Care label, as it might read: leave unattended and the fibres will mat; comb gently and expect it to purr. That is the actual temperament of Groomling, one of five knitted creatures in Soft Companions by Katrijn Westland, a Swedish School of Textiles MA graduate, who showed the project at this year’s Dutch Design Week.
Morphling by Katrijn Westland
The festival chose the theme R.A.W., short for Rebel Authentic Worth, and over nine days it gave space to designers who would rather test an idea than polish it. A room of textile animals that breathe and fidget suits that brief well. Katrijn started from loneliness and from how little attention we pay to the cloth against our skin, which has been touching us since this morning without once being thought about. Her question was what happens to that closeness when the fabric starts paying attention back.
Morphling by Katrijn Westland. Video
The answers are very knitterly. Conductive yarn is twisted into the wool, so a creature senses a stroking hand through its own structure, with no sensor stuck on top. Latex chambers sit beneath the surface and make the knit swell and collapse like a sleeping animal. Felting and dissolvable yarns leave the surface hairy and slightly wild, brushed until it stops looking machine-made. Everything is dyed with plants.
Fondling by Katrijn Westland
Each creature has its own manners. Driftling breathes raggedly when left alone, then slows into a steady rhythm and starts to purr after a few minutes of stroking. Fondling, a dense tube of cotton and linen in muted greys and blues, has a latex lining folded like a harmonica, so it sweeps sideways and strokes your shoulder without waiting to be asked. Morphling hangs in corridors and doorways, its curly tentacles opening and closing as wooden bones pull on the wool, close enough to brush you as you pass. Soling is a flock of small undyed linen creatures powered by a tiny solar panel in their skin. They drift towards the light through the day and go still when it leaves. Give them too much sun and they shiver off into a corner, which they seem to think is a game.
Soft Companion Process and Pneumatic Knit by Katrijn Westland
Katrijn is clear that this is design research and not a product. Still, she sees the approach feeding into future textile products, wearables, therapeutic environments and interactive interiors, anywhere that attentiveness and touch matter. A related paper on the project describes a breathing companion that inflates in a slow 4-4-4-4 box-breathing rhythm, inviting the person holding it to match their own breath to the fabric’s.
For those of us who spend our days among cloth, the appeal is easy to grasp. Textiles have always been shaped by hands, and here the relationship runs in both directions. Take a look at whatever you are wearing and ask how it might behave if it were allowed to answer.
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Further Information:
Katrijn Westland Soft Companions at Dutch Design Week
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Image Credits:
Lead: Driftling by Katrijn Westland. Courtesy of the artist.
All further images as credited in captions.