Return of the hack...

Today was the crit.
The most helpful part of the crit was having to prepare for the crit, and getting the feedback. Writing is a really helpful tool for me, ever since Project last year when we had to write summaries each weeks work. This is why I find the blog so helpful. Writing out my speech allowed me to go back over the semesters work so far. Looking back over my blog made it really easy to see that path.

I didn’t think I covered everything in my speech, I left out a few things because I lost my way a bit. The feedback was really helpful and made me more certain about the direction I was heading. I was worried my concept was going to sound a little elementary. But it turned out o.k. The lovely Jeanne took some notes from the feedback for me. These were some of the suggestions I got back.
- Ask why-question why I want the stretching/shrinking. Don’t need to necessarily be disappointed in these outcomes, maybe I need to work with them. I need to stop trying to predict the outcome and go where the results actually take me.
- Mix fabrics-paper, plastic, shrunk wool against stretched cotton etc.
- Scale- it’s too hard to look at results from a small scale. Look into working on larger scales. I realize I haven’t gone far enough with the extremes of shrinking and stretching so that will be this weekend’s task. Working with patterns has allowed me so far to see the changes in the fabric, but I need to move away from the patterns because they are minimizing the possibilities in design. I think I said it in the previous post, but it’s really hard to move away from the ‘block’. There is a comfort in using the tried and tested methods of patternmaking, but to go back to the Brian Eno I need to keep in mind that it is easy to fall back into that trap. I need to remember, “don’t forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,” or “don’t forget you could adopt *that* attitude.”
- HACK! Just when you think you’ve left last semester’s hacking behind it comes back! I haven’t even thought about hacking since the start of the semester but I feel like –in the words of the great Celine Dion-it’s all coming back to me now. I suppose instead of hacking the image of fashion which was last semester’s research, I’m hacking into the fibres. Usually we try and avoid stretching and shrinking in clothes but I’m trying to open that up.
- Ricarda has suggested looking at Vionnet before and when I do the larger scale tests I’m going to look at letting the fabric drop naturally (without weights) just to see what happens.
- Another thing I just want to write down before I forget is stabilizers. Ricarda mentioned it a couple of weeks ago but I need to look into that.
- Something that Winnie mentioned and I didn’t quite follow but if anyone can remember that would be great. She talked about creating a matrix of fabrics. I might need to listen back to the recording.
- In terms of set out of my work I think I might take a ‘clinical’ approach. Adele told me that I was taking a ‘scientific’ approach to my working because of all the testing of fabrics. I might go with this a bit more and set out my research with a scientific edge i.e-have a hypothesis, conclusion etc. Excuse the lack of knowledge of a science experiment-it’s been a few years since I’ve written up a report so I’ll have to dig up my year 10 work!