Taction

Installed sheet from crit day! Some of my favourite things I sewed on (I spy time?) are:

a piece of tile I found on a hike in my hometown

a iridescent shell I found on a trip to Toronto island with my boyfriend

a rabbit lego piece

a bead that says ‘love me’

a piece from a broken charger

(better photos)

What have you learned about yourself doing this self-directed assignment?

I have learnt that I love hand making, especially textiles, those were the moments that felt like play during this project. I have learnt that I tend to get overwhelmed when I have too many projects going on at once. There were times I just sat at my laptop paralyzed by the amount of tasks I had to do. I have also learnt that I'm not over my fear of public speaking :(

What did you find to be the most difficult aspect of your chosen assignment? Creativity? Research? Connecting design to research? Craft? Organizational skills? Time management? Something else entirely?

I found organization and time management to be the most difficult. I often got stuck in the ideating and planning stage without making anything, I found it difficult to just start making. Connecting design to research was difficult at points, there were times where I felt my works and ideas were sort of surface level. I was happy with how I did this in my 2D project. Taction is so easy to understand and can be such a broad topic that I found it hard to come up with compelling ideas.

What did you enjoy about this opportunity?

I enjoyed the opportunity to just make work for myself, I know in the professional world I'm not going to get many opportunities or this amount of dedicated time to do that. I loved sewing for this project, especially the projection sheet, I had fun at every step of that. I liked making the filter and collage for my reflective too, it felt very playful. I also enjoyed getting to see everyone's work, It really felt like we built this little community and I got all these peaks into people's lives.

How would you rate your performance over the course of the semester?

7/10? I was coming to critique regularly but didn't always have much to show, I could have pushed myself further in refining my work and bringing it to a professional level but I've made some stuff I'm happy with.

Hindsight is 20/20. What would you do differently, now that you've had this opportunity to work this way?

There's many things I would do differently. I would make sure I'm bringing something physical/visual to every critique. Most of the time I wasn't fully happy with the feedback I was getting, it didn't feel productive or helpful. I know we're all visual people so having something instead of just talking would help. And it would give me small deadlines to work towards. Having specific goals/questions for each critique would be useful too.

Testing it out with the projector

These sketches are more of my process

This one is trying to figure out mouse controlled visuals.

Link to final sketch

My friends Interacting with the installation! Thank you Nav, Anusti and Hana <3

Abandoned direction

I first wanted to create a publication collecting all my research and covering different themes that came up throughout my work. I was work around the idea of a touchstone, something all my other work could be compared to/referenced with. I abandoned this idea because of time and It felt too stiff and cold for taction. Below are a couple of spreads I made and an outline I created with a bit of writing.

I bounced around on ideas for a bit after that, I thought about creating a poster with the thermochromic powder or an embossed accordion book.

Part A

I shifted to the idea of games and tact. Tact comes from the same root as taction, meaning to have skill in something. I thought it was fitting since throughout these projects I've tried to learn new skills. Tact also reminds me of games, that's something that has been in the back of my mind since the beginning of the semester. I was drawn to the idea of fate predicting games and fortune telling, to reflect how my end products for this class was unknown when I started it. And how receiving my word was fate/chance.

For one part of my reflective I created a set of 16 oracle cards. One side of the cards has a collage I created using images from throughout this project: process, abandoned directions, inspiration. There's even a couple sunset photos I took while staying late to work at school. It's divided into 4 corners, one for each of the projects.

The other side has writings about each of the projects. The text is covered by thermochromic paint reactive to heat, so its black until you touch it. In tarot card reading you typically lay the cards out in a specific order, sometimes it's chronological. If you lay the cards out chronologically they connect to form the whole image.

I printed this on textured paper so the printed version has this distressed look. That was wasn't intentional but I think its so taction. Also I'm not fully happy with how the thermochromic pigment came out, it's a little streaky and patchy. I was paint it on the night/morning before crit so I rushed it a little.

Part B

I wanted to do something extra for my reflective, and going with the game theme I created these fortune tellers. I used to love making these as a kid, I started thinking about them as I was creating the projection screen for my 4D. I used to make them just to keep my hands busy, like how I treat hand stitching now. They go perfectly with the tact, connection/contact and touch meanings I've gotten from taction. They require touch and to be present in the digital world to make them, and they're a game you play with others.

