Touching: A Research Method in Art and Design

THIS PUBLICATION IS PART OF A PROJECT THAT EXPLORES WHICH RESEARCH METHODS ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS CHOOSE TO WORK WITH, AND HOW THEY USE THEM TO CREATE AND SURFACE NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE. THE FIRST EDITION OF THE PROJECT FOCUSED ON WALKING. IN THIS SECOND ITERATION WE LOOK AT HOW RESEARCH IS CONDUCTED WITH MATERIALS AND MATTER BY MEANS OF THE SENSE OF TOUCH. THE BOOK CONTAINS INTERVIEWS, RESEARCH SAMPLES, RECIPES, QUOTATIONS, AND REFLEC­ TIONS ON THE RESEARCH PROCESS BY EDUCATORS, WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS FROM ALL ACROSS THE EXTENDED KABK LEARNING COMMUNITY. WE HOPE YOU WILL FIND IN THIS BOOK THE INSPIRATION, BUT ALSO THE INGREDIENTS, YOU NEED TO RECREATE AND ADAPT YOUR OWN VARIANT OF MATERIAL RESEARCH. LECTORATEDESIGN.KABK.NL

978 90 72600 59 2

TOUCHING: A RESEARCH METHOD IN ART AND DESIGN

KABK ART AND DESIGN RESEARCH PRACTICES

TOUCHING: A RESEARCH METHOD IN ART AND DESIGN

PUBLISHED BY KABK LECTORATE DESIGN

TOUCHING: A RESEARCH METHOD IN ART AND DESIGN

PUBLISHED BY KABK LECTORATE DESIGN

CONTENTS / KEYWORDS # 3D Printing 123, 124, 125, 126 A Affect 117, 118, 131 Agency 7, 9, 131, 132 Animal 65, 67, 83, 84 Anthropocene 171, 172 Architecture 11, 12, 14, 139, 142, 199, 200 Assemblage 189, 190 B Bioplastic 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 161, 162, 163 Blue dog 139, 140, 141 Body 53, 54, 99, 100, 101, 117, 118, 207 Borneo 73, 74 Bronze 11, 12, 19 Building 39, 42, 44, 45, 199, 200

C Calcium carbonate 149, 150 Caring 65, 83, 161, 189 Cat hair 83, 85 Ceramics 11, 14, 18, 19 Chemicals 139, 140, 142, 171 Clay 11, 18, 19, 83, 88, 89, 174 Colour 53, 54, 109, 110, 111 Cooking 53, 54, 57, 58, 161, 162, 163 Crafting 99, 100, 101, 183, 184 Curtain 39, 42, 47 D Decay 83, 88 Decolonisation 73, 74, 109 Digesting 99, 101 Digital Fabrication 123, 124, 125, 126, 183, 213 Documenting 11, 21, 24 Doorknob 199, 200, 201 Doubting 207, 208 Drailles 65, 66, 67 Dyeing 53, 55, 109, 110, 111

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E Earth 139, 140, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 171 Embodiment 99, 100, 101, 109, 117, 189 Embroidery 99, 100 Entropy 139, 140 Error 189, 191 Experimenting 11, 53, 57, 58, 75, 117, 149, 171, 172, 174, 207 F Failing 53, 149, 189 Fear 199, 201 Fibre 65, 67, 73, 74, 83, 84, 85 Finger 99, 100, 109, 161, 183, 184, 189, 190, 207, 208 Foaminess 123, 125 G Geopolymer 149, 151 H Half-Fabricaats 123, 126 Hand 11, 18, 73, 74, 75, 183, 184 Handshake 199, 200 Haptic methodology 189, 190 Harvesting 83, 84, 86 Hemp 139, 141 Hempcrete 139, 140, 141, 142

I Imagining 39, 189 Impurity 171, 172 Industry 149, 150, 171, 172 Ingredient 11, 18 Interacting 149 Iron 11, 12, 18 K Kettle 149, 150 L Landscape 39, 40, 45, 47 Lemon 131, 132 Lime 139, 141 Limescale 149, 150 Limestone 171, 173 Living 65, 67 M Manipulation 83, 84, 161, 183, 207, 208 Memory 73, 74, 109, 111, 199, 213 Mistake 183, 184 Model 189, 191 Mould 161, 162, 163 Moulding 53, 55, 123, 139 Multispecies 65, 67, 83, 86 N Neo Stone Age 149, 150

P Palpable 131, 132 Patience 7, 8 Pigment 73, 74, 109, 110, 111, 161, 163 Pine needle 161, 162, 163, 164 PLA 123, 124 Plastic 39, 40, 41, 47 Plaster 161, 162, 163 Playing 109, 183, 189 Process 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 24, 53, 55, 57 Property 123, 124, 125, 126 PVA 123, 124 R Recipe 11, 14, 21, 24, 53, 57, 58, 161, 162, 163 S Sample 213, 214, 215 Sand 139, 140, 141 Scale 39, 40, 42, 45 Sensing 117, 199 Sharing 11, 21, 24, 53, 58 Sheep 65, 66, 67 Shepherd 65, 66, 67 Skin 99, 100, 109, 110 Slicer setting 123, 125 Soil 39, 44, 45, 65, 66, 67, 171, 172 Sponginess 123 Spreading 53, 54 Stitch 99, 100 3

T Temperature 117, 171, 172, 173 Tension 73, 74 Testing 11, 12, 18 Textile 39, 40, 47, 73, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 99, 213, 214 Time 39, 47, 65, 75, 100, 109, 139, 142, 149, 152, 161, 162, 183, 184 V Velvet 39, 40, 42 Vibrancy 131, 132 W Waste 171, 172, 173 Water 139, 141, 161, 163, 207, 208 Weaving 73, 74, 83, 85 Wool 65, 66, 67 Workshop 7, 8, 9, 11, 18, 19, 21, 123, 126, 127

OUR MATERIALS COME TO US ALREADY GROUND AND CHIPPED AND CRUSHED AND POWDERED AND MIXED AND SLICED, SO THAT ONLY THE FINALE IN THE LONG SEQUENCE OF OPERATIONS FROM MATTER TO PRODUCT IS LEFT TO US: WE MERELY TOAST THE BREAD. NO NEED TO GET OUR HANDS INTO THE DOUGH. NO NEED – ALAS, ALSO LITTLE CHANCE – TO HANDLE MATERIALS, TO TEST THEIR CONSISTENCY, THEIR DENSITY, THEIR LIGHTNESS, THEIR SMOOTHNESS. NO NEED FOR US, EITHER TO MAKE OUR IMPLEMENTS, TO SHAPE OUR POTS OR FASHION OUR KNIVES. UNLESS WE ARE SPECIALISED PRODUCERS, OUR CONTACT WITH MATERIALS IS RARELY MORE THAN A CONTACT WITH THE FINISHED PRODUCT. WE REMOVE A CELLOPHANE WRAPPING AND THERE IT IS – THE BACON, OR THE RAZOR BLADE, OR THE PAIR OF NYLONS. MODERN INDUSTRY SAVES US ENDLESS LABOR AND DRUDGERY; BUT, JANUSFACED, IT ALSO BARS US FROM TAKING PART IN THE FORMING OF MATERIAL

AND LEAVES IDLE OUR SENSE OF TOUCH AND WITH IT THOSE FORMATIVE FACULTIES THAT ARE STIMULATED BY IT. WE TOUCH THINGS TO ASSURE OUR­ SELVES OF REALITY. WE TOUCH THE OBJECTS OF OUR LOVE. WE TOUCH THE THINGS WE FORM. OUR TACTILE EXPE­ RIENCES ARE ELEMENTAL. IF WE REDUCE THEIR RANGE, AS WE DO WHEN WE REDUCE THE NECESSITY TO FORM THINGS OURSELVES, WE GROW LOPSIDED. WE ARE APT TODAY TO OVERCHARGE OUR GRAY MATTER WITH WORDS AND PICTURES, THAT IS, WITH MATERIAL ALREADY TRANSPOSED INTO A CERTAIN KEY, PREFORMULATED MATERIAL, AND TO FALL SHORT IN PROVIDING FOR A STIMULUS THAT MAY TOUCH OFF OUR CREATIVE IMPULSE, SUCH AN UNFORMED MATERIAL, MATERIAL ‘IN THE ROUGH’.

Albers, Anni. 1965. On Weaving. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1965: 63.

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KEYWORDS AGENCY PATIENCE

PROCESS WORKSHOP

INTRODUCTION ALICE TWEMLOW

TOUCHING: RESEARCH IN ART AND DESIGN THROUGH MATERIALS AND MATTER When we want to check the facts, to verify our ‘epistemic grip on reality’, as the philosopher Ophelia Deroy puts it, the sense for which we reach is touch. And while touch can certainly be used to elicit and ‘grip’ knowledge, it can also be used in a more tentative and probing modality – to feel our way toward truths that are both within and yet always beyond the grasp.

Whether engaging with materials to give tangible form to ideas, or using materials as the very starting point of a creative process, artists and designers recognise that this kind of feeling-toward-knowing requires deep patience and an open­ ness to what a material is willing to impart.

Most research with materials takes place in a specific place – a workshop where tools and technical expertise are located.

Most research with materials also takes place in a specific moment – one in which the researcher is impeccably present.

Being present is part and parcel of being in a workshop where timeslots are valuable and a slip can cost you a day’s work or a wound. Stitches, seconds and millimetres must be measured and counted but, paradoxically, such intense attentiveness can also give rise to an entirely other variant of experience of time where, when you are in a trance-like rhythm of back and forth with a material, in the ‘zone’ or ‘flow’ as some refer to it, whole hours, days even, can disappear without trace.

Interactive Media Design student Moe Kim observes that weaving can be so absorbing you need to set an alarm every so often to remind you to eat and drink.

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It certainly takes time to learn from materials, to allow curiosity to guide you, to make room for doubt, and to attune yourself wholly to the properties and propensities of a material.

Such attunement can forge a connection not only to ancestors and globally dispersed maker peers, but one between maker and matter, so much so that the origin of agency and intent becomes blurred. Co-creating with a material creates space for what is truly unknown to emerge, in ways that question and challenge the degree of control that humans, and especially artists, designers, and researchers, like to think they have.

This publication contains interviews, research samples, recipes, quotations, and reflections on the research process by tutors, workshop instructors and students all across the KABK community. The range of materials and processes engaged with is diverse and the approaches are as unique as finger­prints, but a premise embedded in the DNA of material research is that experiments are shared. And so, whether your work is about addressing one of the urgent social issues of our day or pursuing one of the more enduring questions about the relationship between humans and the environment, we hope you will find in this book the inspiration, but also the ingre­dients, you need to recreate and adapt your own variant of material research.

Focusing on the sense of touch seems more relevant than ever as we emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic and address the challenge of redesigning physical sociality back into our lives. As we do so, let’s keep in mind what student in Fine Arts Heidi Holmstöm advises: ‘touch with courage and care’.

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KEYWORDS ARCHITECTURE BRONZE CERAMICS CLAY DOCUMENTING EXPERIMENTING HAND

INGREDIENT IRON PROCESS RECIPE SHARING TESTING WORKSHOP

WHAT A MATERIAL CAN DO LAURA VAN SANTEN STUDIO TUTOR, BA INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE DESIGN, KABK

LAURA VAN SANTEN Laura van Santen is an architect and studio tutor and head for the first year students in Interior Architecture and Furniture Design at KABK. She collaborates with Diederik de Koning as la-di-da, a design firm that seeks to combine craft and industrial building processes in furniture and architecture commissions.

Laura is fascinated by the potential of materials. Her recent research includes: working with bronze surface treatments (resulting in a permanent exhibition at MAKE Eindhoven); iron glaze testing during a residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre, (leading to developing ceramic tiles with Cor Unum for the New Shoe Museum Waalwijk); and devel­ oping textiles at the Textiellab Tilburg (for 4.000 m² movable walls in the LocHal Library).

Laura has collaborated with Petra Blaisse and Malkit Shoshan on interiors and exhibitions, including the installations in the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012 and 2016. Her work has been published in de Architect, De Morgen ­Magazine, Casa Naturale, Architectenpunt, Volume, Domus, Clog and San Rocco.

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Laura van Santen, landscape of moulds, produced by Cor Unum for the New Shoe Museum Waalwijk, 2021.

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ALICE TWEMLOW

What is your practice and what role do materials play within it?

LAURA VAN SANTEN

My practice is in architecture but leans strongly towards product design. Rather than starting a project by thinking about a design and deciding what materials should do within it, I think about what a material can do. A spatial concept grows from there. I started out working with wood and textiles and then moved on to ceramics. From ceramics, I incorporated metals. I’m now hoping to flow towards glass and plastics.

I bring a question from a previous encounter with a material to the next project. I always work with gradients, series and grids, so that I’m mapping possibilities, but even more than this, I find it interesting to have a set of undefined variables in any given project. That way the research has room to grow in various directions.

ALICE TWEMLOW

What kinds of questions can you bring to materials that you can’t ask with other forms of research?

LAURA VAN SANTEN

You can ask materials to interact with other materials without knowing what’s going to happen. In the case of ceramics, changing anything at any stage of the process makes an enormous difference. If you change the atmosphere, the temperature or mess with the recipe even a little bit, you will get a different, often unpredictable outcome.

The chemistry of reactions amongst materials fascinates me. I find the aesthetic dimension and textures that come 14

La-di-da Architects (Laura van Santen and Diederik de Koning), constructing a wooden A-frame house in Almere, 2020.

