velvet etching, resin, bleaching // surface design

Well, hello!

This post is divided into three parts to show the three different technique

Velvet Etching

Using a fibre remover on silk viscose velvet to create patterns on the material.

STEPS:

  1. Place sufficient fibre remover onto the silkscreen.
  2. Place the velvet (velvet side facing up) below the silkscreen.
  3. Use a squeegee to spread the remover.
  4. Remove silkscreen, leave it aside for the magic to happen.
  5. When you see that some of the velvet has been “eaten away”, iron the velvet (place something between the iron and velvet).
  6. Iron the velvet until it starts turning brown or burned.
  7. Scrape the velvet to reveal the design.

Thoughts

To be very honest, I didn’t exactly understand what I was doing, I was merely following the steps given. Ironing also took very long because I was ironing for some time but didn’t see any outcome and when it finally started turning brown, I was panicking thinking that I burned the velvet. However, it was fulfilling to scrape all those remnants of to see the final outcome and I must say it is very pretty.

Some things to take note:

  • Control the amount of fibre remover, not too little and not too much. For my first attempt, I used too little remover, so not much of the fibre was removed. I would also expect that if used too much, the remover might spread to other parts of the velvet, and your design may not come out as nicely.
  • Try to use high temperature while ironing the velvet to get it brown faster.

It is a shame that we were using white velvet, it would be fun to experiment with other colours and a thicker velvet so you get to see the depth better. I would have wanted to experiment one more time with this technique, but with the Covid-19 situation, I can’t get the materials to do it 🙁

RESIN

STEPS:

    1. Pour resin into a container, measure the amount of resin.
    2. Add approx. 4% hardener into the resin.
    3. Stir evenly.
    4. Pour mixture into mould.
    5. Add in any materials you like.
    6. Let it dry. (make sure not to touch it as it can get hot)

Here are some that I made.

Mus, Minjee and I tried 2 different rounds of resin.

For my first round, I used translucent rocks and iridescent confetti strips.

For the confetti strips, I wanted everything in there, but the mixture already hardened by the time I tried putting it in.

For the second round, I used donut moulds and filled it with marbles, circle paper confetti and translucent confetti strips (same as the first round). However, for this round, we tried a mixture without hardener (BAD DECISION). We wanted to leave enough hardener for the rest of the class so we tried without it. Even after 3 days, it still hadn’t dry and unfortunately, the school was going to be closed so we had to leave it in school to dry.  Well at least, it should probably be dry by the time we get to go back to ADM.

But here are the final outcome!

THOUGHTS?

Some observations I made were:

  • It is important to use the right amount of hardener. For our first attempt, I believe we may have use too much hardener which resulted in it drying too fast. But if you put too little (or none at all), expect to wait forever for it to dry.
  • Another thing I noticed was the mixture with hardener appears more yellow than the one without. I personally prefer the clear version, it looks more sophisticated.
  • As seen from the blue rocks resin in the first attempt, the rocks appear to be afloat even though I placed it in before adding more resin on top of it. Probably cause the rocks are too light but it could help if I place the rocks in, let it dry a little bit and poured another layer of resin after that.

Again with the Covid-19 situation, I won’t be able to continue exploring with resin 🙁 It would have been cool to make resin with a snake scale pattern.

Bleaching
Steps:
  1. Wrap your cloth in whatever pattern you like.
  2. Apply the bleach accordingly.
  3. Let the bleach sit in for less than 10 minutes.
  4. Wash the bleach out properly.
  5. Let dry and voila!

I tried the bleaching technique at home with my old shirt. As you can see, there is a stain on the shirt (it was one of my favourite shirts *sad face*).

When I did some research on bleaching, what I noticed was it works the same way as tiedye. So the patterns used to make tiedye can be used for bleaching too! I tied the shirt into different segments and bleach the knotted parts.

Thats my cat at the back, chilling.

Something unexpected happened.

