Vicki Zhiwei Hong

How do we make materials more alive?

The restrictions and inconvenience caused by pandemic has once again reminded us how human were deeply influenced by accessible assets, environment and sociological connections. While Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) keeps on pushing, perfecting and progressing to reshape post human identities, Vicki proposed a question on the materials and tools that were used to mediate our interactions with inorganic compounds. By prioritising object-oriented thinking, the research direction focuses on developing a textile creature from the angle of knitting and motion design. 

The morphing patterns, the continuously spinning yarns and the forces passed through tools by the makers are what bring textiles alive. Vicki reinterpreted the motion and interactions initiated during the process of textile making and present them as a series of kinetic installations:

⁃ A living creature should be able to sense others, be inevitably, unwontedly influenced, and synchronised. The contraction and expansion were influenced breathing rhythms captured by barometric sensor.

⁃ A living creature will eventually die. Borrowing from the design of domestic knitting machine, the yarns lead by motors will be gradually dissolved by mist spraying on them continuously.

⁃ A living creature should have flesh, bone, vessels that bear forces and transmit informations. The braided tube were filled with iron powders that react to magnets controlled by motors.

⁃ A living creature will produce an energy field that exceeds its ‘limbs’ to influence others around it. The bio cushion was embedded with pressure sensor, once activated, the creature produces magnetic field that attracts metal. This was a model for resolving luggage safety issue for sole travellers.

Viewing textile as a living creature, she was later mapping the devices back to the conventional way of textile making and illustrated a series of fields of application.