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Laura van Santen, physical archive of bronze patination recipes in permanent installation at MAKE Eindhoven, 2021.

out of experimentation enjoyable. It’s interesting how end products embody the lifecycle process that you experience firsthand in a workshop.

ALICE TWEMLOW

I know that you are interested in emphasising the hand and the fingers. Why is this so important to you?

LAURA VAN SANTEN

There’s something important about learning with your hands.

You teach yourself how something is made by doing it.

Knowledge enters through your hands and teaches you.

You need to be hands-on to truly know a material. Engaging with a material’s surface and repeating the necessary motions to work with it can teach you about possibilities.

I started to understand how ceramics could work while spending three months at a residency at the European Ceramics Work Centre. I started wanting to understand the reaction between clay and metals (iron oxide in this case). As I went further and further, I fell in love with this idea of testing and the understanding it produces. Repeatedly making triaxial tests fed into a design for an actual ceramic tile. In other words, I found a way to create a product that communicates the process of its own making, the research questions that gave rise to it.

ALICE TWEMLOW

What is a triaxial test and why is it important?

LAURA VAN SANTEN

It’s a three-part test where three ingredients are combined 18

in different percentages to learn their correct mixture. Triaxial tests are standard in numerous material practices. They are often used in ceramics for glazes when you’re searching for the right glaze constitution to attach to a specific clay body.

ALICE TWEMLOW

It sounds like your work leads you to various workshops and maker spaces around the Netherlands…

LAURA VAN SANTEN

Today we are at Cor Unum, an amazing ceramic workshop that’s inclusive in terms of who works here, material flows and how they collaborate with makers. In my practice, I try to learn from workshops and sites of construction to find room for interventions within my own process.

Workshops are often geared toward working with one specific material. Each has its own attitude, preferred temperatures and, let’s say, level of dirt. But it’s lovely to be inspired by the process of working with one material and then applying it to another. For example, the traditional method of bronze casting can inspire work with ceramics. It’s almost a way of hacking the workshop system, which is healthy for both the designers and the workshops.

ALICE TWEMLOW

How do you encourage students to get into the workshops?

LAURA VAN SANTEN

I find it important to teach students that they can start a project by understanding what a material can do rather than by projecting something you want the material to do; design can grow and evolve out of experimentation.

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Laura van Santen, 3D ceramic tiles, developed for triaxial testing at European Ceramic Work Centre, produced by Cor Unum, 2021.

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Architects and designers have become distanced from the process of making, whether it’s industrialised or craft. It’s more customary to collage or assemble predetermined pieces, rather than learn from, or manipulate, a production process to arrive at a new way of thinking about a material and what it can become.

I try to give my students access to a large amount of what­ ever material they’re interested in so that they can squeeze it, see if it stands up on its own, learn how it reacts to tempera­ ture changes and get it under a microscope. That sort of experience can completely transform their way of thinking or interacting with a material. That can also grow into an architectural skill. It is not limited to product design.

Fantastic research already takes place at KABK, which additional collaborations could enhance. The facility offers space for crossovers that aren’t yet happening because traditional divisions are maintained and protected. These traditions also mean that most material-based work comes at the end of student projects. From my experience, the ideal situation would be to remove boundaries between workshops, instruction and studio, and have material-based learning from the beginning.

ALICE TWEMLOW

What are some ways that you encourage your students to document their research and share it?

LAURA VAN SANTEN

Documenting and sharing are some of the most important aspects of being a designer. We work with recipes and outcomes, both of which can be shared. A recipe is a set 21

Laura van Santen, movable walls designed with Inside Outside allow for diverse spatial programming for a new library in a locomotive workshop in Tilburg, 2019.

of actions. It specifies anything from a mixture of chemicals to the length of time that something should be exposed to specific temperatures. Other people can try your recipe and continue the experimentation on their own. Unfortunately, people often neglect the process of documenting and sharing because it doesn’t seem to contribute to their primary goal.

There’s room for people to do this better in design and archi­ tectural education. Education is all about sharing; it’s what allows us to contribute something to knowledge.

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Laura van Santen, bronze casting through 3D print, CNC-milled mould and cire perdue method at MAKE Eindhoven, 2021.

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Video still with Alice Twemlow and Laura van Santen at Cor Unum, Den Bosch, 2021.

Video still with Laura van Santen and Charlotte Landsheer, director of Cor Unum, Den Bosch, 2021.

Video still with Bryan van Schooten, modeller at Cor Unum, Den Bosch, 2021.

Video still with Irene Driesen, glazing specialist at Cor Unum, Den Bosch, 2021.

Alice Twemlow conducting the video interview, 2021.

Cor Unum in Den Bosch employs a divers team of staff from different disciplines, 2021.

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Van Santen’s tiles of triaxial testing, 2021.

Laura van Santen in conversation with Alice Twemlow, 2021.

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LEARNING FROM TOUCH IS ONE WAY IN WHICH MUSICAL SKILL DEVELOPS – AND THE PRINCIPLE OF REASONING BACK­ WARDS, FROM EFFECTS TO CAUSES UNDERLIES ALL GOOD CRAFTSMANSHIP. THE METHOD MAY SEEM IDIOSYNCRATIC, SUBJECTIVE. BUT THE MUSICIAN HAS AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD TO MEET: PLAYING IN TUNE. AS A PERFORMER, AT MY FINGERTIPS I OFTEN EXPERIENCE ERROR – BUT ERROR I HAVE LEARNED TO RECOGNISE. SOMETIMES, IN DISCUS­ SIONS OF EDUCATION, THIS RECOGNI­TION IS REDUCED TO THE CLICHE OF ‘LEARNING FROM ONE’S MISTAKES’.

MUSICAL TECHNIQUE SHOWS THAT THE MATTER IS NOT SO SIMPLE. I HAVE TO BE WILLING TO MAKE ERRORS, TO PLAY WRONG NOTES, IN ORDER TO GET THEM RIGHT EVEN­TUALLY. THIS IS THE COMMITMENT TO TRUTHFULNESS THAT THE YOUNG MUSICIAN MAKES

BY REMOVING THE SUZUKI TAPES. THIS MUSICAL QUEST ADDRESSES ONE OF THE SHIBBOLETHS IN CRAFTSMAN­SHIP: THE IDEAL OF ‘FIT–FOR–PURPOSE’.

IN TOOLS, AS IN TECHNIQUE, THE GOOD CRAFTSMAN IS SUPPOSED TO ELIMINATE ALL PROCEDURES THAT DO NOT SERVE A PREDETERMINED END. THE IDEAL OF FIT–FOR–PURPOSE HAS DOMINATED THINK­ING IN THE INDUSTRIAL ERA. DIDEROT’S ENCYCLOPEDIA IN THE 18TH CENTURY CELEBRATED AN IDEAL PAPER– MAKING FACTORY AT L’ANGLEE, IN WHICH THERE WAS NO MESS OR WASTED PAPER. TODAY, PROGRAMMERS SIMILARLY DREAM OF SYSTEMS WITHOUT ‘DEAD ENDS’. BUT THE IDEAL OF FIT–FOR– PURPOSE CAN WORK AGAINST EXPERI­ MENT IN DEVELOPING A TOOL OR A SKILL; IT SHOULD PROPERLY BE SEEN AS AN ACHIEVEMENT, A RESULT. TO ARRIVE AT THAT GOAL, THE CRAFTSMAN AT WORK HAS INSTEAD TO DWELL IN WASTE, FOLLOWING UP DEAD ENDS. IN TECHNO­ LOGY, AS IN ART, THE PROBING CRAFTS­ MAN DOES MORE THAN ENCOUN­TER PROBLEMS; HE OR SHE CREATES THEM IN ORDER TO KNOW THEM.

Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman. Yale University Press.

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KEYWORDS BUILDING CURTAIN IMAGINING LANDSCAPE PLASTIC

SCALE SOIL TEXTILE TIME VELVET

HOOKED ON WORKING WITH MATERIALS PETRA BLAISSE INTERIOR ARCHITECT AND LANDSCAPE DESIGNER

The British-born Dutch designer Petra Blaisse founded the interior architecture and landscape design firm Inside Outside in Amsterdam in 1991. Famous for their creation of large-scale flexible spatial compositions that often involve soft, pliable, and living materials, Inside Outside collaborates with many architects and planners, notably OMA. Between 2012 and 2015, Laura van Santen, the KABK tutor being featured in this publication and accompanying exhibition and video, worked at Inside Outside.

ALICE TWEMLOW

As a landscape and interior architect, do your relationships with materials go deeper with some rather than others?

PETRA BLAISSE

I have a relationship with lots of materials. Perhaps velvet is an example of one I have a close relationship to. It is very different from synthetics and wools and mohairs and cottons. It has a beautiful effect if you use it in the right way, because it has a hue, and a shine, and a direction, and so on. I discovered that sewing widths together, horizontally, you get a totally different effect spatially and visually than if you sew them vertically. If you walk past it, one part is dark and the other one light. But if you walk in the other direction, it’s the other way around. So with us, it’s all about the movement of the material in relation to the movement of the people around it.

But I also use plastics. With plastics, you can work freely because you can cut them without them fraying or dis­ integrating like woven textiles tend to do. So we have to talk to recycling firms about how to use recycled plastics.

In fact, the collaboration between designers and production companies is very important. If you are going to specify 40

kilometres of a particular carpet or you are going to make kilometres of something in plastic, we have to find out how to do it in the least environmentally damaging way.

Going back to your question, though, I’m actually less interested in what a material is in itself, and more interested in what I can do with it.

ALICE TWEMLOW

How did you get into this field and interested in working with materials?

PETRA BLAISSE

I trained as an artist – at Hammersmith College of Art in London, in the early 1970s, which was pretty wild. Once I was back in the Netherlands, I started to work with photographers and filmmakers and in fashion just to find out what it was I wanted to do, or be. I discovered I really liked to work with specialists that did visual things. Soon, I became responsible for finding the right props, or the right locations for photo­ graphy and film shoots. I would dress stages and sets – create environments. Then I saw an ad for an assistant curator in Applied Arts at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. I was there for seven or eight years. With all these experiences, I learned how you could create an environment so that objects or paintings or jewellery or whatever could get a new meaning.

Lighting is important. Colour is important. But materials are essential to how you show a model or a piece of glass in a certain setting.

Meanwhile, I became a mother, got married, and became an independent exhibition designer for the applied arts.

Very quickly I was asked by designers and architects like 41

Rem Koolhaas and OMA, who had just opened their office in Rotterdam, to design their traveling exhibitions. And I became involved in their buildings projects as well.

I think the first moment I knew I was hooked on working with materials was when I made a stage curtain for the dance theatre in The Hague, where I discovered how it was to work with velvet. It was an education in how to create things that have a technical function, but that also look beautiful and are surprising. It was the first time I worked at a huge scale. The kick – you can’t imagine the kick – you get when 500 kilos of cloth drops. The effect on an auditorium when it opens and closes or goes up in what you call a Wagner pull. It’s incredible.

It’s like a ballet in itself.

ALICE TWEMLOW

Working with materials at scale seems important to you…

PETRA BLAISSE

Working at scale also has an effect on how a material behaves.

You know, an enormous piece of cloth behaves totally different than a smaller piece of the same cloth. I love seeing fabric used at architectural scale, how it falls, drapes and wrinkles.

You have to discover the right material for the scale of the thing and for the role it has to play.

ALICE TWEMLOW

How would you test that?

PETRA BLAISSE

You can’t really because you never have enough space to try it out. So you need to predict, to imagine, to envision.

It’s the same with garden design: one of your talents, 42

Petra Blaisse | Inside Outside, prototype, Bioreceptive Textiles, 2021 – ongoing.

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I suppose, should be that you are able to imagine what it will become before you can even design and plant it.

ALICE TWEMLOW

And one of the main materials to take into account for that is soil?

PETRA BLAISSE

I am deeply interested in gardens and in nature (a bit like an Englishperson, I suppose). If you have that, then you have this urge to make gardens and to study the plants and the roots, and also the situation of the soil. Because it’s all connected to soil. Certain conditions allow for certain plantings, and others don’t. You have to be interested in what elements together create the conditions that make things grow or live or thrive. Gardeners, we are a bit crazy. If you’re really fanatic, you talk about plants as if they’re human beings. You’ll say, you know, my chestnut tree, he’s very moody this season.

I’m hoping he’ll get over it by autumn…

The soil is, of course, a composition of many things. I’m very happy that, maybe thanks to COVID-19 and climate change, everyone is starting to wake up and to see how important it is and that we should really actively do something about it. Governments and municipalities and even developers are now looking to create the ground conditions that absorb CO2, attract animal life, clean the air and cool the buildings.

With the municipality of Amsterdam we explored how you can influence urban development by finding ways for the urban underground infrastructures – pipes, or tunnels or parking lots – to collaborate with the natural processes of soil formation and maintenance.

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ALICE TWEMLOW

What interventions can you make, as an architect or designer, to encourage these conditions that you’re talking about?

PETRA BLAISSE

If you are early enough in the process, you can really influence decisions in a development – the sizes, the volumes, and the manner in which the underground parking structure is built, how you can reuse excavation rubble either in the land­ scape, by creating topographies, or by creating walls or fences or as parts of the building. We try to influence the planning of roads and buildings and sidewalks to create more soil depth, so that trees, shrubs and perennials can be part of that project.

