Three textile products
3. Please outline your proposed design detailing materials and methods (500-1000 words)
“…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”
Sherlock Holmes in: The Sign of the Four (1890)
Our project is based on a thinking process, the process of a negative data test series.
The term “negative data” refers to an experiment or set of experiments, which does not support the proposed hypothesis. The work can be solid and well thought out but it simply does not show the “right” results. The consequence of this is that we are forced to re-evaluate and consider alternative possibilities.
We both agree that in design and science information about what you work with is vital for success and gaining new insight into your chosen area will direct your future work, however, whereas in design negative data is welcomed and even sometimes expanded on, in science negative data is often seen as a set back, uninteresting and can prove hard to publish.
In our project we wanted to combine the concept of negative data in a design-science piece, using design to make negative data a positive outcome for science. By using an unusual bacterial-textile design process and putting these results side-by-side we have achieved a hybrid design.
The realisation of our project consists of three equally important parts:
1. Our own thinking and testing process (ongoing)
2. Possible design products (prototypes to materialize this thinking process)
3. Communication of the product and the thinking process (Installation)
(1). The Process
We first sought a way of combining science and design and came across the idea of making textiles biological. We started our test series by growing bacteria on different textile materials and structures. We did not intend a certain result, but took one result to lead to another experiment. We used success of bacteria growth on the fabric as a way of grading positive data – the fabrics where bacteria grew well were deemed a success and so positive in nature and vice versa.
(2). Prototypes
From the results of the tests we formed three ideas for textile designs. We used both positive and negative results alongside each other and aimed to turn the negative data into a positive material product, thus making the end result for the positive and negative data have the same amount of success.
Idea A. Dissolving Curtains – Felted Horse Tails
Test results:
- Bacteria not growing
- Felting structure is fragile and dissolves again
The design celebrates the fact that the material does not support bacteria culture. This means the material made from hoarse hair can keep clean for a long time. Horse hair is almost impossible to felt and the structure degrades naturally to return the product to its original state: horse hair. The material can be re-used many times without necessary washing or treating.
Idea B. Thickening Jacket – Woven Llama
Test results:
- Bacteria growing slowly
- Bacteria cause a fibre mingling and the textile grows thicker and warmer
This design changes over the period of a year. The loosely woven llama can be used a summer garment while after a certain time the jacket becomes dense and felted and serves as a winter garment.
Idea C. Growing Armchair – Turkey Feathers
Test results:
- Bacteria grow very slowly but constantly
- Bacteria forms the textile itself
Due to the smooth surface of the feathers it takes about 10 years until they grow a thick layer of bacteria. During this time the feathers dissolve and eventually the bacteria forms a thick textile by itself.
(3). Installation
Our project focuses on applying design thought to science. How we think about our work is not a passive process so we want our end piece to encourage interaction and a lingering wonder.
The set up would be a room installation that simulates a maze. People would walk inside, and surrounding information on the hybrid material would make the viewer think that experiments performed on the biological textile would give particular results. However once they followed the maze round they would see the results were “wrong” and they would become stuck at dead ends and have to look for alternative routes. They would then find the secret exits and corners. Once taken, these routes would work to show them how this “negative data” could lead to the formation of a “positive” outcome and design piece.
The maze will be made of translucent sheets of fabrics with three hidden wooden boards that mark “the end of the path”. Within this wooden boards would be hidden doors, which the visitors could pass through. They would then be able to see either still images or actual design pieces of our 3 concepts.
4. Explain how your design either celebrates and/or communicates science (500-1000 words)
It is hard to say whether our idea really celebrates or communicates science… Our project was all about creating a design-science hybrid outlook. So actually we think our end piece celebrates the ability of design to communicate negative science results in a positive manner.
When we first met up after the speed-dating event we had a chat about what we wanted from this experience. We quickly found that we both wanted to make something that could communicate equally to scientists and designers. After watching the Nobel-Textiles clip Jay was very aware that she did not want to just dictate science to Berit and have her make it into a design piece.
When it came to our actual idea there was a very obvious one, which built on Jay’s current PhD and Berit’s Masters project piece. Jay is working on genes that cause blindness and Berit’s design piece worked to communicate visual patterns through sound… a project combining the two would have been very easy. However we both decided this was not a route we wanted to take. There were two reasons for this ;-
(1) We felt in order to achieve the discipline equality our overall concept could not be a purely scientific one and nor could it use a single design technique to make the end product… for example a furniture piece fashioned into a cell would not work for us as it was just design using science for the idea and science using design for the medium of communication.
(2) This is a unique opportunity for us to work together to produce something so why should we stay in our allocated comfort zones.
So we encouraged each other to think more generally and find links between science and design. We began looking at the processes that designers and scientists have to go through in their work. This is when the concept of negative data came up. When you first think about it, negative data seems boring concept but as we spoke about it we realized that this outcome features in both science and design but the attitude towards it is very different. It is this difference that made it a very interesting concept to us both. We wondered what it would be like it we could apply designs positive outlook on ‘mistakes’ and apply it to scientific ‘dead ends’? What could we make? What if we could take a scientific material and treat it as a design fabric? How would that work? We liked these ideas and we felt we were really able to combine the two disciplines and that they were being treated equally, which is exactly what we wanted. Design was in effect ‘helping’ science to look on the bright side and science was giving design a new medium to work in.
As our thoughts progressed and the ideas were expanded on we developed a plan of having a maze to communicate the idea of a thinking process. The viewer would be given information about our “biological textiles”, this information would lead them to certain assumptions and hypothesizes about the materials. They would then be invited to enter the maze and follow our experiments but they would quickly find the results to be different and “wrong”. This would be represented by a series of dead ends in the maze. However hidden within the dead ends would be a series of exits which when taken would lead the viewer to a positive application of the negative data – such as the horse hair making more hygienic textiles.
We agreed that this is a piece which would enable the viewer to engage with the idea and make of it what they wanted.
5. Give details of supplementary documentation in support of your proposed design, if appropriate (50 words)
- We have documented our email contacts and uploaded images of our meetings on a blog
- We have also kept a sketch / lab book recording bacteria culture and textile production results.