ANETTE MILLINGTON

Response patterns: stage one

Our approach is iterative and experimental, resulting in a collection of samples, prototypes and propositional works for the external and internal environment.

Our first speculations included material behavior tests and imagined applications for the material transformations in color and shape, produced in response to UV light and heat, mechanical heating, and body temperature. A suite of 3D renderings and graphics capture our provocations (Credit Travis Fitch).

Initial textile work includes experimentation with 3D printed deposition, silkscreen hand embroidery, and circuitry on textile.

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?

Graphics exploring our methods and imagining

Graphic and 3D Rendering Design Credit Travis Fitch

Initial uv activated silkscreen

Link Here to Recorded NYTM Research Talk presented at New York Textile Month 2020, the project launch year.