We’re also not the only ones to look at possibilities for weaves or knits to integrate solar cells; or to become the base for algae, mosses, lichens and the like. But the difference is that we work on a much larger scale than most – the architectural scale. Of course we’re also researching how facades and roofs can become more porous, allowing for things to settle and grow and for insects, birds and bats to find a home.

We have a project in Genoa, Italy, where we have been asked to regenerate the very industrial Valpolcevera area, a valley that leads to the sea. We’re supposed to make a fantastic 23-hectare-botanic park, but first we have to deal with the train tracks and concrete walled canals and roads and factory buildings. It’s all to do with the soil under our feet.

ALICE TWEMLOW

Because, in the end, that will be your contribution as a designer, to try and create the conditions so that the soil can 45

Petra Blaisse | Inside Outside, editorial project for Blauwe Kamer magazine and the Municipality of Amsterdam, The Nature of Soil, 2020 – 2021.

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regenerate and then become your collaborator in creating this park? And what other natural elements and forces do you collaborate with? How about time?

PETRA BLAISSE

Definitely. With materials like textiles or plastics, as soon as you install them, they start to degrade and disintegrate.

Or a curtain or carpet will change colour because of daylight or it wears away because people walk on it. These things happen and you have to take them into account. And with landscape, it’s the other way around. It won’t be fully grown for another 50 years, and, as a landscape designer, there’s a good chance that you won’t even be there anymore.

ALICE TWEMLOW

What advice do you have for art and design students in relation to materials?

PETRA BLAISSE

Be curious about everything, test everything in the most inventive way and do not take anything for what it seems to be. What else can it be? And what else can it do? Reinvent the wheel! My boss at the Stedelijk used to criticise me for trying to do that, but now I know questioning is a good thing. I also think it’s a great help if you establish a framework for which you make something.

ALICE TWEMLOW

Parameters?

PETRA BLAISSE

Yeah, I often think that, as creators of applied work, we should be glad we’re not visual artists, because then everything has 47

to come out of yourself. As a maker-designer, you have a frame within which you work. For example, if you are working with ceramics, well, maybe you can create some parameters like, let’s make some ceramic shutters or windows that allow light to come through, but not rain. These are contradictory parameters and that’s a challenge that we, here at Inside Outside, come across. That’s where innovation can happen.

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Petra Blaisse | Inside Outside, editorial project for Blauwe Kamer magazine and the Municipality of Amsterdam, The Nature of Soil 2020 – 2021.

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I HONOUR THE LAY EXPERTISE, PERSONAL PROFICIENCY, AND TACIT INTELLIGENCE ABUNDANTLY DISPLAYED EVERY TIME I SEE PEOPLE PERFORM THE SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE GESTURE OF RUBBING CLOTH BETWEEN THEIR FINGERS TO DISTIN­ GUISH TEXTURE, THICKNESS, AND SUPPLENESS. JULIA BRYAN-WILSON, ART HISTORIAN

Bryan-Wilson, Julia. 2017. Fray: Art and Textile Politics.

Chicago: Chicago University Press: 6.

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KEYWORDS BIOPLASTICS BODY COLOUR COOKING DYEING EXPERIMENTING

FAILING MOULDING PROCESS RECIPE SHARING SPREADING

TAPPING TAPIOCA: RESEARCHING WITH BIOPLASTICS MUIREANN NIC AN BHEATHA ALUM, BA ARTSCIENCE, KABK

ON MAKING AND TOUCHING BIOPLASTICS You have to continually interact with bioplastics while they are being created. They require constant stirring while cooking.

And creating something with cooked bioplastics always gets messy, particularly with plastics made of potato or tapioca starch. You need to spread them into the shape and size you want, which I do by hand because it is important to personally know the bioplastics and their materiality. You need to feel them to know if they are dry enough for use. Sometimes the plastic will dry and look like traditional synthetic plastics; other times, they stay wet and sticky forever, despite being quite strong. I like this unpredictability.

I find the experience of stirring and spreading bioplastics to be very meditative and ritualistic (I usually create huge sheets of them). Working with my hands allows me to experiment with colour. At the beginning, I would mix the colours into the cooking bioplastic. Then I developed a method of throwing the colours at the plastics and letting them naturally mix with the plastics. I also found that I could use my hands to ‘control’ the colour while the bioplastics were fresh. I could draw patterns with the colours in the plastic and do a kind of ‘finger painting’.

I also developed performances with ‘kombucha leather’, a plastic alternative that is grown with bacteria instead of cooked.

I drag this material, which resembles my skin, all over my body and my face. When I am performing with the kombucha leather and bioplastics, I constantly interact with them. I am creating them, I am melting them, I am wearing them and I am eating them. They stick to me, they dry on me, they get caught in my hair. It can be quite grotesque to watch, yet it mirrors how 54

we already interact with the synthetic plastics that we use every day.

We breathe in and ingest the microplastics that are in our clothes, our food and our drinks. Every living thing on this planet contains some sort of chemical that has leaked from plastics. Unlike my performances, these interactions aren’t visible. We might not be aware of them, but it is constantly happening to us and around us. It can be scary, but I want to know what happens when we are aware of these constant interactions. Owning, being around and touching plastic materials allows microplastics to enter our bodies. They become us, or we become plastic.

ON LEARNING FROM MY WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS I love seeing people get into moulding and dyeing their bioplastics with this childlike creativity, where they enjoy the process of making and not worrying about the outcome.

People ask interesting questions which make me think about the materials differently. I told someone that the bioplastics I make would take about 100 days to biodegrade. In response, they asked if they would last for another 100 days if reheated and melted and made into something new. The questions lead me to other avenues of research. I also enjoy just showing people that plastic can be ‘beautiful’ as people often find plastics quite ugly.

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Muireann Nic An Bheatha, performance as part of the KABK Graduation Show, (M)eet de Plastics, 2021.

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ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS I found myself getting caught up in concepts and theory before I started my material research. I would plan exactly what I was going to make, what the finished piece would be, what it would be about. When I discovered bioplastics, I started to enjoy making. I began to form ideas and research other people’s work alongside my material exploration.

I like experimenting with materials as it is not about the final work but the process. You may find, like I did, that the process then becomes the work. That one material leads you to experiment with many other materials. I never worked with wood or metal until I began making tools that would help me create my bioplastics.

There is also an enjoyment in knowing a material very well.

Knowing how it feels, how it will act, how to change it, control it. You can read up on a material or watch tutorials on how to work with it, but working with it and experimenting with it yourself is an entirely different experience. You cannot fully understand materials until you have touched them and used them yourself.

For more information on bioplastics cooking: – Recipes for Material Activism by Miriam Ribul, www.issuu.com/miriamribul/docs/miriam_ribul_recipes _for_material_a – Bioplastic Cookbook for Ritual Healing from Petro­chemical Landscapes by Tiare Ribeaux, www.bioplastic-cookbook.schloss-post.com

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ON BIOPLASTIC RECIPES The bioplastics community is very open to sharing techniques and recipes. I largely use four recipes. I didn’t invent them; I found them online. They have some of the most common ingredients used in bioplastic recipes. The potato and tapioca starch recipes produce strong bioplastics that are quite similar.

These are my favourite because the starch is pretty cheap to buy. You can even make your own potato starch. The gelatine and agar bioplastics remain liquid after cooking, meaning you can pour them into a mould. They can remain quite sticky even after drying. The gelatine includes animal products and is quite expensive, which puts some people off. But I love that you can remelt this bioplastic, and it goes right back to liquid form. Experimenting with recipes is key. Even if you ‘fail’ and things do not turn out as expected, you can still use the outcome for something else. You can mix the old bioplastics with new ones, or melt them down and remake them.

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Potato starch bioplastic 1 tbsp. potato starch 4 tbsp. water 1 tsp. glycerine 1 tsp. vinegar Cook until it is viscous and sticky.

Tapioca starch bioplastic 1 tbsp. tapioca starch 4 tsp. water 1 tsp. glycerine 1 tsp. vinegar Cook until it is boiling.

Agar powder bioplastic 4 tsp. agar powder 4 tbsp. water 1 tsp. glycerine Cook until boiling.

Gelatine bioplastic 4 tsp. gelatine 4 tbsp. water 1 tsp. glycerine Mix the ingredients, cook in a pot, stirring constantly, until really hot, then mould and dry them. Bioplastics take a few days to weeks to dry depending on their thickness and size. Try drying them on different surfaces to create different textures.

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Muireann Nic An Bheatha, performance as part of the Rethinking Bauhaus Symposium at Stedelijk Museum, Bioplastics Cooking Workshop, 2019.

MATERIALITY IS MORTALITY. SYMBOLISATION, OR THE ABSTRACTION OF COMMUNI­ CATION INTO INFORMATION, IS AN ATTEMPT TO HOLD MORTALITY AT BAY. […]

PART OF MATERIALISM, THEN, IS CELEBRATING THE UNIQUENESS OF THE OTHER. THINGS, PEOPLE, AND MOMENTS PASS, THEY AGE AND DIE AND CAN NEVER BE DUPLICATED; SO MATE­ RIALISM’S CLOSE COR­OLLARY IS CHERISHING. LAURA MARKS, PHILOSOPHER

Marks, Laura. 2002. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media.

Minneapolis: University of Minnestoa Press.

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KEYWORDS ANIMAL CARING DRAILLES FIBRE LIVING MULTISPECIES

SHEEP SHEPHERD SOIL TIME WOOL

WINDING WOOL: RESEARCHING WITH SHEEP CYNTHIA HATHAWAY TUTOR, MA INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, KABK

IN MY HAND, I HOLD A CLUMP OF SOFT, RAW WOOL. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TELL? I STUMBLED UPON YOU BY ACCIDENT, STUFFED IN HUGE BAGS IN A DARK SHED. I FELT YOU CALLING ME TO BE INQUISITIVE AND EMBRACE A STATE OF UN­ KNOWING. WHAT IF I START HERE, AT THE BEGINNING, AND FOLLOW YOUR PATH? WHY ARE YOU HERE? HOW DID YOU GET HERE? AND WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DO FOR YOU? YOU ALREADY KNOW. I JUST NEED TO LISTEN. AT ONE TIME, WOOL PROCUREMENT INVOLVED TRANSHUMANT PRACTICES (MOVING SHEEP BY FOOT TO PASTURE) AND MAINTAINED THE RICHEST SOILS. SHEEP MANURE AND LITTLE LIGHT HOOVES KEPT SOILS RECEPTIVE TO THE SEEDS ENTWINED IN YOUR FLEECE FOR A JOURNEY AND RUBBED OFF AGAINST A FENCEPOST. AT EVERY STEP, YOUR VALUE GAINS, SPREADS AND REMAINS. HOW CAN MY STEPS BE AS FERTILE? ON WOOL I use wool as a material to take me on a journey. I knew nothing about wool until it presented itself to me in a shed. It was an invitation to find out what the material is, what can be done with it, where it goes and how it ends up as a sweater on my body.

I started my research on the ground, walking with shepherds.

I learned ‘drailles’ are the ancient, natural pathways used by 66

sheep, dogs and humans when moving gently through land­ scapes. ‘Drailles’ are systems of companionship. I collected stories and information, and the research developed from there. Walking with shepherds led me to more shepherds, pastoral organisations, wool collection companies, organi­ sations associated with national parks and shearers.

A material such as wool provides a myriad of avenues for discovering where we as a (multi)species have been, where we are and where we are heading. Wool represents worlds within worlds. All my interests and ways of working are woven into its fibres: multispecies relationships, geopolitics, global industrial and agricultural systems, the rights of dignity and mobility in people and animals, regenerative practices, artistic research, social design and participatory action research.

ON TOUCH Touching a material lets you develop a sensorial relation with it. Touch is intimate. You learn that the wool is warm.

It is sometimes wet, full of seeds and covered with soil.

It’s alive; as the sheep breathes, the wool undulates. It is a living material that asks you to care, learn and, in a way, protect its beauty and integrity.

Touching wool on a sheep is an engagement between species.

This awareness demands an etiquette of consent. You ask, “May I touch your wool? Will you let me? May I have some of your wool?”

ON HOW TO CHOOSE A MATERIAL Let it choose you. Find out where it wants to take you.

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Cynthia Hathaway, flock of sheep, France, Wool Paths, 2019.

Cynthia Hathaway, first encounter with raw wool, Wool Paths, 2016.

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Cynthia Hathaway, raw wool packed to be shipped to China, Wool Paths, 2019.

Cynthia Hathaway, mountain of wool in Pakistan, Wool Paths, 2021.

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TOUCH SEEMS TO BRING BOTH AN AWARENESS OF THINGS EXTERNAL TO THE BODY AND OF THE BODY ITSELF. THE BODY IS THAT

BY WHICH WE MEASURE THE FEATURES OF THINGS IN THE EXTERNAL WORLD, AND SO IS ALWAYS PRESENT IN OUR AWARENESS OF THINGS THROUGH TOUCH.

’Touch’. 2020. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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KEYWORDS BORNEO DECOLONISATION FIBRE HAND MEMORY

PIGMENT TENSION TEXTILE WEAVING

FEELING FIBRES: RESEARCHING WITH WEAVING MARCOS KUEH SHENG PANG STUDENT, BA TEXTILE & FASHION, KABK

ON WEAVING I started learning to weave about two years ago in order to find familiarity in a foreign country. Weaving allows me to tell the stories and struggles of my homeland Borneo by recreating textures, patterns and objects based on memories. I research how and where local and traditional belief systems, such as myths and moral values expressed through crafts, fit or do not fit into global contemporary discourse. How do these traditions figure within decolonisation and the formation of an indepen­ dent ideology of the self?

