13. Implications and applications

Final Project Proposal by Maddie Olsen

I’m from Dallas, Texas, which is a very urban and suburban area. Green spaces are limited and architected, and often times not species accurate to the original ecoregion of North & Central Texas: The Blackland Prairie. Remaining and restored parcels of the prairie are rare but valuable for local plants and wildlife. From my past work as an environmental educator, I connected with my community by sharing the stories of this landscape and the life it supports.

A few times, I have left Dallas for an extended period. Every time I come back, the landscape has changed drastically, quickly, and to cement. Returning in my early adulthood, engaging with the ecology for the first time opened my eyes to this: the disconnection from this environment has been deliberate since the inception of the city. In my research I came across an essay by Taylor Cleveland, Dallas: The Concrete Snake. A certain quote from an obscure book he referenced, Imagining Dallas, articulated the effect of continuous development in a place with little regard for its ecological origins.

"Our sense of culture does not come from a tending and caring for the ground, a caring for those who came before us, those who have long since returned to the soil and on whose ground we stand… We continually annihilate the past of this place and pretend that nothing came before us…"

State of the Art: Projects & Publications

1. Felted Terrain by Yihyun Lim
2. E-Textile Sensor Experiments: Tufting With Conductive Thread by Wearable Media
3. Tapis Magique: Machine-knitted Electronic Textile Carpet for Interactive Choreomusical Performance and Immersive Environments from MIT Media Lab
4. Record, Map and Capture in Textile Art: Data Visualization in Cloth and Stitch
5. Wild Dfw: Explore the Amazing Nature in and Around Dallas-Fort Worth
6. Finding Remnants of the Blackland Prairie Interactive map by Matt Donaldson
7. Electronic textiles for energy, sensing, and communication

References & Inspiration

Motivations and Timelines

What do I like to do, what skills do I already have?

Slow textile production. Weave, crochet, knit. Hand dye and hand construct. I want to return to writing more poetically, creatively, or narratively about the topics I research. Visually represent the colors and textures of living things through textile art.

What do I want to learn and explore more? What was new but exciting to me?

Electronics, 3D-modeling/digital fabrication. Designing the interaction with a textile. I am a very tactile maker, and want to invite or allow touch in my work. Clear metaphor for the disconnect/reconnect with a lost environment.

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