Biodesign and the Allure of “Grow-made” Textiles: An Interview with Carole Collet

Williams, Nina; Collet, Carole

doi:10.1080/2373566x.2020.1816141

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Combined scientific and designerly approaches are necessary to innovate throughout fashion and textile industries (Williams and Collet, 2020;Ribul et al 2021;Morrow et al, 2023) in order to effectively address their ecological impact (Fletcher and Tham, 2019). Low-tech fabrication approaches can broaden access to biodesign to designers without scientific backgrounds, allowing for interdisciplinary, collaborative research to approach circularity from practice-led perspectives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fermenting knits: A material-driven exploration of knit-based bacterial cellulose biocomposite textile materials through fibre reassembly

De Lara

2024

Res. dir. Biotechnol. des.

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Environmental concerns surrounding textile production have increased the need and interest in developing material innovations and interdisciplinary approaches to offset this ecological impact. Bacterial cellulose is present in several industries, and its biologically produced form has shown potential use within fashion. Within the emerging field of biodesign, research surrounding bacterial cellulose textiles generally focuses on the initial sheeted growth, while alternative outputs and working methods remain scarce. Here, fibre reassembly is analysed by fully integrating broken down BC fibres with knitted structures. Material selection and working methods take a practice-led approach to experiment formulation in order to observe material behaviour as central to development. This project aims to create biocomposite textiles that enhance the properties of bacterial cellulose and expand its designable characteristics through low-tech working methods accessible from designerly backgrounds. The results are intended to inform further research in footwear design contexts, as basis to develop BC-based components. Experimentation shows BC fibres reassembled around the knitted structures, varying according to yarn choice and fermenting environment alteration. This demonstrates potential for material and methodology development while exploring co-design with living organisms. In the context of future applications, BC-based composite textiles can self-assemble at different growth stages, offering the possibility of material-driven approaches to spaces intersecting biology and design.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fermenting knits: A material-driven exploration of knit-based bacterial cellulose biocomposite textile materials through fibre reassembly

De Lara

2024

Res. dir. Biotechnol. des.

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“…Personal experience of students was also significant, which allowed approaching the analytical process in more detail. Portability, not generalization, was ensured by giving rich descriptions and highlighting the uniqueness of the case (Maxwell, 2013) [19], [22], working with AI tools, during the process of generating interior design. Ethical issues were addressed by ensuring the confidentiality of participants and maintaining the protocol during data collection.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In design research (Cotsaftis, 2023) and when thinking about ethics, indeed, more and more many researchers are trying to challenge the utilitarian view of nature as an unlimited resource for human activity [32]. Authors around the world do this by criticizing examples in the history of design that focus on human flourishing at the expense of planetary conditions (Fletcher, et al), 2019; St. Pierre, 2019), without thinking sustainably (Bratuškins & Treija, 2019), highlighting the reducing binary link between nature and culture outlined in sustainability discourses (Fletcher, 2017;Williams & Collet, 2021;Cotsaftis, 2023) [20], [22], [32]; studying efforts to reassess humanity's relationship with nature through biodesign (Sawa, 2016; Bratuškins & Treija, 2019) [6]; or again analysing the interdependence between organisms and Earth forces (Haraway & Endy, 2019) [7] - [11]. In addition, critical reflections on the biological approach to design and innovation have drawn attention to the risks associated with the strengthening of new colonial and capitalist thinking precisely in these design approaches.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial Intelligence in Architecture and Art Education

Elere,

Ulme,

De Paolis

2024

ETR

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This article is written in the context of two European cultures from two countries with different histories, both universities collaborating in the field of digital arts. The aim of the study is to provide clear methods for the use of digital tools in higher education for students of architecture and visual arts. To achieve this objective, ten tasks have been set and the results are presented in this paper. The methods used in the study include observation, photo-fixation, Prototyping interior design with artificial intelligence, literature studies, modelling, surveys, and interpretation of their results through graph-analytical methods. The authors present the positive and critical aspects of education: artificial intelligence is powerful and fast at processing huge amounts of data that humans should be able to process over an incomparably longer period, but it is poor at judging people and art. AI accurately processes billions of websites and resources to offer the best results for our search queries, and it has beaten the reigning champions in many intellectual games. But based on their own and others' research, the authors show how inaccurate AI is, for example in predicting whether individuals who have previously used AI in their artwork might achieve better results than if they had produced their own work using their own talent and personal experience. AI is no better than a simple guess, and yet AI is being used to determine people's futures. One of the experts discussed by the authors is Zweig, who introduces us to the basics of AI and provides a toolkit for designing AI systems. Finally, all the respondents explore the ethics of AI and how we can shape the process, prepared us for the biggest question about AI: where we should use it - and where we should not with a particular focus on the quality of education, developing young people's creative abilities, fostering critical thinking and responsible decision-making.

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“…An increasing number of scholars are reinstating the missing "histories of animal agency" into geohistories of capitalism (Shukin 2009, 130), and, are demonstrating how concepts of "animal work" (Porcher 2015), and "non-human labor' (Beldo 2017;Barua 2017;Palmer 2020, Ernwein et al 2021 are "vital entry points for animating capital" (Barua 2019, 652). Moreover, Louise Crewe's work re-tracing the journeys of "bio-commodities", such as a crocodile skin handbag, from production to consumption highlights the "complex connections that exist between bodies and economy, between life and capital" (Crewe 2017, 53) in contemporary fashion (see also Williams and Collet 2020). In this paper I locate the fashion bio-commodity further back in time (as in Patchett 2019a) whist building on my work exploring how to methodologically re-present bodies, both human and animal, "at work" in the past (Patchett 2017).…”

Section: Avian Accessory As Archivementioning

confidence: 99%

Feather-Work: A Fashioned Ostrich Plume Embodies Hybrid and Violent Labors of Growing and Making

Patchett

2021

GeoHumanities

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This paper uses a fashioned ostrich plume to conceptualise and re-present ostrich "featherwork" as being co-constituted by human and non-human labor. The plume archives not only the human hands that fashioned it but also the bird-body that grew the feathers, insisting it be conceptualised and researched as a grown-made commodity. From this starting point I reconstruct its journey along the "feather-road": from reared and plucked ostrich on a South African ostrich farm to willowed plume in Euro-American sweatshops. By fleshing-out the "hybrid labor" (Battistoni 2017) involved in the plume's growing and making, I demonstrate that feather-work not only exploited indigenous African, indentured migrant and sweated immigrant human laborers, but how it yoked the reproductive and metabolic labor of ostriches. By doing so the paper illustrates how this luxury feather-fashion accessory is historically implicated in colonial, economic and ecological violence, locating the troubling journeys of fashion's "bio-commodities" (Crewe 2017) further back in time.

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Biodesign and the Allure of “Grow-made” Textiles: An Interview with Carole Collet

Cited by 9 publications

References 20 publications

Fermenting knits: A material-driven exploration of knit-based bacterial cellulose biocomposite textile materials through fibre reassembly

Fermenting knits: A material-driven exploration of knit-based bacterial cellulose biocomposite textile materials through fibre reassembly

Artificial Intelligence in Architecture and Art Education

Feather-Work: A Fashioned Ostrich Plume Embodies Hybrid and Violent Labors of Growing and Making

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