Of the ordinary, in this ordinary: Translating the everyday for the textile design process
Loading...
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
Location:
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Authors
Date
2023
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Master’s Programme in Fashion, Clothing and Textile Design
Language
en
Pages
176 + 48
Series
Abstract
Our everyday moments often fade into the background of our lives, actions repeated over and over. This everyday, however, is the space we live and inhabit for the vast majority of our lives. By paying attention to the everyday, one is able to access the rich aesthetic dimension surrounding one’s own life, thereby enriching it. By the careful observation of my everyday textiles, situated in the context of my home, this thesis explores how the ‘mundane’ and ‘routine’ of the daily can be a rich source of inspiration for a textile design process. Defining the ‘everyday’ in terms of both my daily life and design practice, I also study how this careful paying attention to or act of sensibility can help designers translate everyday experiences into textile design. I highlight the role of a textile designer as a ‘translator’ one who traverses mediums transforming and adding to the initial experience and observations, translating daily life onto textile that is embedded with the rich storytelling that lies in the everyday. The theoretical background situates this practice within the broader context of everyday aesthetics. It discusses how our encounters with everyday objects and environments create aesthetic experiences, impacting decision-making and the ways in with we engage with the ‘everyday’. The concept of sensibility, or paying attention, is crucial for utilizing everyday life in design and enriches both daily life and the design process and manifests as textile thinking in the textile design process. Viewing the textile designer as a ‘translator’ then provides an insight into how experiences of the everyday can be translated into textiles by traversing across mediums in this process. With this foundation, the everyday textiles in my home and their relations to other things and myself are studied. Qualitative data is collected using an autoethnographic method – the diary, which includes notes, photos and drawings. The subsequent organisation and categorisation of this data takes place in the form of mind maps and finally, expressed in a visual format through the creation of a narrative collage book. The production part of the thesis uses this book as starting point to create six woven fabrics, representing a collection of mundane moments together patching a glimpse of the everyday. The outcome also includes a lookbook where these six fabrics are showcased in the setting of the home. This thesis, therefore, in brief, expands on a designerly way of doing focused research about everyday routines and life and experimenting with how to create design directions out of the autoethnography-based qualitative data. Further, with these findings, it offers insight into how everyday experiences can be methodically translated into textile design.Description
Supervisor
Salolainen, MaaritThesis advisor
Hidalgo Uribe, LeonardoPaavilainen, Heidi
Keywords
textile design, weaving, home textiles, translations, everyday aesthetics, sensibility, autoethnography
Other note
Media files notes:
Lookbook
Media creators:
krishnaswamy, anusuya
lin, yu-chen