Dialogue tools

The lace-making pillow, the double loom and the stitching hoop are the three Dialogue tools. These provide the means to establish a dialogue for and through making. The action performed with these tools, in which two people are always involved, wants to prompt a shift into the perception of the textile material, which becomes involved in codifying and embedding spoken exchange and shared memories. The experiments set fabrics within a consolidated communication paradigm (dialogue between two), addressing cloth’s narrative potential (text) and examining the overlapping of the authorial intention and the viewer’s interpretation (only the participants have the visual key to decode their work). The final outputs are textile transcriptions, i.e. physically codified conversations.
I created three Dialogue tools, which could provide the means to establish a dialogue for and through making. The action performed with these tools, in which two people are always involved, wants to prompt a shift into the perception of the textile material, which becomes involved in codifying and embedding spoken exchange and shared memories. The experiments set fabrics within a consolidated communication paradigm (dialogue between two), addressing cloth’s narrative potential (text) and examining the overlapping of authorial intention and viewer interpretation (only the participants have the visual key to decode their work). The final outputs are textile transcriptions, i.e. physically codified conversations. In order to design tools for dialogue I selected three techniques connected to the cloth which could resemble three different typologies of dialogue. Moreover, the three objects wanted to be a wearable and nomadic workshop, which could be set and used in every place. Backstrap weaving, Stitching and Lacemaking are three techniques which require skills and are usually performed with a relation 1:1 artefact-maker. I modified the appearance and structure of the traditional tools, to obtain the possibility for two people to work on the same output, facing and helping each other.