State of the art, Project Management and Documentation

Class one - 26 September 2017

Lights

A little history.

I’ve grown up having a strong connection with the textile and fashion design world, my grandmother was a costume maker for the movie industry, my aunt a tailor, and in my first years at university I used to make elaborate costume replicas from famous movies, for me and my friends. It eventually became a part time job as I specialized in propmaking (realizing so called “properties”, the objects and costumes used on a movie, theater or TV set).

Today, my dream of working in a Fablab realized, I’m looking forward to discover what new cool things can be designed and made about textiles.

What do I expect from this course?
I’ve enrolled in the Textile Academy in the first place because I wanted to offer it as a node in Fablab O Shanghai. I visited Cecilia’s workshop in the Waag Society and I fell in love with the atmosphere of the lab, then after the meetings in Fab 13 I really felt a big excitement growing in me about the class.

LEFT - Me dressed as a Star Wars Clonetrooper at the Colosseum in Rome in 2014. The costume and armor was entirely made by myself with various materials.


Define a concept and follow that track

I’ve been thinking about some ideas for a possible final projects, not only about the final project itself but also about a concept to follow like a track throughout all the semester.
Because of my background as a designer with a broad range of interests, I don't want to decide right now one specific field of application of the final project. I'd rather follow a concept-track and see what inspires me most during the classes. This opportunity is also one of the features I love about the Textile Academy Schedule (final project in the last months).

  • Recycling waste materials, reusing of common materials, extraction of raw materials from common find objects. (One of the first thing that impressed me in China is the "overpackaging" of many items, with the inevitable creation of plastic and paper waste)

  • Trying to work on garments/clothing/products from the Chinese tradition, and investigate how a foreigner (an Italian that has a similar thousands-years-long cultural heritage) may interpret it with a "proactive ignorance" and of course with the use of the innovative tools and techniques of the Fablab and Biolab.

    This concept is not limited to clothing, but it may apply also to traditional woodworking. I am pretty excited about the possibilities offered by digital fabrication and soft materials. For example, the same CAD design used to cut wood on the CNC Machine, could be use as a base to design other parts of the same product made with fabric or other soft materials in order to create an integrated system of different digitally fabricated materials.

  • Textile applied to food/kitchen/packaging: the scaffolding class sounds like something that can be applied to the creation of small structures. Textile materials can be washed and reused or they can be biodegradable or even edible.

    • Lights

    Illustration of Chinese accessories from Olfert Dapper (1670).

    Documentation Website

    Instead of using the provided wiki website I created a new website using HTML, CSS and a framework called Bootstrap. This way I will have direct control on every aspect of my documentation. I also plan on using my iPhone as the main tool for ducumenting, using the app "Notes" to take pictures, write text or short comments to pics and also to draw simple sketches.

    I created my website locally on my computer using the app Brackets, then I uploaded it to my space on Gitlab using Git that was already present in my Mac as I previously downloaded and installed Xcode. To make my website become visible (gitlab needs to recognize it as an html website) I followed this tutorial about Gitlab-Pages and then I modified the link to my name in the student list page on wiki.textile-academy by using the online editor.


    Lights

    A screenshot of the software I use to create the website, Bracket. This is how this page looks like when you visualize its raw code.

    Files Storage

    You can find all files and view, clone or download my website repository at the following address: gitlab.fabcloud.org/saveriosilli