People from Borneo are often perceived as ‘exotic’ and we feel pressure to fulfil that expectation. Through my weaving research, I write an introspective love letter to myself and the people of my land on our long walk to understanding independence. We have grown beyond our colonial past to develop acceptance of, and even pride in, ourselves.

It is an invitation to speculate together an alternate regime where third-world labour decides how we receive information, where entertaining visuals, adverts and information are crafted through real pigments and fibres instead of LED screens.

What changes when human touch becomes more important to the process of communication?

The critical factor of weaving is the manipulation of tension.

Our ancestors knew how to bind fibres without letting them hang too loosely or bind too tightly. They knew how far to push a material before it deteriorated in the hand. This knowl­ edge is a cooperation between logical memory and muscle memory. Along with the documented measurements, the hands need practice to know how much pressure to exert.

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ON WORKING WITH YOUR HANDS I appreciate and form a certain relationship with a material when I work with it with my own hands. This relationship is different from those I form when studying a material through texts. It is like meeting a person in real life versus reading a biography about them; you get to dive deeper, ask questions, make your own deductions of the person – you get to experience them.

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS Material breakthroughs require that you put faith in the process of experimentation; adding things that you least expect to work through the machines, and being willing to go beyond just brainstorming or speculation.

I think it is easy to be intimidated by the machines in the workshops but if you spend enough time to sit down with them, I promise you can learn so much from them.

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Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang, detail of woven artwork with motifs inspired by traditional Bornean crafts, Kenyalang Circus, 2021.

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Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang, creating contrasting textures and depth with different weaving structures, Kenyalang Circus, 2021.

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Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang, creating contrasting textures and depth with different weaving structures, Kenyalang Circus, 2021.

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Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang, detail of research into colours, Kenyalang Circus, 2021.

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WHEN ONE TOUCHES AN OBJECT, THE TOUCH SEARCHES FOR A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE OBJECT TOUCHED AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PERSON WHO TOUCHES IT. NITHIKUL NIMKULRAT, ARTIST AND EDUCATOR

Nimkulrat, Nithikul. 2012. ‘Hands-on Intellect: Integrating Craft Practice Into Design Research’. International Journal of Design.

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KEYWORDS ANIMAL CARING CAT HAIR CLAY DECAY FIBRE

HARVESTING MANIPULATION MULTISPECIES TEXTILE WEAVING

HARVESTING MATERIALS MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES TUTOR, BA INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE DESIGN, KABK

Marie Ilse Bourlanges’ artistic practice concerns the narrative and conceptual potential of materials. Harvesting and gleaning natural resources are often the starting point of her research.

She teaches in the Interior Architecture and Furniture Design department at KABK. ALICE TWEMLOW

You are listed as the ‘Media and Materials’ tutor. What does that mean for you and how do you go about teaching this topic?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

I want to stimulate students to play with materials and investi­ gate techniques. But also to go deeper into the resources they use, to understand that a material is not just there for you to express something, but can have its own embedded meaning.

A textile is not simply a commodity, like a roll of fabric that you cut a slice from and make something from as fast as possible. Instead, I want them to question every aspect of it, every detail. Where do all these intertwined threads fibres come from? Who made this fabric and how? What animals or plants were involved? So the fabric is what we work with but it also brings into focus these sensitive points, these important societal issues about labour and environmental issues about extraction. The course is constructed so that we can dive into one aspect of a material each week. So with textiles we would go from the fibres to the structure, to colours to other kind of manipulations.

ALICE TWEMLOW

Do you collaborate with the textile workshop? Or is this something you are doing separately?

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MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

We have a strong connection with the textile workshop, but we don’t stay in a workshop for the full class. It was quite a conscious choice to try to make the workshop a bit more porous because sometimes it’s hard to get access to a machine and most weaving techniques require a lot of dedication.

So sometimes a workshop assistant will come into our studio to demonstrate a spinning wheel, for example, or we will do some knitting experiments that don’t require machines; we just use our fingers or our bodies to make it more performative.

ALICE TWEMLOW

How do you encourage the students find out about the sources of the materials they work with?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

We start with fibres. We learn about how to harvest wool from a sheep, and I bring in my little silk worm cocoons for them to feel in their hands and then I ask them to go outside to find things they think they can make a thread from. So they collect dried grass, or plastic wrapping or straws, or their own hair.

And then I show them a method of rope making, where you spin and twirl the threads by hand. This is to show them that you can actually make your own material.

ALICE TWEMLOW

What’s the weirdest thing a student has tried to make into a thread?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

One guy harvested his cat’s hair. But actually I don’t find it weird; it made total sense for me.

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ALICE TWEMLOW

Right it’s not that different from Angora. Maybe a bit more allergenic…

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

But it was also about the process of harvesting. That’s where the learning came. Through the combing, the repeated gestures of care, and the exchange you have with the cat is a form of interspecies communication.

ALICE TWEMLOW

I like how specific this example is. Interspecies communication is often talked about in the abstract, but it’s good to examine an actual engagement – in this case it’s a kind of request or agreement with the cat to release its coat which would then become a resource, a material for you.

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

Yeah, it helps to make a bridge to the theoretical ideas around multispecies living.

ALICE TWEMLOW

What I find interesting is how poetic your assignments seem.

If I didn’t know you’re working with architecture and furniture design students, I might have guessed you at working with art students. So what is your thinking about that? Are you trying to sort of take their attention away from focusing on the final product?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

Yeah, it’s very much on purpose. I have an ambivalent relation­ ship with the field of architecture and design because it’s my education background, but then as a professional, I realised 86

Flax shack of the Linen Stewardship, 2021.

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it didn’t fit somehow. So since I permitted myself to be an artist, I’ve felt very emancipated. I think I like to share that with them – the possibility of bringing art practice into their design practice.

ALICE TWEMLOW

Tell me about your own relationship with materials. Is it some­ thing that’s evolved over time? Has it changed, deepened?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

What I’ve come to appreciate is that things can fall apart and that I want to embrace these qualities of temporality, damage and decay. First I was interested in a technique which was called burnout, where I made textiles with carbon paper that recorded the traces of touch and use and ultimately dissolved.

It was about maintaining and displaying a state of disap­ pearance. Later I became interested in moving past just emulating the decay. When working with ceramics, for example, I think about the fact that the moment you put something into the kiln, the piece that you produce will stay on the Earth forever. Maybe it will break into parts and go into the ground, but it will never go away completely. So we started to to work more risk into our ceramics, and use more unfired forms.

I was always fascinated with architecture such as mosques in West Africa that are made of mud, structures that take decay into consideration. Every year, with the rainy season, some parts of the architecture kind of falls apart. And it becomes a social event to gather and care for the archi­tecture. So we got interested in working with raw clay. You can make things, but then add some water and get to work with it again.

We worked for a while with a unit of one tonne of clay which we formed into bricks and boxes but always soaked so that we could keep the material in play through a series of artworks.

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It had many, multilayered lives. And that’s something that I find really beautiful – this sort of paradox that some things that can transform and and fall apart, but still remain.

ALICE TWEMLOW

Is this a form of stewardship? A material that you guide through these different processes rather than owning it as a maker?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

Yeah, it is more like guiding. These huge bags of clay came with us everywhere, every time we moved studios. They were really heavy. We were always carrying this big baby of clay.

With the flax, it really is a form of stewardship.

ALICE TWEMLOW

And what about touch, the subject of our publication, what interests you most about that?

MARIE ILSE BOURLANGES

While working with textiles, for example the repetitive move­ ment can create something close to a hypnotic state. It also triggers something in the brain which is connected to pleasure. I’m interested in the aspect of touch that is connected to pleasure.

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Harvesting of flax, Hemmen, the Netherlands, July 2021.

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Linen pods collected after rippling, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

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Marie Ilse Bourlanges, weaving sample made using documents found in her grandfather’s personal archive, 2018.

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Marie Ilse Bourlanges, weaving sample made using documents found in her grandfather’s personal archive, 2018.

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Marie Ilse Bourlanges, weaving sample made using documents found in her grandfather’s personal archive, 2018.

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Marie Ilse Bourlanges, weaving sample made using documents found in her grandfather’s personal archive, 2018.

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PEOPLE USED TO BE ABLE TO FEEL THE QUALITY OF WOOL BETWEEN THEIR FINGERS. BUT THIS KIND OF SENSITIVITY HAS BEEN LOST, NO LONGER CULTIVATED OR SCHOOLED, AS SOCIETY STOPPED VALUING THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND MATERIAL PROPERTIES THROUGH SENSORY EXPERIENCE.

AS SOCIETY’S VALUES HAVE SLOWLY STARTED TO SHIFT AGAIN, PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO RETURN THEIR ATTENTION TO THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES FROM EXPERIENCE. THIS KIND OF NON-PROPOSITIONAL, NON-VERBAL KNOWLEDGE – TACIT KNOWLEDGE – [CAN BE GAINED] THROUGH DAILY EXPERIMENTATION WITH ANCIENT CRAFT TECHNIQUES AND AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES. CLAUDY JONGSTRA, TEXTILE ARTIST

Jongstra, Claudy. 2018. ‘Tacit Knowledge, Rooted Material’.

Maharam Stories.

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KEYWORDS BODY CRAFTING DIGESTING EMBODIMENT EMBROIDERY

FINGER SKIN STITCH TEXTILE

SIFTING STITCHES: RESEARCHING WITH EMBROIDERY RENATA MIRON STUDENT, MA ARTISTIC RESEARCH, KABK

ON EMBROIDERY Through the embroidered stitch, our hands secrete desire, anger, or loneliness. It is a medium through which to feel, create, write, and translate.

Embroidery is a digestive system that transforms one world into another. The body calls for an urgent ingestion of elements with apparent but uncertain affinities. The act of slowing down, sitting, and contemplating an embroidery piece acti­ vates the necessary space and time to chew on these elements.

Sharing a moment of creation facilitates intimacy and trust between bodies, bodies and material, and bodies and knowl­ edge. Engaging in a craft allows the world to enter the body through the skin; the fingers translate the previously unknown into a language that speaks in favour of a space of possibility.

In other words, crafting is an embodied act of worldmaking, a process of chewing on, breaking down, absorbing, and shitting out.

ON EMBODIMENT Living embodiment thins the skin to make the inside more accessible to the outside, and the outside to the inside.

The skin does not disappear but becomes translucent. The body becomes see-through for others to read into. Embodiment makes the body vulnerable and sensible, allowing the self to attenuate and acknowledge itself as a fragment of the larger body it inhabits. The boundaries in and between bodies dissolve, exposing what philosopher Gail Weiss terms ‘inter­ corporeality’, which positions embodiment as a public affair, dependent on continuous interactions between human and non-human bodies. To be touched by others is to experience 100

embodiment. To be touched is to merge the inside with the outside, the depth with the surface. Digesting and creating worlds through crafting is an intercorporeal, embodied action…

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS Matter speaks. It has its own language and texture. Material texts, it inscribes onto you as you blend your body with it. There is nothing like being in direct contact with material.

Getting dirty and messy allows for embodiment to happen.

It diffuses the boundaries between three bodies: yours, the material’s and the viewer’s.

Edited extract from ‘The Bowing Knitter II – Mindlessness’, part of an essay series by Renata Miron on feminist forms of craft making as an artistic method for world de-construction and re-assembly.

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Renata Miron, intercorporeality study, Embodied Embroidery, 2021.

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Renata Miron, intercorporeality study, Embodied Embroidery, 2021.

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Renata Miron, intercorporeality study, Embodied Embroidery, 2021.

Renata Miron, intercorporeality study, Embodied Embroidery, 2021.

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AS HUMAN BEINGS WE INHABIT AN INELUCTABLY MATERIAL WORLD. WE LIVE OUR EVERYDAY LIVES SURROUNDED BY, IMMERSED IN, MATTER. WE ARE OUR­ SELVES COMPOSED OF MATTER. WE EXPERIENCE ITS RESTLESSNESS AND INTRANSIGENCE EVEN AS WE RECONFIGURE AND CONSUME IT… DIANA H. COOLE AND SAMANTHA FROST, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THEORISTS

Coole, Diana H., and Samantha Frost, eds. 2010. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.

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KEYWORDS COLOUR DECOLONISATION DYEING EMBODIMENT FINGER

MEMORY PIGMENT PLAYING SKIN

CARESSING COLOUR: RESEARCHING WITH PIGMENTS GIULIETTA PASTORINO VERASTEGUI ALUMNA, BA FINE ARTS, KABK

COLOUR IS A LANDSCAPE. IT IS A LIVING PRESENCE. THE CARRIERS OF COLOURS, SUCH AS FABRIC, ALLOW US TO TRANSFORM A PARTICULAR PIGMENT’S ENERGY INTO DIFFERENT FORMS. EACH PIGMENT IS COMPLEX IN ITS PROPERTIES; A CLEAR RELATIONSHIP NEEDS TO BE ESTABLISHED WITH EACH OF THEM. ONE PIGMENT MAY BE STUBBORN AND RESIST THE FABRIC, AND THE OTHER MAY BE HAPPY TO BE FIXED THERE. COLOUR IS NOT A RIGID STRUCTURE, BUT IT MOVES BETWEEN PLACED CONTEXTS, TIME, AND SPACE. AS A MATERIAL, IT IS A WILD, UNPRECE­ DENTED, POLYTROPIC PHENOMENON. EMBEDDED IN MY SKIN FROM DAYS OF DYEING FABRIC, I STILL WELCOME ITS COMPANY AS I NAVIGATE MY DAILY LIFE. 9 OCTOBER 2021, 17:34

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ON RESEARCH WITH PIGMENTS As artists, we get to understand our materials intimately through touch. I say intimate because touch allows you and the material to know one another, what you’ll need and what is possible to achieve. You feel the variation of a material’s texture. You learn how it changes when dry, wet, warm, cold, hot, handled and raw. Touch is vital to the traditional dyeing process I use (shared with me by a Mexican-American pigment artist), which is one of the ways I interact with colour.

