Words about Art + Technology + Sustainability

Statement on The Converstations with Gee's Bend Exhibition, 2018.

On the Short Life of Color-Change Textiles, 2013.

On Art and Patents; and How We Value Our Creative Work, 2013.
a personal essay by Maggie Orth

Artist's Statement, 2009

As one of the first creative and technical practitioners of electronic textiles, I have had a rare opportunity to develop and grow an exciting new medium, electronic textiles, which use textile processes, such as weaving and sewing, to incorporate electronics and conductive fibers directly into fabric. My work in electronic textiles includes programmable color change textiles, interactive textile and light pieces, electronic fashions, and design products.

The materiality of my work is essential to its meaning. Electronic textiles juxtapose two seemingly antithetical worlds: textiles, which are stereotyped as handcrafted, decorative and feminine; and computer technology, which is seen as mass-produced, functional, and male. Working in textiles allows me to physically transform technology from hard, functional, mass-produced, and progress oriented, into something soft, sensual, and intimate. Electronic textiles allow me to handcraft my computational medium, creating a circuit and its electrical properties, like resistance, simultaneously with aesthetic design. Handcrafting computational media aligns my work with arts and crafts practices, which seek a deep understanding of the medium through physical process. Adding electrical function to decorative elements repositions the decorative, which is stereotyped as a lesser feminine artistic practice, and invigorates it with new creative questions of interactivity. Electronic textiles allow me to place high-tech in the service of the creative and sensual, reflecting my belief that making and experiencing aesthetic objects is an essential part of the human experience.

My color change textiles layer woven textiles, printed inks, software and time. In the gallery, the pieces begin when the viewer presses a button. Saturated color, hidden electrical elements, weave structure, and patterns are slowly revealed. Perception is challenged as background and foreground shift, and the static relationships of the compositional elements change. The experience is cumulative, quiet, and reflective, the opposite of most screen based media. Time in my work is experienced on many scales. Initially, software creates immediate changes which reflect weaving and yarn spacing. Over a few minutes, these become bold, compositional color elements. Over days and weeks, these changes become permanent, creating new visual elements on the piece. Viewers that return to the gallery days later see a subtly different piece, and the work that enters the gallery is not the same when it leaves.

The process of creating these works is one of revelation and relinquishing of authorship. Textile panels are woven with resistive yarns, and then printed thermochromic inks, which are dark and unsaturated. During the printing, I am only able to imagine the color change effect. I then connect control electronics to the textile and begin composing expressive software, which sends current to different parts of the textile, causing the resistive yarns to heat up and the fabric to change color. It is at this point that I experience the color change effect and see how the woven resistive yarns interact with saturated color and software.

My interactive textile and light pieces explore the hidden properties of textiles, including structure and color (which are revealed through light transmission), and electrical and tactile properties (which are revealed through touch). These works combine light with tactile and soft textile sensors. When the viewer touches the textile sensor, a small charge flows through the viewer's body to ground. Electronics sense this change and cause lights to dim or adjust, revealing color and pattern of textiles. The experience of the viewer is immediate and sensual and brings to the fore the electrical nature of our bodies. Viewers can use touch to change the pieces locally and immediately, or slowly create pattern and color effects over a larger surface. These works are made with a broad range textile processes, including machine embroidery, hand tufting and woven pile, each of which creates different tactile and light effects.

While the development of commercial products, including technology and patent development, and meeting electrical and safety standards, plays a large role in my technical mastery of the medium, it is also, like the logistical efforts of Christo, a part of my artistic process. Art does not exist in avauum of culture and it's econimic demands on creative people. My commercial activities enabled teh development of all my art. Without them, it would not have been possible.

It is in my products that the irony and humor of my work is perhaps most evident. A patented, UL listed, electronic pom pom is humorously transgressive and questions our culture's perception of technology it's status as functional, and fulfilling a need. Presenting high technology in a low tech aesthetic also questions our modern preconceptions about form and function and our preference of the "modern" aesthetic over the decorative.