Implications and applications

First Research

My initial project ideas focused on wool, driven by a strong feeling that my textile practice should revolve around this material. With the aim of helping to revive this long-neglected industry, I work locally and on an artisanal scale, positioning myself within an existing, growing community that is reinvesting in wool and recognizing its many benefits.

I realized that for the Fabricademy project, I should not start something from scratch, like 'building a machine,' even though I'm very excited about it. I changed my mind so many times while trying to choose the 'perfect' project. I've come to understand that my project needs to strike a balance between what I already know how to do and what I want to learn.

Concept & Development - THREAD2PRINT PROJECT

As a Fabricademy project choice, I decided to focus on a research topic that had the potential to enhance and nourish my knitting practice, and more broadly, my work as a textile artist and designer. This research, led by Jim McCann, was developed at Carnegie Mellon textile Lab around a knitting-specific programming language called Knitout. .knitout is file format thought as a universal knitting machine language that can represent low level knitting machine instructions. Knitout was developed to simplify industrial or semi-industrial knitting langage and reclaim it, instead of passing through the learning and the use of private and opaque softwares.

Below, you will find all my references. I invite you to go directly to the "project" → "Thread2print" tab to access the booklet that explains the entire project!

References ↓↓↓

WHO

For all knitwear designers and knitting lovers.I’m obviously speaking to the textile world and to everyone who’s invested in it, but also to the fab lab and maker scene, where “soft” materials still haven’t fully found their place. Because no — textiles are not limited to a sewing machine and/or a semi-industrial embroidery machine.

WHAT

This project aims to develop and make accessible an academic research initiative focused on a program that transforms 3D models into knitting instructions for industrial and semi-industrial machines.The idea is to use this research as a base to adapt it for more accessible — and often overlooked — knitting machines: domestic knitting machines. More than just proposing artifacts, I want to bring this method of 3D modeling into the spotlight, giving it the same recognition and legitimacy as 3D printing.

WHEN

During the Fabricademy program and after.

WHERE

This project takes place within both textile-focused and more traditional fablabs, with the hope that one day such distinctions will no longer exist. It is also aimed at all knitting enthusiasts — and more broadly, at anyone passionate about textiles.

WHY

I know that learning to use a knitting machine is much more challenging than using a 3D printer, and I believe that’s why knitting machines receive so little attention. What I really wanted to convey in this project is the role that knitting machines, and more broadly textile machines, should play in fabrication spaces. It's about providing space for a whole community that currently works from home. The idea of doing 3D knitting, although very exciting, was also a way to tap into the trend that gave rise to fab labs, with the belief that anything could be produced in 3D with 3D printers. Today, we can 3D print with almost any material, and I wanted to extend this phenomenon to knitting by building on existing research, while also opening up this trend to a textile community that has been overlooked by fab labs.

Extension / Personalisation

The aim of this project is to make the research from Carnegie Mellon University on the Knitout language more accessible, and to enable the use of this language to create 3D forms with a domestic knitting machine. The broader ambition is to eventually expand the project into a more advanced and impactful formal exploration.

Formal research around the Knitout language has not developed much. Through this project, I would like to contribute by proposing new forms and objects as concrete applications and designs for this tool. I would like to carry out a popularization effort to further open up this research and make it more accessible. With these tools, many formal possibilities open up to me. I would like to highlight and concretize what the architect Philippe Rham calls the "Anthropocene style."

"The need to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption today, as well as the fight against heatwaves, calls for a reconsideration of the thermal value of decorative art from the past. It is essential to rethink our interior design practices, their spatial, formal, and material configurations, in a new perspective of climate performance: a decorative aesthetic unique to the twenty-first century, which we propose to call the 'Anthropocene style.'"

My interest has been focused on the moldings that adorn bourgeois interiors. The idea here is to shift their use, so that they are no longer merely ornamental elements of space, but also functional. Thus, these wall "appliques" have the simple goal of warming the space, much like tapestries did in the past.

References

drawings

This extension of the project aims to reconnect with my initial idea — IDEA 1 (as you can see in Miro "FIRST RESEARCH") — where I wanted to develop a method for felting wool directly in three-dimensional form. Here is the first slide presentation I made for the midterm presentation, which I didn’t continue, but it reflects my initial idea of mold-making!