Among many other questions, I want to know: Why are pig­ ments so different from each other? How do pigments react with acidic and alkaline environments? Which natural mordants can fix a certain pigment? Can colour heal? Is colour energy?

What happens to a bright pigment when it soaks outside on a balcony for five months? To what extent can I decolonise myself and others through colour?

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS By creating intimate connections with the material, you establish a relationship with it; you capture a memory, a situation. The colonial academic world criticises personal and intimate research, but these methods reveal the insistent plurality of our universe. Research with and through materials allows playfulness to happen. Playfulness is childlike.

We explore and develop our own identities through it. When we do so, we extend our curiosities and engage more than our visual sense. We smell, touch, encounter and dream through materials.

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Giulietta Pastorino Verastegui, dye process, Touching Colour, 2017 – 2021.

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Giulietta Pastorino Verastegui, dye process, Touching Colour, 2017 – 2021.

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A RECENT PUBLICATION OF THE SOVIET EMBASSY IN WASHINGTON RAISES THE QUESTION OF WHETHER A SIXTH SENSE HAS BEEN DISCOVERED. ABOUT A YEAR AGO, RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS REPORTED THAT A 22-YEAR-OLD GIRL, ROSA KULESHOVA, HAD THE ABILITY TO RUN HER FINGERS OVER PRINTED TEXT AND ‘READ’ A NEWSPAPER. SHE COULD ALSO NAME COLOURS AFTER TOUCHING PIECES OF COLOURED PAPER PLACED IN OPAQUE PAPER ENVELOPES. REPORTS FROM MOSCOW ARE THAT THE CASE OF MISS KULESHOVA HAS NOW BEEN CONFIRMED BY THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. FURTHERMORE, ONE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE ESTIMATED THAT ONE PERSON IN SIX HAS A SLIGHT AMOUNT OF THIS ABILITY. THE MOST RECENT TEST OF MISS KULESHOVA WAS DONE THIS WAY:

SHE PUT HER FINGER TO THE EYEPIECE OF AN INSTRUMENT CALLED A SPECTRO­ ANOMALOSCOPE, A DEVICE USED FOR TESTING COLOUR VISION. THE DEVICE GENERATES ALL COLOURS OF THE SPECTRUM FROM RED TO VIOLET. ORDINARILY, A PERSON PUTS HIS EYE TO THE EYEPIECE. MISS KULESHOVA WAS BLINDFOLDED, ALTHOUGH THIS WAS ‘ADMITTEDLY AN UNNECESSARY PRECAU­ TION,’ AND SHE PUT HER FINGERTIP TO THE EYEPIECE. THE TESTS WERE CONDUCTED UNDER PROF. YEFIM RABKIN WHOM TASS IDENTI­ FIED AS A ‘WELL-KNOWN SOVIET OCULIST.’ TASS SAID THAT MISS KULESHOVA ‘NAMED ALL COLORED CIRCLES PRESENTED TO HER FOR IDENTIFICATION BY PRESSING THE TIP OF A FINGER TO THE EYEPIECE OF THE ANOMALOSCOPE.’

Sixth Sense Is Hinted in Ability to ‘See’ With Fingers.

January 26, 1964. The New York Times.

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KEYWORDS AFFECT BODY EMBODIMENT

EXPERIMENTING SENSING TEMPERATURE

TESTING TEMPERATURE: RESEARCHING WITH THERMOCEPTION LUDMILA SOUZA RODRIGUES TUTOR, ART PLAN, KABK

ON THE BODY Heat is hugely important in our lives. We are warm-blooded animals, after all. Warmth is also highly metaphorical; it carries an affective potential. While writing an essay about affect through remote communication, I decided to experiment with heat-sensitive pigment / paint. I painted the entire surface of a piece of paper with one or two colours and asked people to observe how the colour reacted to their body’s warmth when they touched it.

I did this experiment during last winter’s lockdown. I sent the paintings with instructions via post in an attempt to (be in) touch with each recipient. Later we all met (online), and everyone shared their experiences and stories with me.

My material or medium is the human body itself. Playing with materials by engaging our bodies allows for a physical dialogue to happen. We learn about the material and the material informs us about our own body’s potentials, limits, desires and unconscious ideas. This embodied knowledge can only arise if we engage with our entire body and senses.

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Ludmila Rodrigues, performative installation, Approximation, 2012 – 2017.

Ludmila Rodrigues, performative installation, Approximation, 2012 – 2017.

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THE USE OF TANGIBLE MEDIA TO CONVEY SENSATIONS SUCH AS TOUCH, MOTION, SCENT OR WARMTH HAS BEEN RECENTLY EXPLORED, FACILITATING MORE INTIMATE TELEPRESENCE. WE ARE INTERESTED, INSTEAD, IN HOW WARMTH AND VIBRATION CAN BE USED TO CREATE EMOTIONAL RESPONSE. WARMTH AND VIBRATION MAP NATURALLY INTO THE REALM OF HUMAN INTERACTIONS. WARMTH IMPLIES ‘TOUCH’ AND BODY HEAT WHILE VIBRATION IMPLIES THE ‘BUZZ’ OF ACTIVITY. PEOPLE CORRELATE THE COMBINATION OF HEAT AND LOWLEVEL MOTION WITH HUMAN CONTACT.

TEMPERATURE AND VIBRATION ARE TOO INEXACT TO CONVEY EXPLICIT MESSAGES OR COMPLEX INFORMATION, BUT THAT AMBIGUITY WORKS WELL FOR COMMUNI­ CATING ‘FUZZIER’ DEGREES OF ATMO­ SPHERE, AMBIANCE, OR AFFECT. THE SENSATION OF VIBRATION OR WARMTH TRIGGERS GUT-INSTINCT RESPONSES, WHICH WORK WELL FOR CONVEYING AMBIENT INFORMATION OR FOR COMMU­ NICATING URGENCY.

Dobson, Kelly, Danah Boyd, Wendy Ju, Judith Donath, and Hiroshi Ishii.

2001. ‘Creating Visceral Personal and Social Interactions in Mediated Spaces’.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Media Lab.

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KEYWORDS 3D PRINTING DIGITAL FABRICATION FOAMINESS HALF-FABRICAATS MOULDING PLA

PROPERTY PVA SLICER SETTING SPONGINESS WORKSHOP

PUSHING PRINTS: RESEARCHING WITH GEOMETRY DOLORES HILHORST AND MARCEL VAN NISPEN INSTRUCTORS, MODELLING AND MAKING, 3D LAB, KABK

ON GETTING INTO MATERIAL RESEARCH DOLORES HILHORST

I have a background in industrial design engineering, which I studied at the TU Delft, and specialise in digital fabrication.

This encompasses technologies such as 3D printing and laser cutting. My research interest lies in exploring new materialgeometry combinations that exhibit interesting properties and behaviours. For example, I participated in a research project that combined 3D-printed PLA and PVA with layers of silk fabric to obtain a hybrid material exhibiting a spongy behaviour.

MARCEL VAN NISPEN

I started my career as a theatre designer making all kinds of costumes and weird stage accessories. I later switched focus and began sharing my knowledge with young designers at the Design Academy Eindhoven and KABK. My research is focused on testing and researching 3D-printed materials that replace traditional materials in the fabrication of shoes, lingerie and clothing and contribute to the development of the print-in-one-go approach.

ON THE KABK 3D WORKSHOP DOLORES HILHORST AND MARCEL VAN NISPEN

We advise and assist students who want to use digital fabri­ cation techniques, including 3D scanning, modelling, printing and laser cutting in their projects. Besides sharing knowledge about machines and technology, we share our hands-on experience gained through the development of design strate­ gies so that students can become more efficient and adapt their designs to changes.

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ON THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF 3D PRINTING DOLORES HILHORST

Even though 3D printing began in the 1980s, it only became widely accessible about ten years ago in the form of affordable ‘desktop printers’. So it is still a new and unfamiliar tool for artists and students at an art academy like KABK. The 3D Lab offers many students a first glimpse into the world of digital fabrication technologies and their artistic possibilities. We see some students using 3D printing as a tool for fabricating an artefact, such as a 3D-printed mould they can use for casting a ceramic part. Other students use the 3D-printed objects themselves as part of their final work. The technology offers the ability to attain exact geometry unattainable through different techniques.

Digital fabrication offers students a great range of possibilities, and we help them navigate those options. The shape of 3D models, slicer settings, print orientation, wall thickness and infill all influence properties such as flexibility, weight and transparency in the final products.

MARCEL VAN NISPEN

We also investigate materials that have exciting properties within the 3D printing context. For example, I experimented with a material called Varioshore TPU. This material becomes foamier when the printing temperature is increased. Because it’s easy to change the temperature in this digital fabrication technique, it is possible to precisely determine the level of foaminess throughout its geometry.

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ON HALF-FABRICAATS DOLORES HILHORST

The half-fabricaats that we have in our workshop give students a taste of what is possible when they combine familiar materials with plastic, wood and fabric in digital fabrication technologies…

MARCEL VAN NISPEN

…and to think about how materials, manufacturing processes and geometries influence an object’s properties and behaviour.

ON INSPIRING RESEARCH DOLORES HILHORST

I am interested in the Material Driven Design (MDD) method, developed by Professor Dr Elvin Karana. Most of the design methods I learned during my studies take a problem as a starting point, but MDD takes a (new) material as its starting point. The properties of the material are examined, and these properties inform what design opportunities and possible applications exist. MDD has helped people find interesting applications for ‘waste materials’ such as used coffee grounds and old shoes.

MARCEL VAN NISPEN

Associate Professor Yeong Wai Yee from the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP) works on a range of exciting projects.

She works to bring copper wire into 3D printing so electronics might be integrated into the printing process. She also focuses on the use of 3D printing in the area of bio and medical research.

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ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS DOLORES HILHORST

Art and design projects must, ultimately, materialise. You can start with an abstract idea or concept, but you will eventually need some type of material to express that idea. Looking into various materials and fabrication processes can help that transition from idea to reality. I encourage students to visit different workshops with an open mind to understand the possibilities that each material and technology offers and apply them in their projects. Material properties, such as shape, weight, softness and flexibility, can inspire modes of expression.

MARCEL VAN NISPEN

Do not be afraid of not knowing things. Your error could become an inspiration for your next idea. It could be good to start without too many boundaries. That is why we like to call our workshop a Lab.

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IN AN IMPORTANT SENSE, TOUCH IS THE PRIMARY CONCERN OF PHYSICS. ITS ENTIRE HISTORY CAN BE UNDERSTOOD AS A STRUGGLE TO ARTICULATE WHAT TOUCH ENTAILS. HOW DO PARTICLES SENSE ONE ANOTHER? THROUGH DIRECT CONTACT, AN ETHER, ACTION-AT-A-DISTANCE FORCES, FIELDS, THE EXCHANGE OF VIRTUAL PARTICLES? WHAT DOES THE EXCHANGE OF ENERGY ENTAIL? HOW IS A CHANGE IN MOTION EFFECTED? WHAT IS PRESSURE? WHAT IS TEMPER­ ATURE? HOW DOES THE EYE SEE? HOW DO LENSES WORK? WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF FORCES THAT PARTICLES EXPERIENCE? HOW MANY KINDS ARE THERE? WHAT IS THE NATURE OF MEASUREMENT?

ONCE YOU START LOOKING AT IT THIS WAY, YOU GET A DIZZYING FEELING AS THINGS SHIFT. THIS PARTICULAR TAKE ON PHYSICS, AND ITS HISTORY, ENTAILS A TORQUING, A PERTURBATION FROM THE USUAL STORYLINES, BUT I SUBMIT THAT IT IS A FAIR DESCRIPTION AND WORTH CONSIDERING FOR THE WAYS IT OPENS UP NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR THINKING ABOUT BOTH THE NATURE OF PHYSICS AND OF TOUCH. KAREN BARAD, FEMINIST THEORIST

Barad, Karen. 2011. ‘When two hands touch, how close are they?’.

On Touching – The Inhuman That Therefore I Am. Munich: Academy of Fine Arts.

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KEYWORDS AFFECT AGENCY LEMON

PALPABLE VIBRANCY

PALPATING PIXELS: RESEARCHING WITH IMAGES BENEDETTA CIAPPINI STUDENT, BA PHOTOGRAPHY, KABK

ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND TACTILITY The challenge of photography for me is to create an image that feels almost palpable. I was inspired by how Jane Bennett describes all things (animate and inanimate) as presenting agency within themselves – a vitality, a vibrancy – and how all things influence each other and cooperate.

Through my research, I want to find out: How can the medium of photography grasp and represent this material agency?

How does photography itself participate in it?

