Textile Symposium:

SIGN POST TO A NEW SPACE
Concept, Collection and Collation
24th and 25th November, 2005
Why am I, a Digital Artist going to this bean fest of middle aged ladies who indulge in variations of ‘low protein’ art? i.e. Digital Art vs Textile Art:
Postmodernism:
The genealogy of post modern art arrives at a disconnection with the modern in theory which is not a culmination of art but a negation or literally, an “end of art”.
Baudrillard says that: “Art has penetrated reality. and the border between at and reality has utterly vanished as both have collapsed into the universal simulacrum:
1. Art is the reflection of a basic reality.
2. It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3. It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4. It bears no relation to any reality whatever…it is its own pure simulacrum.
I am concerned about this loss of reality. Will a return to the process ….thinking with your hands….solve this dilemma for me?
Threads tie us together. It is the attempt to marry the haptic with the virtual? I am curious to see if there are reverberations and echoes.
Nowadays everyone accesses the facilities that computer have to offer.
Once can scan in and manipulate images to re-use sources at the drop of a hat.
Does computer technology make things easier and open new avenues of opportunity for communication…. for, after all, what is art but a form of communication.
Art is considered in this symposium to be a ‘visual language’.
Some contributors are inspired and reinforced by sound variations.
Some participants say they are textile artists because they use textiles in their work, actually inserting/inlaying it in wooden/metal structures, and some actually make textiles, weaving, embroidering, stitching, knitting, wrapping, tying, dying, crocheting, braiding…the list goes on.
Why have I moved from the real to the virtual? It is the possibility of introducing the dimension of time at the expense of deleting the element of touch? For, I feel, the is the trade-off. In a Digital Art work, the other sense that is added is sound. This is usually absent in a work of Textile Art. Interactivity takes on an entirely different aspect in Digital Art. In the world of Textiles, the handle of a fabric is crucial….in the virtual world, it simply does not exist.
But to explore the influence of time and movement on the development of a substrate is a very seductive element to my work. So, this is my rationale, but it is interesting to see how the advent of computer technology has affected the Textile Art world, both as a tool for executing the work, and sourcing influences, inspirations and raw material.
It is revealing to discover how pervasive the influence of the computer has become to the world of creation.
The Baudrillard quote can be found in: Appignanesi, Richard & Garratt, Chris,(1995) Postmodernism for Beginners, Icon Books,Penguin, London. p54,5

Unravelling

The challenge now is to explore the possibilities of planes and juxtapositions. The strategies of constructions and deconstructions.
To pursue this, I would like to experiment with constructing knitted substrates and then film the ravelling for the purpose of recording them.
If I do this using white yarn and then film the sample on a black background, I should be able to superimpose other images on top.
The variables would be, the yarn and the methods and types of stitches used in the construction.
The procedures can be diagrammed and then explored further. The footage can be inserted into Premiere Pro and then the proceeding techniques can be applied, varying the sequences in speed, scale, sequence, direction etc. [i.e. the clips can be reversed, exhibiting unravelling or ‘knitting up’.