Lou Baker, Textiles, touch and participatory art, 22.3.20

Lou Baker

Textiles and touch

22.3.2020

Materiality ‘The materiality and multi-sensory nature (of cloth) blurs the boundaries of visual and tactile experience’ (Bristow, 2011, p45)

Lou Baker, felted hand knitting

Participatory art and screens My art is normally very physical so, in the light of this isolation, I need to think of ways to engage people without the allure of physical touch. In a talk I gave, just the other day, I emphasised how critical it is to be allowed or invited to touch a range of textured surfaces in this age of screens and keyboards, but now we have no choice.

Lou Baker, sculptural hand knitting

Surface There’s a merging of the senses of touch and sight associated with cloth; ‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual and tactile…’ the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other.

(Barnett 1999: 185)

Lou Baker, ruched velvet

Alluring cloth Cloth can provoke a strong compulsion to touch.

Some surfaces have more of this allure than others, including hand knitting, handmade felt, commercial felt, machine knitted fabric, towelling, fake fur and velvet.

Lou Baker, flocked and quilted manufactured felt

Second skin ‘The materiality and skin-like nature of cloth provides an alternative range of meanings to the use of cloth in art, operating ‘both through the haptic and the scopic simultaneously, the two modes of perception provide differing points of access to the viewer’ (Dormor, 2008, p240)

Lou Baker, stitched fake fur

Haptic and scopic definitions

Dormor defines the ‘haptic…(as) that which pertains to touch and induces the sense of touch. ..(and the) scopic... (as) that which pertains to sight and the act of seeing’ (2008: 251).

Lou Baker, felted hand knitting

Comfort and the body Cloth has associations with comfort and the body, it has a bodily resonance which can also be inviting. At this time when most communication is screen or text based, how can I simulate this need to interact with sumptuous, soft surfaces?

Lou Baker, 2014, imitation leather, paint, stitch, printed flocking, quilting, used clothing, zip

Touch and screens Most of my work relies on its physical presence and surface for the greatest impact. How can this effect be transferred to a screen? I’m sure it can.

Lou Baker, Other 5, 2015, detail

Touching with your eyes It’s almost a form of synaesthesia; one knows how something feels by looking at it. It’s like touching with your eyes.

Lou Baker, 2014, Nobody 1, detail

Lou Baker, 2014, Nobody 1, detail

Lou Baker,The feedback cell, 2019, a participatory installation at B-Wing, Shepton Mallet Prison

Lou Baker, Safety net, 2017, a participatory installation at ‘Refuge: in search of safety’, Fringe Arts Bath

Lou installing Red is the colour of.... at Bath Spa University, 2020

What next?

I will explore ways to facilitate participatory art, involving textiles and touch, in safe and socially distanced ways. I’ll also research ways to simulate touch virtually, through a screen.