DesignMarch: "New Directions"

Can we make musical wearables that are controlled by our heartbeat? 
Can we capture dance in textiles? 
Can we substitute food waste for porcelain?  

These are some of the questions being raised in the works by the participants of Fabricademy x Icelandic Textile Center 2022-2023. For six months, the participants have been exploring the intersection of textiles, digital fabrication and biology. In collaboration with the ITC, Faricademy provides a program revolving around finding alternative and innovative ways of designing in and for the future. The program aims to challenge the potential of textiles in conjunction with a global knowledge network. Our participants final projects are displayed in the exhibition "New Directions" during DesignMarch in Reykjavík. 

Each project’s exploration questions what textiles are and can be. The projects range from heart disease awareness with wearables to parametrically designed textiles generated from dance to reformulating to porcelain slip casting process with local biomaterials to haptical and inflatable objects made out of local seaweed. The participants will also be showing a range of works developed at the Icelandic Textile Center highlighting resources and machines available to create with. 

Alice Sowa | Reformulates the porcelain slip casting process by substituting plaster and porcelain slip with local bio and waste materials. Inspired by Iceland’s glaciers for form development and material properties. 

Margret Katrín Guttormsdóttir | Explores the relationship between dance, stress and material. The aim is to capture the memory of the dance in visual shapes that allow people to re-experience the dance’s stress-relief motion. 

Emma Shannon | Explores the relation between input and output of the human heart, by creating a wearable music maker controlled by the heart beat. The project aims to create a dialogue between wearable tech, parametric design and traditional craft to raise awareness of heart disease in a fun and playful way.

Alberte Bojesen | Reconnects to the local seaweed, by exploring the textural, haptical and inflatable properties of kelp as a biomaterial. The project aims to create interactable objects to initiate a sensorial dialogue between seaweed and human. Spurring the questions of what seaweed is and can be.

 From the 4th to the 6th of May 2023

 Bakkaskemman, Grandi Mathöll, Reykjavík