ANETTE MILLINGTON

Response Patterns

Response Patterns is a project undertaken with the support of the Center for Craft's Materials-Based Research Grant, to invent environmentally responsive embellishment methods for textile. The team includes three faculty from the Parsons MFA Textiles program and leverages interdisciplinary experience—Yuchen Zhang’s knowledge in material science and interactive technology, Travis Fitch’s methodical study of architecture, geometry and digital fabrication, and Anette Millington’s expertise in textile art and embellishment.

The Materials-Based research grant at the Center for Crafts fosters new craft-based approaches to STEM research and advances innovative research in craft materials. In undertaking our project in June of 2020, we are exploring how new materials and technologies add time-based, environmentally responsive behavior to textile surfaces. Central questions to our investigation are: How does the relationship of surface and place change when nature, through light, weather and time, becomes a direct collaborator? What is the communication potential of environmentally responsive materials? What do new materials and technologies add to an already rich lineage of connection between textile and local ecosystems?

Meaning Embedded in material

The Coded Textile Project: Generating embellishment  

The Coded Textile Project uses computation to explore materials and meaning in textile embellishment. In the context of the project, “coded” is a process of designing a system of signs, organized by rules, procedures and relationships, using either analog or digital tools. Here machine thinking generates new possibilities for print, embroidered/embellished and woven design.

The project also takes the approach that textile embellishment is itself a “code”- storing information, abstracting meaning, formulating new symbols or communication systems. The relationship of embellishment to location is central to this investigation of “embellishment semiotics”. Our digital sketches and textile outputs explore how technology impacts the interaction of surface design and environment.

Everyday creativity in mother-makers

The Exquisite Mama Project: A MAKING GAME IN THE STYLE OF THE SURREALIST EXQUISITE corpse. 

This project explores the impact of motherhood on making practice and creativity, as well as the role of collaboration and play in creative process. The project is a year long mail-based collaboration with three artists. Objects are created in three steps, with each artist starting an object, mailing the object to the next artist to continue and finally mailing to the last artist to complete.  The format mirrors the exquisite corps drawing game, but does not consider head/body/feet, rather begin/ add/ resolve. The three makers all work in fibers/ soft sculpture, have an interest in the talismanic properties of art objects and see motherhood as generative to creative practice. 

Project Collaborators:

Rachel Klinghoffer:  http://www.rachelklinghoffer.com/

Brett Windham: http://brettdaywindham.com/