ON COLLABORATION WITH MATERIALS THROUGH TOUCH I started with metal and went on to darkroom chemicals, paper, rocks, bricks, wires, copper, zinc, lemons…

Understanding the qualities of different materials through touch helped me learn how to photograph them. Touch also works the other way around: seeing an image of a material allows me to speculate on what it feels like to touch it.

Both touch and photography help us develop our material intelligence, a sense of what things are made of.

In this project, I worked with materials individually and in their collaboration with each other and with humans. Working in partnership with materials raises important questions: Where does my power end, and where does the power of the material begin? Is the resulting picture the product of my effort or the material’s effort?

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ON SYNESTHESIA Touch shapes the way we perceive our surroundings. I find the gap between touch and photography intriguing. In photo­ graphy, the eyes play the part of the hands. I find an image appealing when I have the desire to touch it or feel that I am touching it.

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Benni Ciappini, material scan, Vibrancy of Matter, 2021.

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Benni Ciappini, chemical experiment: lighting a low voltage led light with lemons, zync, copper and crocodile wire clips, Vibrancy of Matter, 2021.

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EACH HUMAN IS A HETEROGENEOUS COMPOUND OF VIBRANT MATTER. IF MATTER ITSELF IS LIVELY, THEN NOT ONLY IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS MINIMISED, BUT THE STATUS OF THE SHARED MATERIALITY OF ALL THINGS IS ELEVATED. JANE BENNETT, POLITICAL THEORIST

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things.

Durham: Duke University Press.

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KEYWORDS ARCHITECTURE BLUE DOG CHEMICALS EARTH ENTROPY HEMP

HEMPCRETE LIME MOULDING SAND TIME WATER

HANDLING HEMPCRETE: RESEARCHING WITH STRENGTH CYNTHIA BRUINSMA STUDENT, BA INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE DESIGN, KABK 139

ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND TACTILITY On February 19, 2021, Vice Magazine reported on the sighting of some blue dogs in Russia. People saw them near an abandoned chemical plant in the city of Dzerzhinsk where plexiglass and hydrocyanic acid were once made, and where some buildings still house chemicals like copper sulfate.

The dogs may have been rolling around in it and blueing their fur.

Around the same time, our tutor Maartje Lammers organised an excursion to De Kreake, a small farm in Húns, Friesland.

It is a non-profit cultural foundation initiated by Claudy Jongstra, Claudia Busson and Gitta Luiten that explores sustainable futures. We collected materials from that site and designed something based on its location and surroundings.

Donna Haraway’s idea that ‘human beings are with and of the earth, and the biotic and abiotic powers of this earth are the main story’ inspired me. The concept of entropy – a measure of disorder in situations where different ingredients inter­ mingle – also informed this project. In a figurative sense, entropy is about how nature recovers what people have tampered with or taken.

I wanted to find a sustainable building material. I collected earth. I needed to increase the strength and durability of the earth without mixing it with harmful materials, such as gravel, sand, silt or cement. I started to experiment with limestone, which biodegrades when combined with earth.

As my research developed, I came across an alternative: the biocomposite hempcrete.

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ON HEMPCRETE AND RAMMED EARTH Hemp is versatile and absorbs CO² , making it a sustainable option for building. Combining hemp flakes with lime produces a composite that has the flexibility of clay and the strength of concrete.

I used the hempcrete and the rammed-earth building method to make a compost toilet pavilion. The compost toilet ensures a circular ritual where chemical household cleaners are not used. The compost can act as organic fertiliser for plants. I wanted my pavilion to be as gentle as possible to the humans and non-humans encountering it, as well as to the materials it was made from and the earth it sat on.

ON METHODS, TOOLS, AND SAMPLE SHEETS I tested the strength of different mixtures of materials such as clay, earth, limestone, cement and water. I did the same with hempcrete. Here I measured the mixes of hemp, limestone and water. I arranged the samples on sheets to document the results.

I used my hands as a tool for gathering the earth and sand, and for shaping moulds and pounding rammed earth. I went to the metal and wood workshops to create different types of moulds for the earth samples and hempcrete samples.

ON TOUCH I approached this research with physical touch and – this might sound bizarre – mental touch. The image of those blue dogs was the starting point for my research, and it stayed with me.

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Through material research, I developed another way to include my sense of touch in this project. I wanted to know what would happen when I added household chemical cleaners to natural materials. The chemicals created crystallisation in the rammed earth samples and hempcrete samples. Being able to see samples re-shape into patterns over time and through my touch was rewarding.

Before this project, I would have an image of a finished product in mind before I would touch materials. This work has proven that the form can arise in unexpected ways from touching.

ON HOW OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS Materials are especially important in architecture for how they shape our perceptions. From my point of view, it’s also necessary to use materials that won’t harm humans or nonhumans. A good place to start is to observe which materials animals use to create their spaces and shelters.

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Cynthia Bruinsma, material research; hemp, rammed earth mixed with various house supplies, What Touches You, 2021.

Cynthia Bruinsma, material research; hemp, rammed earth mixed with various house supplies, What Touches You, 2021.

Cynthia Bruinsma, material research; hemp, rammed earth mixed with various house supplies, What Touches You, 2021.

HUMANITY AND NON­ HUMANITY HAVE ALWAYS PERFORMED AN INTRICATE DANCE WITH EACH OTHER. […] MATERIAL POWERS, WHICH CAN AID OR DESTROY, ENRICH OR DISABLE, ENNOBLE OR DEGRADE US, IN ANY CASE CALL FOR OUR ATTEN­TIVE­NESS, OR EVEN ‘RESPECT’.

JANE BENNETT, POLITICAL THEORIST

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things.

Durham: Duke University Press.

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KEYWORDS CALCIUM CARBONATE EARTH EXPERIMENTING FAILING GEOPOLYMER INDUSTRY

INTERACTING KETTLE LIMESCALE NEO STONE AGE TIME

COAXING CALCIUM CARBONATE: RESEARCHING WITH GEO PROCESSES ERCO LAI ALUMNUS, MA INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, KABK

ON COLLABORATING WITH THE EARTH We have finally realised that mainstream manufacturing methods damage the Earth and environment, but we attempt to fix the situation from only a human perspective. As a designer, I want to understand how to work with the Earth as an equal partner. I want to establish hybrid manufacturing systems amongst geo-processes such as mineral accretion, crystallisation and concretion and human processes such as industrial design. I speculate what a ‘Neo Stone Age’ would look like and how we might integrate limescale harvesting and production into the way we build our homes.

Mineral calcium carbonate, found in rivers, lakes, skeletons, shells and caves (tufa and stalagmites), is a primary material in my work. It is the primary component of limescale, an often overlooked and discarded byproduct of human activity.

But limescale has various applications in agriculture, the food industry, glass industry and cement production.

ON PROCESS For this project, I collected limescale from my kettle. I used vinegar to dissolve it (my mother taught me this method), and then I put it into Petri dishes to recrystallise. Meanwhile, I collected seawater from Scheveningen and attempted to get salt through evaporation.

Then I found a method called Biorock, which uses electricity to restore coral reefs. After reading some scientific papers, I understood that this is a process like electrolysis. I set up the experiments and began to document the process and results.

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However, the experiment did not go as well as I expected.

I realised I needed some help. I found Esmee Geerken, an artist and Earth scientist, doing a similar project called Build like a Shell. I was impressed and encouraged myself to contact her. Luckily she was interested in my experiments and willing to be my consultant.

She introduced me to a laboratory at the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (AMOLF). With their help and suggestions, I managed to extract calcium from water.

But the results were limited, and the layers of sediment left in the beaker looked more interesting.

Next, I found a method called geopolymerisation, which I began learning about through academic papers. I discovered that geopolymer is similar to concrete but without cement; like ceramics, but without the need to bake it.

ON HANDS AND TOUCH I enjoy hands-on experiments, and I’m always learning by doing. I would describe myself as a design alchemist: I set a goal through observation and imagination, then I experiment intuitively with basic material knowledge and learn more by consulting professionals. I make a mess and then reflect on it critically.

I wanted to make a stone. To me, a stone is something you can hold in your hand. Using my hands to determine the results was important in my project. To be precise, I used my nails to see if I could make scratches in it. (On the Mohs Hardness Scale, natural limestones are 2 – 4 and fingernails are 2.5) 151

I stopped working with electrolysis because the result was not ‘rocky’ enough.

My sense of touch not only indicates hardness but tempera­ ture, which lets me know if I have mixed the materials in the right proportions. During the reaction of geopolymeri­sation, the mixture will generate heat. I can tell by the warmth of the ‘dough’ if I have put in the right amount.

Reading the texture and shape of a material through touch has an irreplaceable value, even in the digital era. Touch is fundamental to understanding a material; for communication, touch is the best way to show, not tell.

In Taiwan, we have a saying: ‘View the big picture while handling the details’ (大處著眼 小處著手). Touch is the only way to sense the nuances of something.

In most research methods, the input and output happen at different times. For instance, I read and then write. This means that I need some extra time to consume the informa­ tion. But with touch, I make while thinking. It is about both input and output; however, the emotional element of touch makes it hard to judge results critically.

In my practice of researching via making, killing one’s darlings is the fundamental skill you need.

ON RESEARCH WITH AND THROUGH MATERIALS I want to keep learning from the Earth and make things that are like the Earth.

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From materials, I find a way to connect to others. Materials contain untold stories; I act like a sculptor that chips away at the stories hiding inside.

I like observing how we interact with the materials around us. Materials construct our world and change our behaviours.

I trained to be a product designer, but I’ve always struggled with functionality and value.

I define myself as a design maker. From this project, I found out that manufacturing intertwines geo-systems and human systems. I would like to have a ‘factory’ and produce objects with alternative materials for domestic use.

ON HOW OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS I suggest choosing one material as your medium and use it to tell your story. It can give you insights and materialise your thoughts. If you can visualise your research with and through materials, it can start conversations. Others can better under­ stand you and enter your world.

Don’t be afraid to fail; don’t overthink; be critical about the outcomes.

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Erco Lai, prototype, Neo Stone Age – Domesticating Limestone, 2021.

Erco Lai, prototype, Neo Stone Age – Domesticating Limestone, 2021.

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Erco Lai, result of electrolysis experiment, Domesticating Limestone, 2021.

Erco Lai, result of electrolysis experiment, Domesticating Limestone, 2021.

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Erco Lai, sample collection of electrolysis experiments, 2020.

[T]OUCH DELIVERS INVASIVE ‘UNBOUNDED’ DATA, WHERE­ AS THE EYE SUPPLIES IMAGES THAT ARE CONTAINED IN A FRAME. […] [A] NEURAL NETWORK OF EYE-BRAINHAND ALLOWS TOUCHING, GRIPPING, AND SEEING TO WORK IN CONCERT. RICHARD SENNETT, SOCIOLOGIST

Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman.

New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

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KEYWORDS BIOPLASTICS CARING COOKING FINGER MANIPULATION MOULD

PIGMENT PINE NEEDLE PLASTER RECIPE TIME WATER

PINCHING POWDERS: RESEARCHING WITH PLASTER MOULDS WIKTORIA MARKIEWICZ STUDENT, BA INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE DESIGN, KABK

I often feel disconnected from the sense of touch. Some days, my hands only touch my phone and computer – life can be busy and stressful. To work with materials I had to find a path between my mind and fingertips. Only then I could appreciate how powerful and resourceful touch is.

In the second year of my studies, I experimented with and made materials. I worked with mould and bacteria, bioplastics, plaster powder and dried pine needles. Each material asked for different modes of care and interaction.

ON MOULD I wanted to learn if it is possible to grow and control mould growth intentionally. I wondered, can different types of bacteria and mould live together? How do they influence each other? What kind of materials can mould digest?

How long does each take? This research consisted primarily of observation, trial and error; it was less hands-on and more ‘let it be and see’.

Generating mould requires several tools and organic materials: Petri dishes, agar substances, cotton swabs, a homemade ‘incubator’, a set of scales, bacteria and a lot of time. I had to create a layer of nutrient agar for the mould by mixing and cooking different ingredients. Then I would add bacteria gathered from hands, air and surfaces and let it grow in a dark, warm environment.

ON BIOPLASTICS I used touching and smelling to experiment with bioplastics.

Creating a perfect recipe takes time. It’s possible to find 162

research and recipes online; however, you need to do tests when adding oils and dry herbs. Cooking bioplastics requires a stove, pan, agar, glycerine, water, essential oils and lavender.

All of these ingredients are usually easily accessible, cheap and organic. After cooking, I poured the hot bioplastic mixture into moulds made of silicone, latex gloves and ice cube platters – almost anything can work depending on what shape and size you want to achieve. I tried to make sensorial, pleasur­ able objects to help people to destress.

ON PLASTER For my plaster research, I wanted to know: What are the qualities of plaster, and how can they be manipulated to create a unique, multisensorial material for use in architecture?

I mixed plaster powder with curcuma, hibiscus, cinnamon or beetroot to give it a natural colour and smell. I also experimented with particles of lavender, pine, clove, oregano and salt. Besides that, I also tried plaster pigments, clay, stones and many more. Adding things to a plaster mixture is risky and requires a few tries to get the right proportions so that the plaster doesn’t break when it dries. I created card­board moulds to shape poured plaster and wrote a ‘cookbook’ of mixtures.

