TFRC taking time

TFRC Launch Event from Chris Ralls on Vimeo.

The launch of TFRC as a Centre was only 6 months ago but already there has been much activity and new direction, including the development of the four different Research areas (Science; Digital; Sustainability and Identity & Reflection) through workshops and lectures and the involvement of TFRC members in the VF Future Fashion Textile Student Competition across the UAL.

The launch event saw TFRC members create a collaborative artwork together with David Littler of Sampler-Culture Clash. We sat together as a group drawing onto a very long piece of grid paper, which was then punched with holes. The paper was then fed through a wind up machine that created delicate sounds that were mixed and sampled to create what we called 'textile music'.

David had even developed a play list of songs that have a textile theme - see the list here.

Looking back on that small action, it says alot about the nature of collaboration - true collaboration, where people are able to bring their diverse skills and interests to meet at a point and create something better together takes a huge amount of trust and willingness to try things differently. Most importantly, it takes time, and TFRC is really only at the beginnings of this journey.

Making textile music....

On Monday 13th December the TFRC member's invited David Littler to join them to make some textile music, at the 2010 Christmas workshop. Posing the question, 'What Does Our Research Sound Like?', David used this Sampler Culture-Clash workshop to take TFRC's four research themes and turn a discussion into sequencial drawings, and then drawings into music. The four TFRC themes are:

1. Design-Science Textiles

2. Digital Textiles

3. Sustainable Textiles

4. Identity & Reflection

The musical 'piano' recital at the end of the workshop was projected via a webcam, and later linked to sampling software, then looped and layered to create a more complex score. Watch this space, as we will upload the video when we have edited it, and you can see and hear for yourselves how our research sounds! During the session we also brainstormed song titles and band names that related to textiles, giving David a playlist for his You Tube DJ session at the launch party in the evening. We will also publish the list of TFRC textile music here soon, so that you can download and create your own textile compilations.

This fun session had been preceeded in the morning by the TFRC PhD Student Platform Event, where four of TFRC's research students had presented their projects. The four were all at very different stages, ranging from Matilda Aspinall's freshly registered project - just two months old - to the very final stages of Kate Goldsworthy's PhD which has used laser technology to explore the foward-cycling of polyester textiles.

You can follow the students and their projects at their own group blog space.