Textile Society of America

 

Date of this Version

2010

Comments

Presented at “Textiles and Settlement: From the Plains Space to Cyber Space,” Textile Society of America 12th Biennial Symposium, Lincoln, Nebraska, October 6-9, 2010. Copyright 2010 Textile Society of America

Abstract

By the invention of digital thread control and digital subject processing programs, quite new possibilities for creating woven textiles have come into existence.

I will describe my way from the traditional to the digital tools. A development that over the last ten years has lead me to new expressions in woven textiles—elusive optical phenomena, color gradations and a new weave-construction based on digital technology.

It was the absorption in digital subject processing that inspired me to explore the possibilities of developing new methods for creating weave-constructions.

The similarity between pixelated pictures and the graphic expression for a weave-construction gave the idea for a fundamentally different approach to the weave-construction based on colored pixels - I call it “random weave”. In principle the technique “translates” each colored pixel in the digital motif to a visible thread in the motif of the woven fabric.

Like in printing techniques where all the colors are created by mixing cyan, magenta, yellow and black on white paper, the shading of colors in my woven motif are created by mixing threads of the basic colors red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white.

This technique gives a possibility of making very smooth color gradations and an almost photorealistic reproduction of the image.

New technology has also made a bridge to the contemporary production machinery which has never been accessible before. It opens new possibilities with enormous potential for making one-off products, individual design, small series, place-specific textiles, etc... on industrial looms.

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