Process Development¶

Prototypes¶

Process Update, Jan 26, 2026:

I've spent the last two weeks acquiring materials and setting up my initial tests. This includes:

natural lakes, ( created 16 and bought 6 ) including indigo, cochineal and Japanese knotweed.
Built a mini cymatics rig to test cymatics with a waterproof speaker
Started 6 kombucha vats at the lab. They will grow for 16 days.
Sourced 2 larger speakers and an amp for the big cymatics, and researched their connections and wattage needs.
Further researched cuts and patterns I like by playing with paper shapes
Documentation research - how will I showcase all my hard work?
silk, wool

This week;

testing natural dyes
testing cymatics for marble ability
developing the sewing pattern further

Next week:

Build the pattern from muslin
continue dye tests

Montreal, Feb 7 - Feb 14:

Build the final cymatics rig in the lab
natural dye tests
make a vat of indigo
test kombucha for dye ability
decide on final colour palette
source final fabrics

Machine List:

Cymatics rig

Mid-term Presentation Feedback¶

At midterm, Professor Becky Early from University of the Arts London, (the guest judge for my presentation) gave me some fantastic advice.

I’d pitched the idea of having other people wear my final garment – to see how they would style it, as a fun experiment.

This was a systems project after all, and I knew other people absolutely had to be part of the system. The whole point was to make room for connections in my work.

Becky liked my idea. But she said (I’m paraphrasing): “Don’t forget, YOU are still the artist. So don’t let it get too broad. Make sure your original point of view is still palpable”.

After this feedback I realized it wasn’t about how people style the jacket. It was about the ones who would help me make it – who were going to sell me the materials and give me advice.

I realized the jacket was a symbol, but the prototype is actually the process.

This advice steered me in a much more honest direction. It was also a better way to test out my system because now I’d have to ask strangers for their portraits, not friends. It pushed me a little more. It was also a good excuse to practice French. I took French immersion as a kid and have always wanted to get it to a level where I can converse with people in shops without them switching to English.

Process Update, Feb 23, 2026:

It's been busy since mid terms. The last few weeks were heavy on the experimentation front. I hit a few road blocks. My lake pigments were really not marbling....

I made what feels like a thousand pigments at the front of term. I was going for "security in numbers", but none of them were working. So I was starting to panic slightly this week. I would have advised past me to focus only on a few colours ( and think of what I actually want to wear!). I was feeling stretched thin.

But I had to keep pushing, so I moved on exploring pattern with other materials. I'd previosuly used acrylic to test my prints - but this week I also played with cornstarch. I learned the thickness of the marbling bath will actually change the resonant frequencies of the cymatics. Cornstart was cool because it temporaily freezes the patterns in the bath when the frequency stops.

I also experimented with different rig set ups. I've used both speakers and a surface transducer now. I switched to a transducer because I read transducers are usually better at showing higher, more lace-like frequencies.

I've learned,

A) - higher frequencies are very annoying for you and anyone around you to listen to constantly ( so it was actually I blessing I was only getting low ones.)

B) the most influential element is actually usually the plate size. Different plate sizes and materials respond to different frequencies.

Like latex....

These cymatics were made by cutting the bottom off an old distilled water jug and stretching a jumbo balloon over it (it took two people to tape it down). I carved a hole in the side for a voice tube. Unlike my electornic gear that needed a lot of fussing, this set up gave me instant results when I sang into it. They were subtle but promising. The ones in the photo were generated by placing my small waterproof speaker under it. But it was a difficult systme to stabilize.

And the particle size of your cymatics medium also matters.

The logic here was that if I use pigment instead of sand I might somehow imprint the pattern on wet alumed fabric. I did this and left it for the weekend. Unfortunately the result is very very faint when the pigment washes off - so I have yet to get that to succeed.

I'm realizing I'm probably only going to have time to capture water cymatics.

In material news - Annie contacted her kombucha waste supplier and they gave us three giant buckets of scoby! It is the most alien material I've ever worked with. It looks like giant slabs of chicken breast. It's truly bizarre. But I loved it!

She so graciously helped me wash it all and we had a nice Friday laying it out artistically on a sheet of MFD. It took about one week to fully dry.

In the design realm, I've been trying on a lot of different cuts and patterns to see what shapes and scales I like, and how they blend together.

And I've been shopping for a lot of materials ...

I'm still finalizing the design. I really want to do multiple simple garments with cymatic patterns at differnt scales - but we will see if I can get time back after my massive marbling delays.

Documentation wise - I've been really wanting to get more comfortable with film photography for a long time - so I told myself this was the perfect excuse to bite the bullet. I've started taking film photos of the process and my world right now when I'm out and about - including portraits of all the people in the shops who have sold me supplies. Everyone has said yes! Montreal is so great.

And to circle back to pigment - it finally registered, after all this time, that traditional ebru was done with earth pigments! I'm glad I tried plants, but to ensure I can get any prints at all, I'm now focusing on earth pigment instead.

I'm happy to report that today finally I managed to get my first earth pigments to marble. (Annie helped a lot.)

So now it's on to the final phase...

capturing the prints and figuring out what the heck my garment should look like.

Design, ideation & sketches¶

Bag


Project management	Digital bodies	BioChromes
E-textiles	Project management

Outfit


Computational Couture	BioFabricating Materials	Soft robotics
Implications and applications	Project management	Digital bodies

___Cymatics Hertz Comparison__

The following tones were captured on printer paper using sumi-ink and porphyry pigment. No alum was used for the tests as printer paper catches the ink nicely without pre-treatment.

The lower tones produced wide waves. The higher tones produced tighter waves. Where the movement was most vigorous, the paint was pushed away leaving "empty areas".

The vigorousness of the wave is also impacted by the volume the tone is played at, as much as the tone itself.