While working with bleach, my cat, Socks, started reacting to the smell of it. Don’t worry, she wasn’t negatively affected but rather she started getting high. I googled it and turns out, cats react to bleach the same way they would react to catnip. Well long story short, she tried sneaking into the bathroom to get high on bleach. So do take note for those that have cats at home!

While panicking about my cat, I didn’t observe the shirt. When I came back to it, I was shocked by how much colour was gone.

However, after opening it up and washing it, the bleaching came out better than I expected.

Thoughts?
  • The bleach might have been too strong. Do add water to the bleach to dilute it.
  • Wear gloves and mask, because working with bleach can hurt.

I really like the pattern and I believe with the right pattern, the bleaching can turn out like the snake scale pattern, thus I’ll be trying out bleach for one of my techniques for the final project. But I’ll make sure to keep my cat away from the bathroom. Stay tuned!

 

thermochromic ink // surface design

One of my classmates used thermochromic ink for her interactive project before, so I have seen the magic happened before and it was cool to try on my own!

We first began by mixing a clear base with a thermochromic powder (colour of your choice) together. (Careful not to inhale too much of the powder)

We tried transferring the mixture using two techniques: silkscreen and block printing.

Silkscreen
  1. Layer some of the mixture at the bottom or the top of the silkscreen.
  2. Using a squeegee, evenly drag the mixture in 1 swift direction. If need to, go over a couple of times to make sure everything has been covered by the mixture.
  3. Remove the silkscreen and voila.

Thoughts?

I placed too little mixture on the silkscreen, so halfway through my striped pattern design, it ran out of mixture to coat the rest of the design. This was primarily because there wasn’t much mixture left. So I salvaged some mixture that was left on the silkscreen by the others and created a gradient effect for the other half which actually came out pretty neat!

Block Printing

In my first attempt, I was the first person to use the mixture and the block. I wanted to try the yellow mixture. However, I didn’t think that the colour of the block could fuse into the mixture, so my print turned out more green than yellow.

From my observation of Mus and Minjee’s prints, Minjee and I took more time to press the block down as compared to Mus. However, Mus’s print came out more yellow, so I guess less time would allow less colour of the block from running down.

Also, the print came out quite watery for the yellow print, but you don’t see the same for the black one.

So thats all I have for this week!

knitting // surface design

A couple of years back when I had a lot of time to spare, I tried knitting for fun and this was the only outcome I achieved. Now, I use it as a blanket for my pet cat, Socks.

So, it was really fun trying knitting again. Initially, I wasn’t aware that how you move the needles (forward or backwards) would affect the knitting outcome. However, it was very tricky trying to do 2 different knits in one (right and wrong side) because I got confused by the direction. Eventually, I stuck to one technique of knitting.

I failed many times during my first few knits, which required me to start all over again. But once I got the hang of it, I couldn’t stop.

Other than the knitting needles, I bought a circle knitting device from Daiso which helped to create a circular knit like this.

This was a lot easier to manage but requires some getting used to at the start.

Here are all my knitting experimentations.

All 3 knits make use of different types of yarns, thus achieving 3 different outcomes.

I don’t exactly have much to say about knitting. So that’s it for now. I’m currently experimenting knitting with other kinds of material. One material I’m using is twine and it is pretty painful to knit 🙁 Nonetheless, I’ll update soon with the outcome!

manipulating polyester // surface design

When I bought my polyester, I thought I had just needed to get 100% polyester. I didn’t take into account of stitching of the material. Unfortunately, the stitching on the material I purchased was a little too loose so initially, my thoughts were that it probably can’t hold the shape very well.

STEPS:

  1. Use whatever materials you can find to act as a mould.
  2. Wrap the polyester around each object with a rubber band or rope in your desired design.
  3. Wrap it with aluminium foil.
  4. Boil it for 45mins to an hour depending on your object and material.
  5. Unwrap aluminium foil.
  6. Let it to dry.

For my experimentation, I used square wooden chips as my mould and tried a simple origami.