In designing this I took the 4 main meanings I've gotten from taction and created questions based off of them. These are things I've been thinking about throughout this project and Ideas I'm going to take into creative work in the future. Pulling from concepts I learned about in texts I read for this project like ocularcentrism and memories associated with senses.

I added photos in black and white with a textured grain to represent each word. I used a humanist serif and added bodoni dingbats for an extra maximalist tactile something. Every serif typeface I've used in this project has been a humanist/oldstyle typeface because they have remnants of handwriting in them and look natural. I included instructions as well.

(going back and uploading writing initiatives)

I presented the plan for my touch box (3D) and the concept and tests for my 4D

They liked how the 3D subverted senses and connected well to my word

Pushed me to better connect/explain how the filter connects to my word. Suggested ideas for objects, like stuffing a stuffed animal with rocks, a past student did this. Talked about Sanchari's work in another class working with webcam footage

almost my final hydra sketch, just adding overlayed noise controlled by the mouse.

Also going to either put my sketch inside a webpage or just hide the code.

To go with my coded filter I want to create a screen for it to be projected on! I'm using the same fabric, ribbon and beads as in my book, hoping to tie them together.

I was really inspired by all the small trinkets you find in antique stores, and things that people collect. When I was younger my mom gave me a tin that had all these treasures she collected when she was a kid, I'm thinking about all those objects and the act of collecting. It's so tactile, like keeping an object (eg. a smooth rock or shell) in your pocket to hold.

I went to Courage my Love to get beads and objects for this project and the interior totally fits this idea. They have all these bins and drawers, you just want to touch everything. I dug through this giant bin of brass objects to find the embellishments I bought.

I have the hand photos just working on editing them, cutting and hemming the fabric, then I'll embroider and embellish. I'm also getting the projector from my dad this weekend and will test projecting as I finish up the coding.

The photo holding fabric concept is inspired by Susan Weil and José Betancourt's Catenary. Also love this piece by Aukje Boonstra, the stitching around the pottery shards is so pretty

This is my my reflective, I'm either going to create a book with a cover using this or create a poster covered in it. Thermochromic powder is changes color with heat and body/hand heat works well.

I tested different binders and layers. Mod Podge worked the best.

For my 3D I wanted to create a touch box/sensory box to compare how different people's brains processed touch without other senses. For the objects for the box I wanted to transform common household objects, like surrealist sculpture. I was really influenced by Méret Oppenheim's Le Déjeuner en Fourrure, the texture looks so upsetting to me. I also really liked the idea of mixing hard and soft textures in unexpected places, especially with textiles since they are comforting soft textures. Marie Rullions daily haptics ceramics collection was another inspiration.

For the actual box I originally wanted to use rapid prototyping to create a wooden box, I made this cardboard mockup with interlocking joints. It wasn't very sturdy, I used a similar method to make a lamp for my GD3 class and it took alot of glue to make it stand. I decided to just buy a storage box from ikea, cut a hole and hot glue fabric to cover the hole.

I decided on 3 objects- a stuffed rabbit filled with rocks, a knitted swatch stiffened with glue and a glass covered in fabric. I used mostly objects/materials I already had. The rabbit came from a crit, Paul said that a past student did something similar for their project. I wanted to knit because I really like the texture of it and I wanted to subvert the softness. And the glasses are inspired by a project my Dad whos an elementary art teacher did with his students.

The knitted swatch took ages to dry and the centre wasn't fully dry when I started the experiment, I had to hold it under the bathroom hand dryer :/

Here I'm testing out different methods for tying the tights around the glass, I went with hand stitching.

I then asked 10 people I know to touch the objects, draw what they felt and write observations. I went with 2 minutes to touch the objects and how every much time they needed to write and draw. I was originally going to do each object separately but I decided to put them in the box at the same time so It would flow smoother and be faster.

Thank you to my friends, classmates and prof for participating!!

Right now I'm finishing designing the booklet collecting all the drawings. Something that came to mind when organizing everyone's responses was google's Quick, Draw!, it's a game designed to train a neural network on users drawings. The sets of data remind me of my data, with how the drawings range in detail and how they are influenced by people's frame of reference.

I was also thinking about the Aphantasia test diagrams, measuring how well someone can picture objects. I think that ability plays into how accurate people were doing my test. It'd be interesting to ask people where they fall on this scale.

This linear format also influenced how I am arranging the drawings in my booklet