Bootcamp 2017 Paris - Angela Barbour

Day 01 . Monday. September 11 , 2017

I am very happy for being able to join the Textile Academy Bootcamp Paris 2017 in this very very busy week ! As I have just known (in the weekend) about it and done my subscription exactly in time to go on, it was not possible to have the enough free time to do everything I wanted but I will do my best to try to at least think about the content even if I dn't have the time to do all practices or hands on.

In the first day, we had a very interesting introduce from Fiore and Anastasia, the presentation of the participants that was wonderful, because there are people from all over the world, since Vancouver and Brazil (I ) to Mumbai , India crossing to Lisbon, Amsterdan, Ireland, Norway, Germany and of course Barcelona.

After we had the lecture from Zoe Romano : Hacking the Fashion System.

Hands on : Laser Cutting

My experience with Laser Cutting, appart from those from the normal FabLab activities, are for my personal artistic work. As an artist I've been working with Memories and with objects that shows the time passing, so in my interventions I 've included some old fabrics that are “cut” by termites together with materials that are laser cut, so the visitant of the exhibition can't distinguish what were cut by whom. I think it is a very interesting point to consider because, usually people don't even want to look at an old tissue and especially if it is damaged by insects. But in my work I have incorporated this kind of material because I believe that insects will create distinct patterns of what I would think of doing and I find it very interesting and inspiring. I also enjoy seeing the beauty in the old, destroyed, spoiled and rotten.

TEIA, 2017 Installation

Here you have an example of this procedure in a work I have done for an exhibition that was in an old space, first constructed and occupied by a blanket factory, the “Cobertores Parayba” that were very famous and everyone in Brazil used them and recognized them as the Brazilian blanket made of wool and cotton from here.

Not only the building of the factory , but an entire village, containing many buildings from the factory, houses for the employees, a school for their children, and many leisure areas. But after Chine industry has entered with its products in Brazil, especially its duvets, this old and solid factory has not been able to compete, like many others . So what left over from the old factory is a small employee's cooperative. In this place I've collected images, and depositions to include someway in my artwork.

The result of this project you can see in these picture, where damaged tissues, eaten by termites composes and share the scene with pieces laser cut, some tissues and old books. The results become very interesting and people can't believe when you say that some of them where naturally cut.

Day 02 . Tuesday . September 12 , 2017

Lecture : Embodies Forces by Aldo Sollazzo.

Talked about the impact of computational Fashion. Language and Scale.

Anastasia : 3D Printing

Hands On : 3D Printing

Renda Natural, 2015 Digital Photograph in Fineart Cotton Paper

In a similar way of thinking my art projects, I have some photograph series about damaged materials. In the example bellow you can see one of them, and I propose a challenge for you to guess how this work was done.

Day 03 . Wednesday . September 13 , 2017

Lectures:

Biomaterials and Biocomposites. Anastasia

Natural Textile Dying. Cecilia Raspanti

Considerations in Natural Textile Dying

As I am a Pharmacist and Biochemistry, appart of being Visual Arts, I would like to propose some aspects to the discussion and perhaps help in including these itens in the Fabricademy program.

01. Growning Bacteria is very interesting but needs some special instruction and tips.

02. About this same subject I think it is important to discuss about : Contamination, Selection and Resistance, that can occur in a bacteria culture process.

03. About extracting the natural dyes from the bacteria , also is important to discuss, because it has to be very well planned, because it is not an easy process and may be more toxic to the environment than the traditional dying, if not well done.

04. I think it is important to include lab safe procedures in the program, to work natural dying , because, even if we feel as just cooking in our kitchen, the process demands special safe procedures, like in a biological or chemical Lab.

Hands On:

Well , this is the best part of the program, and I absolutely crazy about the natural dying process and have some previous experience, that I would like to share. I have made many experiments with several natural dyings , and also testing different mordants , and different pHs. Here you have some doccumentation of this process.

Experience different Natural Dyes In order of appearance in the image: Urucum (Annatho), Casca de Cebola Amarela (Yellow Onions Peel), Açafrão ou Curcuma (Turmeric), Romã (Pomes), Casca de Cebola Roxa (Purple Onions Peel), Café (Coffee), Catuaba (Catuaba), Abacate (Avocado).

Day 04 . Thursday . September 14 , 2017

Lecture: Making Sense of Sensors by Fiore

Hands on : Electronic by Anastasia

Today we have seen many interesting things about , how it is possible to include electronic in our projects using since boards with all included as making our own boards from the beggining. For me , it was very helpful to have access to this content, and I will use it in next projects.

Day 05 . Friday . September 15 , 2017

Today we have a meeting in the morning and everyone has gone to do their projects, I used my time updating this documentation, and thinking in what I want to do with all we experience and share this week.

As final projects I would like to do:

01. A best documentation of all my experiments in Natural Dying, to be able to be shared and used in Fabricademy.

02. Develop some content for Natural Dyings and Bioplastic related to Chemical, Biological and Safe aspects of interest, for informing and at the same time inspiring people to be involved with this area.

03. I will apply the content to the Project I am developing for my next exhibition that will be in October 2 here in Sao Paulo. I'm already doing some experiences with rasterization of paper , using the laser only to peel the cover layer from the paper, I think the result is becaming very interesting.

04. Concluying the ArtBook Project I have began some time ago with the Natural Dying and EcoPrinting processes.

Finally, I think Fabricademy may be a good tool to many professionals, and I will think on it specially to artists, because I think it will be of interest, because the textile field of contemporary art is in growing, and there is not many information for this, and people doesn't know about that, and as I am artist I think I can contribute with this field to Fabricademy.