue.

When unstretching the fabric, the hot glue acted as a barrier, ensuring the parts of fabric it merged with remained stretched, creating an incredibly interesting 3-D topographical-in-some-areas-shirred-in-others almost sculptural piece that was inverted from the front to the back.

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I enjoyed photographing it from multiple angles, seeing how the shadows exaggerated the forms when seen from a side and how light seeped through and highlighted the hot glue lines when looked at from underneath.

Overall, the process was extremely fun and just to my liking. I’ve always enjoyed going back and forth between analogue and digital mediums and this experiment showed me a new way to do just that.