ON PINE With the pine project, I started with pine needles that I col­ lected in forests and parks. I had to learn about the different kinds of pine and how to identify them. Then I tried to repur­ pose this ‘nature waste’ into other objects and find methods for upcycling. I tried grinding, blending and extracting. I produced essences, powders and dyes. I also used writing 163

and video to explore the qualities of pine needles and how they influence what can be made with them.

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS A whole new set of methods, ways of working and designing arise as soon as you stop depending on what is easily acces­ sible and start looking for your own solutions. Designing ‘from scratch’ allows us to be more aware of what goes into a design, how sustainable it is and how easy or expensive it is to produce and recycle. Others can continuously learn from, and add to, your research. This is the kind of knowledge we need to be designers or artists of the future.

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Wiktoria Markiewicz, mould research, A Personal Touch, 2021.

Wiktoria Markiewicz, mould research, A Personal Touch, 2021.

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Wiktoria Markiewicz, pine as resource, A Personal Touch, 2021.

Wiktoria Markiewicz, pine as resource, A Personal Touch, 2021.

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Wiktoria Markiewicz, sensorial model, A Personal Touch, 2021.

Wiktoria Markiewicz, sensorial model, A Personal Touch, 2021.

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THERE IS A CHARACTER HIDDEN IN A MATERIAL EVEN BEFORE IT HAS BEEN MADE INTO A RECOGNISABLE FORM – A SORT OF EMBEDDED PERSONALITY, A SHY ONE, NOT ALWAYS VISIBLE, EASILY CONCEALED OR DISGUISED, BUT ONE THAT, WHEN APPROPRIATELY MANIPU­ LATED, CAN CONTRIBUTE TO GOOD DESIGN.

Karana, Elvin, Owain Pedgley and Valentina Rognoli. 2013. Materials Experience: Fundamentals of Materials and Design. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology.

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KEYWORDS ANTHROPOCENE CHEMICALS EARTH EXPERIMENTING IMPURITY

INDUSTRY LIMESTONE SOIL TEMPERATURE WASTE

TENTATIVELY TOUCHING TOXICITY: RESEARCHING WITH INDUSTRIAL WASTE LUCIE PONARD ALUMNA, MA INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, KABK

ON INDUSTRIAL ROCKS Some landscapes are haunted by industrial histories. This project studies the area of Zuiderstand and Westduinpark in Zuid-Holland. Although these landscapes seem to be ‘natural’, their soil is full of monsters. Slags, byproducts of industry, waste and debris of the war are silent hybrids that have become part of the landscape. Giving a voice to rejected monsters draws attention to the intersection of local and national histories.

This project is about revealing stories hidden in the sand.

I collected pieces of bricks, coal ash and steel slag. I developed ranges of glazing for ceramics, experimenting with different sizes of grains, temperatures of firing, and various ways of applying the glaze. This produced a series of ‘monstrous’ textures that reflect the monsters of the Anthropocene.

I created a set of three landmarks, telling different stories and trajectories of the haunted landscape. The relation with the material was even more interesting because some of the products were toxic. Moreover, with the help of a scientist and a park volunteer, I created a geological guide, that categorises these new specimens, and a tour which provides another way of looking at the site.

The industrial rocks that I study can be seen as Anthropocenic objects. I have found it interesting to reflect on the idea of purification in industrial processes and the pursuit of the purest, finest version of a material. What would happen if we designed with the dirt and impurities without separating them?

How can we use rock slag to reflect on our ways of designing?

Steel slag is a byproduct of the steel-making process, pro­ duced during the separation of impurities from the molten 172

steel. The compound contains limestone and dirt. There are several steel plants along the coast of the Netherlands.

This slag could also come from the Maasvlakte, Rotterdam’s newly built industrial area, or TATA Steel.

I also work with coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal. When coal is burnt, particles of things like ground-down concrete are added to improve the heat capacity. In the Netherlands, until the 1990s, dumped ash built up into mountains. These days, coal ash is used as filler for roads and to make concrete.

The Dutch government wants to stop coal production by 2050, so these slags will remain as fossils and, hopefully, become the subject of future archaeology.

I also worked with pieces of asphalt, bricks and bits of old WW II bunkers. These bunkers have been blown up or are gradually eroding. Fragments of their structures have spread all over the landscape, becoming the new local rocks.

I am interested in any type of rock. I would like to keep working with industrial slags in France, especially waste from iron factories with attractive colours (blue, green).

ON METHODS AND TECHNIQUES First, I went to the metal workshop and experimented with melting the materials at a very high temperature, transforming them into glass. Then I went to the fine art printing workshop.

I wanted to use my materials as pigments for wood printing.

I had to learn how to make my own ink.

Next was the ceramics atelier, where I used the rock waste as a glaze for ceramic. This is what I spent most of my time doing.

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I ground the materials into powders: from very thin powder (filtered in a thin sieve) to bigger grains in order to have room for experimenting with the textures and patterns that these grains would create. I had some knowledge of ceramics, but I had to learn a lot in terms of making glazes and conducting experiments with pigments. I was also in (online) contact with a ceramist who specialised in glazes. That helped a lot.

ON TOUCH When touching my materials, I used gloves, which is best to do if we aren’t fully aware of the consequences of the materials on the skin. Touching helped me in many ways. For example, I used my fingers to position the powders the way I wanted on the surface of the ceramic. Being able to apply bigger grains than I could have done with the brush allowed me to achieve different types of textures and to create new patterns.

Touching is another type of intelligence...

ON RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS I usually work by conducting material experimentation.

It brings surprises and exciting discoveries. It allows a third party to participate in the project in a way: the chemical reaction. There can be a dialogue between the ceramic kiln, the clay, and me. There are many parameters that I don’t have control over. But the more I learn, the more I can antici­ pate how materials will react. It’s a bit like being a conductor of elements.

Although everyone has different working methods, I think it would be a bit of a shame not to use the workshops at KABK 174

because they make a lot of things possible. Working with materials allows us to discover things that we wouldn’t have thought about beforehand and inspire new ideas. Theoretical reflection based on the material research is also interesting.

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Lucie Ponard, ranges of glazing for ceramics, Untangling Stories in Earth Layers, 2021.

Lucie Ponard, ranges of glazing for ceramics with texture, Untangling Stories in Earth Layers, 2021.

Lucie Ponard, ranges of glazing for ceramics with texture, Untangling Stories in Earth Layers, 2021.

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Lucie Ponard, ranges of glazing for ceramics with texture, Untangling Stories in Earth Layers, 2021.

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WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT TOUCH, WHEN SET AGAINST THE OTHER SENSES, IS ITS MUTUALITY. WHILE WE CAN LOOK WITHOUT BEING LOOKED BACK AT, WE CAN’T TOUCH WITHOUT BEING TOUCHED IN RETURN. TOUCH IS THE FIRST SENSE TO DEVELOP, AND IS MEDIATED

BY THE SKIN, OUR LARGEST ORGAN. WE ARE ONE OF THE FEW MAMMALS TO BE BORN SO PREMATURE IN THE TRAJECTORY OF OUR DEVELOPMENT.

OUR MOTOR SYSTEM ISN’T FULLY DEVELOPED, WE CAN’T FEED OURSELVES, WE CAN’T REGULATE OUR OWN TEMPERATURE BEYOND A CERTAIN THRESHOLD – ALL OF WHICH MEANS THAT WE RELY ON OTHERS TO SURVIVE. AS A CHILD, BEING CARED FOR DEPENDS PRIMARILY ON TACTILE CONTACT AND ‘BEING HELD’.

DANIEL MILLER, ANTHROPOLOGIST

Miller, Daniel. 2010. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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KEYWORDS CRAFTING FINGER HAND

MANIPULATION MISTAKE TIME

PICKING PIECES: RESEARCHING WITH VINYL SCRAPS MATAS BUCKUS STUDENT, BA GRAPHIC DESIGN, KABK

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS For years, graphic designers worked with their hands and fingers. It was, undoubtedly, a much more time-consuming process than using the computer. Digital tools have made many aspects of design easier and faster. But I kept wondering, What has been lost with this search for convenience?

Using the Dymo label printer and leftover adhesive vinyl scraps, I constructed lettering collages to offset the pessimistic mood of the book I was designing.

My sense of touch allowed me to work intuitively – doing instead of getting stuck on the thinking phase. Having the materials right in front of my nose let me directly relate to the materials with which I worked. I could manipulate materials and content immediately and flexibly using my sense of touch, rather than having to abide by the limitations of a digital programme.

Once it’s just you and your materials, you must tune into your inner self. Most artists and designers trace our use of touch in crafting back to an early age. This gives us per­ mission to make more mistakes, design more spontaneously and come up with more intriguing compositions.

The results of this mode of visual research may be imperfect, but they’re also unique. The tiny hairs, sloppy lines and scratches suggest to the viewer that they can also do it. I hope they think, ‘Yes, I can also do it!’

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Matas Buckus, composition from vinyl leftover scraps and Dymo labels, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, 2021.

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WHAT DOES TOUCHING THE MATERIALS ADD? THE HAND CONNECTED TO THE EYES AND THE BRAIN. HANDS, EYES, BRAIN: IT’S THE MAGIC TRIANGULATION. IT COMES FROM PASSION, HEART AND INTELLECT INSEPARABLY CEMENTED TO YOUR TIMES AND TO YOUR EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES. SHEILA HICKS, ARTIST

Hicks, Sheila. 2015. ‘Fibre Is My Alphabet’. Frieze.

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KEYWORDS ASSEMBLAGE CARING EMBODIMENT ERROR FAILING

FINGER HAPTIC METHODOLOGY IMAGINING MODEL PLAYING

MANIPULATING MINIATURES: RESEARCHING WITH MODELS KATIE PELIKAN ALUMNA, MA NON LINEAR NARRATIVE, KABK

ON GATHERING KNOWLEDGE For me, touching is as intuitive as looking. My body extends out to take in.

When I began a master’s degree focused on new media, my teachers asked why I sculpted tiny replicas of all my research topics.

It’s true, there was an odd, tactile assemblage growing across my desk, around my books. Some objects were half-thought forms, and others were painstakingly detailed. As I read I could turn over the materialised research in my palm. I began to pay attention to how I gathered knowledge.

A haptic methodology reminds us of our bodies. Seeing my own hands in an image creates an uncanny portal to that moment. I can feel what I was touching then, and I am tethered to that responsibility. The material carries my fingerprints.

I cannot pretend (as we, designers, are often tempted to) that I am a benevolent, neutral force.

In my work, I confront romantic mythologies about the natural world by exploring the limits of human control and the fallacy of removing ourselves from the equation. By embracing the non-expert role, I aim to open conversations about critical issues in unconventional ways.

The previously untouchable can be infused with playfulness, absurdity and warmth. An embodied practice challenges empirical ways of gathering knowledge. Taking matters into our own amateur hands empowers us to imagine new worlds of curiosity and care.

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ON CONDUCTING MATERIAL EXPERIMENTS They create gaps for failure and unpredictability. Working with materials reminds me to loosen up and allow for some lovely surprises. Even the big failures are good moments to slow down and ask yourself what you’re doing. I remember adding the ‘water’ to finish my first model. Overnight, the resin melted through the architectural foam and spilt every­ where. Mixing those materials was an obvious error, but I had no idea. Because of the extra time spent fixing my material errors, I had to write my script while building the landscapes.

This ended up being a happy accident because the narratives and physical worlds grew in tandem.

ON HOW OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS My main advice is to stay curious and trust your intuition.

Art school can be an important site for growth, but it’s easy to get worn down and lose trust in yourself. When you’re learning and unlearning ways of thinking and working, don’t forget to return to the things that inspire you. There will always be the pressure to make relevant work, but if your heart’s not in it, even the most urgent issues will lack depth. Choose things that matter to you. Don’t try to erase or hide your role as the designer in the work.

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Katie Pelikan, film still, Landscape Lab, 2021.

Katie Pelikan, film still, Landscape Lab, 2021.

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Katie Pelikan, film still, Landscape Lab, 2021.

Katie Pelikan, film still, Landscape Lab, 2021.

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Katie Pelikan Bašelj, detail, Landscape Lab, KABK Graduation Show 2021.

THE SKIN READS THE TEXTURE, WEIGHT, DENSITY AND TEMPERATURE OF MATTER. THE SURFACE OF AN OLD OBJECT, POLISHED TO PERFECTION BY THE TOOL OF THE CRAFTSMAN AND THE ASSIDUOUS HANDS OF ITS USERS, SEDUCES THE STROKING OF THE HAND. IT IS PLEASURABLE TO PRESS A DOOR HANDLE SHINING FROM THE THOUSANDS OF HANDS THAT HAVE ENTERED THE DOOR BEFORE US.

THE CLEAN SHIMMER OF AGELESS WEAR HAS TURNED INTO AN IMAGE OF WELCOME AND HOSPITALITY. THE DOOR HANDLE IS THE HANDSHAKE OF THE BUILDING. THE TACTILE SENSE CONNECTS US WITH TIME AND TRADI­ TION: THROUGH IMPRES­ SIONS OF TOUCH WE SHAKE THE HANDS OF COUNTLESS GENERATIONS. JUHANI PALLASMAA, ARCHITECT AND WRITER

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2005. The Eyes of the Skin.

Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

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KEYWORDS ARCHITECTURE BUILDING DOORKNOB FEAR

HANDSHAKE MEMORY SENSING

HOLDING HANDLES: RESEARCHING WITH BUILDINGS MAE ALDERLIESTEN STUDENT, MA INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE 199 (INSIDE), KABK

ON TOUCHING BUILDINGS As a designer, I focus on the sense of touch. Whenever I enter a building, I touch it to discover what I am dealing with.