For the wooden chips, the outcome came out pretty nicely considering the loose material and the fact that it was only 1 layer of material. However, the rubber band I used to tie it down was too thick and long so there is a big gap between the chip and the base. So it is important to consider what you use to tie your material.

 

The origami was a failure, probably because the material was too loose. and there wasn’t a stiff material to create the folds.

Audrey mentioned that to do origami folds, she used YUPO paper and placed the polyester between 2 papers. I’ll try experimenting with that technique in the future!

field trip // national museum

Before I talk about one installation, I shall give my general opinion on the field trip.

I have visited the National Museum a number of times and I had always enjoyed the Glass Rotunda exhibit. However, after today’s field trip, I have a deeper appreciation of the entire exhibit.

Maybe because I was too lazy to read the long chunk of text previously, I wasn’t aware that the Glass Rotunda exhibit was linked to Magic and Menace. To be very honest, even though I went to NMS many times, I never once visited Magic and Menace. So before today, I thought there was a disconnection between the Glass Rotunda exhibit and the rest of the museum, given that the rest of the museum was more historic while the Glass Rotunda was more, for the lack of a better word, “aesthetic”.

So I had a thought.

Is my inability to associate the Glass Rotunda exhibit to the history of Singapore caused by my laziness to read chunks of text or by the design and structure of the exhibit?

One thing I thought could help with the association would have been to place the Magic and Menace exhibition adjacent to the Glass Rotunda exhibit so the relationship between the two becomes clearer.

Or

Imagine walking through Magic and Menace and having a magical door that leads you into the Glass Rotunda exhibit from there.

Nonetheless, the Glass Rotunda exhibit doesn’t cease to amaze me every time I step into the space and now knowing more details, I’m in greater awe.

I guess the only “complain” I have is the proximity sensor at the last section of the exhibit that wasn’t reactive enough. The issue I felt was that the trees didn’t appear fast enough. From what I’ve gathered from taking Interactive modules so far, a comment that is often received is that feedback or reaction should happen instantaneously as to when an action is done. When there is a delay in feedback, people can’t associate their actions to that feedback so the outcome seems to appear random rather than on purpose.

I might have pointed out way too many bad points so I shall end it off more positively by saying that the exhibition was definitely an immersive experience which I believe is credited to the beautiful art as well as the sensory experience of using smells.

Now I shall move on to talk about one installation in the “An Old New World”.

The installation I have chosen is the one below.

Using this wooden, circle object, we are supposed to match the herb to its remedy. The audience is invited to pick up the circle object and match it to the correct image. When it is correctly matched, the image lights up.

I didn’t actually have time to read this station properly, but my guess it is to show how people in the past use traditional medicine instead of western medicine to treat ailments. So in terms of the association to the rest of the exhibition, I think it is pretty relevant.

Honestly, I thought the interaction and technology behind it were impressive. When I first touch the circle object, it didn’t feel “technological” so, in a way, they hid the technology well.

However…

I’m sorry to say, the feedback from the interaction was fairly disappointing. What do I mean by feedback? Basically how it communicates to the audience when you get it right or wrong.

Firstly, there was no indication if you got it wrong. Would have been more intuitive if there was red or green light behind the “Place here to match” marker.

Secondly, what was the association between the circle object and the herb? I think it lacks the visual element to contain the subject matter. For example, maybe in the circle object, the actual herb is contained inside it, then people can see the relation.

Thirdly, as mentioned by Shah, an animation might have served the purpose better. So when you correctly match it, the animation changes to when the person is healed. For example, for the cut on the arm, when accurately matched, the image of the arm changes to a healed wound. I believe this will help people better understand that the herbs are used as a healing technique.

Enough of the negatives.

So what can I learn from this?

It is important to take note of how your audience perceives the feedback. Every object in an installation should have an association with your subject matter to help the audience better understand your message.

In the context of my project, I guess what I should take note of the objects placed in my space, and figure out the user experience of it. How do you manipulate the space, objects and the artwork so that the audience interact with it the way you want them to?