9. Textile Scaffold¶

Research¶

I watched the video Anastasia sent us :

and youtube followed with this one which litterally blown my mind :

References & Inspiration¶

Bianca Bondi - discovered at the XVth Contemporary Art Biennale

The class gave all those work paths and we definitely had to choose some with we will not work because of time. Lucia made us a schedule to work in small groups according to our choices. This week has been massive, no day off and several projects a day.

Leather molding¶

P9 Artist Profile: Wei Li

Jean-Paul Gaultier x Olivier Rousteing Fall/Winter 2022

Knit casting¶

I wish I had more time to work and explore the casting, intense references with the art of Ernesto Neto and TSZ YAN NG

Tools¶

Process and workflow¶

Crystallization (wednesday)¶

General recipeAlum recipeCopper sulfate recipeProcessCaution

distilled water
crystals (copper sulfate, epsom salt or alum salt)
patience

400g alum
1L distilled water
a crystal of alum (starter)
glue varnish (optional)

450g copper sulfate crystals
125ml distilled water
a crystal of alum (starter)
glue varnish (optional)

Heat water until 80°

Dissolve crystals

Filter before transfer in the container for soaking

copper sulfate: wear gloves and mask

scaffolding Starting to scaffold straight on the body / Sterilization of the jars and knitted supports

For all, place or slightly glue a crystal on the support to be crystallized (of the same composition), in order to help it to start crystallization.

Prepare the containers as well as the supports: sterilization by boiling to avoid impurities that would take the lead onto the crystals we want to grow.
Make sure that the crystallization medium does not touch the bottom or the edges, if you want the crystals to form where you want them.
Immerse until the crystal starter. Wait few days.

Copper sulfate

Steps of immersive bath with knitted and normal threads :

Here we can notice in the results that of course crystals grow everywhere (how could I think it will only grow on the thread ?) so it's nice in the end, but not what expected.

Alum & epsom

What happened to be more interesting was to lay the textile in a plate and submerge only with a thin layer of solution and wait for the evaporation. This technic reminds me of the marais salants in french Bretagne. This way, the crystals grown more homogenenously on the surface.

Steps of march technic with leather, wool and avocado-alginate biomaterial in alum bath :

Steps of march technic with grapefruit skin and copper sulfate :

Mycelium (wednesday)¶

kit

We used a mycelium kit consisting of : fungus already inoculated on wood chips and a flour (binder). We mixed the two in the desired quantities 60g of flour for 1kg of shavings, and molded into different shapes and supports. Wrap with plastic film, pierce with a few stabs and place in a room with a constant temperature of about 22°C.

After 2-3 days, the mycelium started to spread and the chips turned white.
I made small tests with a broken plate and reconstitution of an acorn only with its hat (picture below).
You could find more experiments about growing mycelium at Amandine's page.

kit

Paper (thursday)¶

Recipe

1kg floor
4L water half warm half cold
X shredded fabrics (using the shredder)

When the mixture is ready, mold a layer of about 5mm thick paper in a screen frame. Wringing out, demolding on textile support (to avoid adhesion on cardboard support).

Drying 1 to several days depending on the thickness of the work and the humidity of the room.

As far as I am concerned, I used the bottom of this bath, which did not contain any more of the previous crushed textile fibers.

I used the fabric dust coming out of the grinder, the threads were totally decomposed so the mixture with the paste was very fine. I added a little bit of glue.

My goal was to make the thinnest possible sheets of paper. The result is a very thin sheet (less than a millimeter) with a very soft feel (like a felt) but it's very fragile.

Some of the sheets were so thin in places that I had a hard time peeling them off the canvas of the frame without tearing them.

I wanted to consolidate them by adding another layer: gelatin resin for one, and glue + eggshell/coffee husk/avocado peel filler (leftover of biomaterial) for the other.

The resin has not yet dried completely and the glue has unfortunately stuck to the support.

Molding composite : ze gogotte (friday)¶

Real mineralogical curiosities, gogottes are concretions that form in very pure siliceous sands. Composed of tiny grains of quartz cemented together (sandstone), they can take amazing, strange and dreamlike shapes that make them unique natural sculptures. As a child, I used to accompagny my dad who is an amateur geologist in informal quarries to search for this types of amazing stones, here in the Rhône-Alpes area we call it Poupées du loess.

Me dressed as the fabric used.

For this project, there were two big steps. The first one has been managed by Camille, and you can find all the process and use of the CNC on her page for creating a mold in 3D. Once the mold was made, I ground up a fabric to make the composite material for this molding. We decided to use gelatin resin again for this work.

Long grinding step, as our mold was on a small scale, if we wanted to keep detail, we needed a composite that was not coarse.

Steps* Composite mixture : gelatin

* Grind the textile to the desired size
* Coat the mold with kerosene to improve the demolding
* Prepare the composite mixture*
* Cast
* Close the mold and clamp very tightly
* Wait

300 ml water
60 ml (37.5 g) powdered gelatin
6 g glycerin

steps of gogoting

This was a good experience but we spent too much time in grinding the fabric, next time maybe we'll choose another material. The gelatin glued well everything together, but inevitably mold came into play. Each day was cleaning day, it means it cannot last long inert in time.