Touching a building allows you to learn about its condition and materiality, and the emotions it contains. I wonder why in architecture there is so much emphasis on the visual and so little on sensory experience.

The House Dedel, originally a seventeenth-century mansion in The Hague, has been different things across the years.

It felt neglected, which surprised me because it is a house full of stories, materials and character. I hoped to help the House Dedel become a place appreciated for its beauty and its stories. I wanted to tell those stories loudly and clearly, but also make sure some secrets remain.

House Dedel is a building where one feels the urge to touch everything and admire it up close. The house brims with decoration; different wallpapers, ceilings and colours appear in every room. Touching, however, is not possible due to the value of the house and its contents. Touching doorknobs, on the other hand, is permitted.

ON DOORKNOBS Using the doorknob as a starting point in my research, I wanted to allow the importance of touch to grow throughout the building. A room’s handshake, whether firm or delicate, wel­ comes and guides visitors through its space. By approaching doorknobs in a sensorial way, they can introduce visitors to the house’s stories.

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused us all to reconsider our use of doorknobs. Perhaps as we start to touch them again, we will appreciate them anew.

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS Materials surround us. Working with materials is the best way to research a topic. While working with your hands, you learn more and experience greater inspiration and fascination. People often fear touching objects, even before COVID-19. Overcoming that fear allows you to feel closer to your surroundings and teaches you a lot about tactility.

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Mae Alderliesten, doorknobs in House Dedel, Shaking Hands with a Building, 2021.

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Mae Alderliesten, doorknobs in House Dedel, Shaking Hands with a Building, 2021.

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ALL YOUR FIVE SENSES ARE DIFFERING FORMS OF ONE BASIC SENSE – SOMETHING LIKE TOUCH. SEEING IS HIGHLY SENSITIVE TOUCHING. THE EYES TOUCH, OR FEEL, LIGHT WAVES AND SO ENABLE US TO TOUCH THINGS OUT OF REACH OF OUR HANDS. SIMILARLY, THE EARS TOUCH SOUND WAVES IN THE AIR, AND THE NOSE TINY PARTICLES OF DUST AND GAS. ALAN WATTS, WRITER AND THEOLOGIAN

Watts, Alan. 1966. On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. New York: Pantheon Books.

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KEYWORDS DOUBTING EXPERIMENTING

FINGER WATER

FIDDLING FINGERPRINTS: RESEARCHING WITH IDENTITY HEIDI HOLMSTROM STUDENT, BA FINE ARTS, KABK

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ON FINGERPRINTS AS MATERIAL I read an article in the British Medical Journal titled ‘Finger Wrinkling After Immersion in Water’ by G. Alvarex, J. Euolo and P. Canales. The article prompted my curiosity and made me wonder if I could change my print so that I could access someone’s else’s data.

This experiment flows from the rest of my practice, where my interest bounces between materiality, humanity and manipu­lation. I hope it will lead to more experiments that continue to explore these ideas.

In this first stage of the experiment, I only observed minor changes. What one can do with these changes remains hypothetical. I hope to use the next stage of the experiment to access someone else’s computer with my soaked fingerprint.

ON WHY OTHERS SHOULD TRY RESEARCHING WITH MATERIALS Doubt is the most critical part of the process to guide you into directions you haven’t been yet. Use the feelings of doubt and curiosity to direct you on unknown paths. Consider every­thing an experiment. Be playful with your thoughts and reflections about materials and how they touch you. Touch with courage and care.

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Heidi Holmström, research into fingerprint distortion via immersion, Traces of Touch, 2021.

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IF YOU TOUCH SOMETHING, YOU LEAVE A CHARGE ON IT. AND ANYBODY ELSE TOUCHING IT CONNECTS WITH YOU, IN A WAY. EL ANATSUI, ARTIST

Goldberg, Alison. 2022. Bottle Tops: The Art of El Anatsui.

New York: Lee & Low Books.

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KEYWORDS MEMORY DIGITAL FABRICATON

SAMPLE TEXTILE

SITTERWERK 213

ON SITTERWERK, ST. GALLEN In exploring the possibilities of establishing its own archive of material samples and recipes, the KABK is greatly inspired by the Sitterwerk Foundation’s Material Archive located in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Sitterwerk collects, organises and makes available around 2.500 material samples for use by visiting artists, designers and researchers.

From wood, textiles, animal materials, and pigments to syn­ thetics, new high-tech and recycled materials, each material sample has an RFID label that provides access to a database where detailed information can be consulted about its prop­ erties and possible applications, its history, role in the economy and ecological impact. The texts are authorised by experts and edited by external editors, and continuously expanded, updated, and deepened.

But another layer of less formal information can also be found in the drawers: Artists-in-residence often leave notes and work samples to be discovered by visitors to come – thus creating a slowly evolving collaboration and conversation through the materials.

The samples are arranged in drawers by material type such as ‘Concrete, Lime and Bitumen’, ‘Wax’, or ‘Plant-based Materials’ and can also be searched through an online catalogue.

The director of the Sitterwerk Foundation, Patricia Hartmann studied art history and has a background working in contem­ porary art galleries. Her favourite drawer in the Material Archive is the one labelled ‘Seashells’: ‘They are just so real 214

and perfect and complete on their own, without any human intervention’, she says. ‘It reminds me that in the right context anything is a material.’

Julia Lütolf, who manages the Material Archive, trained as a furniture-maker and conservator. She finds herself returning most often to the ‘Plaster Samples’ drawer. ‘Plaster is such a simple material and yet it contains a beautiful richness of possi­bilities’, she observes. ‘It is so easy to work with and yet it shows the natural, innate complexity that many materials share.’

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Patricia’s favourite drawer in the Material Archive, containing seashells, 2022.

Drawer of Material Archive in Sitterwerk, 2022.

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Julia’s favourite drawer in the Material Archive, containing plaster samples, 2022.

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Drawer of Material Archive in Sitterwerk, 2022.

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Drawer of Material Archive in Sitterwerk containing wool samples, 2022.

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Drawer of Material Archive in Sitterwerk, 2022.

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Drawer of Material Archive in Sitterwerk, 2022.

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EXHIBITION 225

TOUCHING: A RESEARCH METHOD IN ART AND DESIGN The exhibition, centred on the research-practice of architect Laura van Santen, who teaches in BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design, featured her selection material and technique research samples made by students, tutors and workshop instructors from the extended KABK community.

Laura believes in the importance of making the knowledge generated by material research – including failures, insights, ingredients and steps – accessible to others.

The exhibition also included recipes so that visitors can make these samples themselves. You can still access the recipes on the Design Lectorate website, lectoratedesign.kabk.nl.

As such, and inspired by the Sitterwerk archive, the exhibition in itself can be seen as a prototype and a recipe for what a KABK material and sample archive might become.

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MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUE RESEARCH SAMPLES CABINET ONE

CABINET TWO

Youbin Kang BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Tactile Information Printing 1

Cynthia Bruinsma BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Hempcrete and Rammed Earth Crystallising

Moe Kim BA Interactive Media Design Electroluminescent Wire Weaving Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang BA Textile and Fashion Plastic-Fabric Fusing and Waste Embroidering Marlot Meyer BA Interactive Media Design Broken Electric Heater Hacking Marcel van Nispen Instructor KABK 3D Lab 3D Print Filament Dyeing Courteney Reitz BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design 3D-Printed Magnet Embedding Leonie Schneider Instructor KABK Metal Workshop Copper Surface Hammering Maria Tyakina BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Steel Colour-Tempering

Cara Domscheit BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Clay Slip Processing Dolores Hilhorst Instructor KABK 3D Lab Plywood Kerf-Bending Youbin Kang BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Tactile Information Printing 2 Erco Lai MA Industrial Design Calcium Carbonate Geopolymerising Chiel Lubbers BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Biomaterial Cooking and Plaster Mouldmaking Lucie Ponard MA Industrial Design Ceramics Fly-Ash Glazing Jan Sagasser BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Wood Self-Tensioning Joinery

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CONTRIBUTORS MAE ALDERLIESTEN is a student in MA Interior Architecture (INSIDE) at the KABK.

WIKTORIA MARKIEWICZ studies interior architecture and furniture design at the KABK.

PETRA BLAISSE is a designer, educator and founder of landscape design and interior architecture firm, Inside Outside.

RENATA MIRON is a student in MA Artistic Research at the KABK.

MATAS BUCKUS studies graphic design at the KABK. MARIE-ILSE BOURLANGES is an artist and teaches Materials in Interior Architecture & Furniture Design at KABK. CYNTHIA BRUINSMA studies interior architecture and furniture design at the KABK. BENEDETTA CIAPPINI studies photography at the KABK. CYNTHIA HATHAWAY is an artist.

She teaches industrial design at the KABK. DOLORES HILHORST is a specialist in digital fabrication. She is an instructor in modelling and making in the KABK 3D Lab. HEIDI HOLMSTROM is a student in BA Fine Arts at the KABK. ERCO LAI is a designer and runs the design studio ercoffice. He graduated with an MA in Industrial Design from the KABK 2021.

MUIREANN NIC AN BHEATHA graduated with an BA in ArtScience from the KABK 2021.

MARCEL VAN NISPEN is a designer and an instructor in modelling and making in the KABK 3D Lab. LUCIE PONARD graduated with an MA in Industrial Design from the KABK in 2021.

KATIE PELIKAN graduated from the KABK in 2021 with an MA in Non Linear Narrative.

LAURA VAN SANTEN is an architect and collaborates with Diederik de Koning as la-di-da. She is a studio tutor and the year head for first-year students in BA Interior Architecture & Furniture Design at the KABK. MARCOS KUEH SHENG PANG studies textile and fashion design at the KABK. LUDMILA SOUZA RODRIGUES is an artist, scenographer and tutor in ArtScience at the KABK. GIULIETTA PASTORINO VERASTEGUI is an artist and writer. She graduated with a BA in Fine Arts at the KABK in 2020.

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DESIGN LECTORATE

VIDEO INTERVIEW

Design Lector Alice Twemlow Coordinator Martha Jager

Art direction Niels Schrader Photography Roel Backaert Camera and editing Yannick van de Graaf Music Laura Dillettante Script Niels Schrader Production Martha Jager Thanks to Charlotte Landsheer and Cor Unum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch

lectoratedesign.kabk.nl

PUBLICATION Art direction Niels Schrader Editing Alice Twemlow Editorial assistance Kiersten Thamm, Ada Popowicz and Hannah Cheney Photography Marije Kuiper (p. 13), Keesnan Dogger (p. 15), Jeannette Slütter (p. 16 and 25), Marije Kuiper (p. 20), Peter Tijhuis (p. 22), Maarten Nauw (p. 60 – 61), Hasnain Lilani (p. 69), Liza Prins (p. 90), Katalin Deér (p. 216 – 223), Roel Backaert (p. 194 and p. 228 – 237) Printing robstolk Paper Edixion 80 gr Typefaces G1 – G5 Stencil designed by Niels Schrader and Martijn de Heer, and Graphik designed by Commercial Type Publisher Design Lectorate, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague ISBN 978 90 72600 59 2

®

© 2022 Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague

EXHIBITION Exhibition concept and design Laura van Santen Graphic design Niels Schrader Exhibition coordination Martha Jager Exhibition production assistance Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang and Luke Templeton Videography Baha Görkem Yalim Thanks to Diederick Tutein Nolthenius

SPECIAL THANKS TO Laura van Santen, for providing inspiration through her teaching, research, design practice, and the combination thereof found in this project.

All the students, tutors and instructors who contributed their work and reflections to this project. Keep on touching!

Bart Vissers, KABK Head of Technical Services, and all the workshop instructors for providing patient and skilled guidance for the research in techniques and materials.

Niels Schrader, for his thoughtful art direction and unwavering support for the Design Lectorate.

Ranti Tjan, for joining us as the new KABK director. We look forward to working with you!

THIS PUBLICATION IS PART OF A PROJECT THAT EXPLORES WHICH RESEARCH METHODS ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS CHOOSE TO WORK WITH, AND HOW THEY USE THEM TO CREATE AND SURFACE NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE. THE FIRST EDITION OF THE PROJECT FOCUSED ON WALKING. IN THIS SECOND ITERATION WE LOOK AT HOW RESEARCH IS CONDUCTED WITH MATERIALS AND MATTER BY MEANS OF THE SENSE OF TOUCH. THE BOOK CONTAINS INTERVIEWS, RESEARCH SAMPLES, RECIPES, QUOTATIONS, AND REFLEC­ TIONS ON THE RESEARCH PROCESS BY EDUCATORS, WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS FROM ALL ACROSS THE EXTENDED KABK LEARNING COMMUNITY. WE HOPE YOU WILL FIND IN THIS BOOK THE INSPIRATION, BUT ALSO THE INGREDIENTS, YOU NEED TO RECREATE AND ADAPT YOUR OWN VARIANT OF MATERIAL RESEARCH. LECTORATEDESIGN.KABK.NL

978 90 72600 59 2

TOUCHING: A RESEARCH METHOD IN ART AND DESIGN

KABK ART AND DESIGN RESEARCH PRACTICES

TOUCHING: A RESEARCH METHOD IN ART AND DESIGN

PUBLISHED BY KABK LECTORATE DESIGN