Engaging the Public with E-Textiles
Following her NYC residency at CultureHub in December 2022, Nicole Yi Messier provides additional context, inspiration, and reflections on the workshops and Open Studio she presented to the public during her time with us at CultureHub!
Tell us about your project, and how you utilized the CultureHub Residency
Nicole Yi Messier (Right) and Victoria Manganiello (Left) standing in front of their Ancient Futures E-Textiles piece
Ancient Futures is a multi-layered woven textile whose surface visually fluctuates based on the sentiment analysis of visitors’ shared secrets. It is a participatory media installation capturing sonic textures and creating an evolving fabric of soundscape. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Victoria Manganiello. Because we are developing a textile sculpture with new materials by mixing textiles and electronics, we have made a conscious decision to start showing “Ancient Futures” as we prototype and develop it. This allows us to learn through making and conversation within varying communities. The CultureHub Residency provided us with both time and the physical space to finish work in progress pieces that we have been creating over the past year and share them within a community.
The residency also provided us with the opportunity to explore different ways to make Ancient Futures an embodied experience by creating lighting that both highlighted the fiber optics and the textile pieces. With the help of the CultureHub team, we were also able to explore a variety of ways to make the piece interactive through motion detection and audio feedback.
Can you speak on your inspirations for creating this project?
This piece is inspired by the textiles that have held humanity’s secrets across time and space. Ancient Incans used Quipu to document economic and civil data. Enslaved people created a system of railroad quilts as they traversed the Antebellum Southern USA. During WWII, women knit secret war strategies into the sweaters of spies. Technical methods in weaving, knitting, sewing, etc. are able to hide and deliver sensitive details and encode important messages with a visual language that all humans are intimately familiar with: textile. We are creating a current, modern precedent in this textile tradition: “Ancient Futures” is a connection to the past and the future. One day this technology will be vintage, just as the quilting, weaving and sewing of precedents past was innovative for the time yet common and almost invisible today.
How would you describe the engagement you received from the audience During the exhibition?
During the CultureHub residency we hosted two workshops on Weaving with Fiber Optics and an open studio to showcase various WIP pieces as well as the participatory interactive textile installation. During the Open Studio, it was invaluable to see how the public engaged with the textile installation; it started a dialogue about new ideas to think through for the future. The workshops provided us with an opportunity to collaborate with workshop participants as well. Each workshop participant created woven swatches with fiber optics that will be integrated into the larger Ancient Futures textile system. Photos of the evolving piece will be documented on craftwork.today.
Tell us about a current artistic inspiration or obsession of yours!
Currently, I’m really interested in blurring the boundaries between craft, art, and new media. Through creating work and producing projects such as eTextile Spring Break, the work I’m doing aims to focus on process and research oriented practices both through my own work and collaborations, as well as showcasing other artists who work in this way. Some artists and designers who are exploring these pillars that I have enjoyed following are Laura Splan and Layla Klinger.
I’ve also recently reconnected with bringing my generative sketches into physical form; most recently using a Riso Printer as a print medium and a KH910 Brother knitting machine as a textile medium. It’s been an exploration of blurring the boundaries mentioned above.
Do you have any plans for what's next artistically?
I recently formed Craftwork Collective with Dierdre Shea, Victoria Manganiello, and Julian Goldman, and we have a few exciting projects that we are working on next year around eTextiles and dining experiences, quilted ternary computers, earth furniture, and more. We’re a material-focused craft, design, and art collective exploring the nature of craft through material-innovation, storytelling, and future building. As a group of artists, ceramists, technologists, and designers, we unite around emerging technologies and sustainable materials explored through historical and cultural contexts.
