G.Hack has completed our first collaboration project with an installation in the Threads & Yarns Exhibition at the V&A Museum, July 18th 10am – 5pm. Check it out!
G.Hack worked with Joanna Morrison, Rebecca Hoyes and the Central Saint Martins BA Textile students to develop the interaction component for the installation. The installation is a table of crocheted flowers that were created by Central Saint Martins BA Textile Design students and senior citizens over conversations around biomedical themes. The conversations were recorded and nine soundbites of about 1 minute were chosen to be featured in the installation.
The final installation is a sea of flowers over a table top. Nine of the flowers were matched with the nine sound bites and made interactive. When one of the nine buttons is pushed on the table, an audio soundbite plays and the flower and its button light up for the duration of the audio.
G.Hack edited down and optimized the audio of the nine featured sound bites. Each soundbite is matched with an interactive flower and a momentary push button. There are a total of nine interactive flowers in the installation. These flowers are woven with superbright LEDs. The buttons used had an embeded LED so that the LED could be controlled separately from the button.
Leading up to the installation, we ran a workshop with the Central Saint Martins textile students to introduce them to integratation of physical computing into textiles. The workshop was run in the newly opened MAT Workshop in the basement of the Electronic Engineering Building.
The final result can be experienced on Monday July 18th at the V&A in the Sackler Center.
G.Hack Threads & Yarns Press:
- Threads & Yarns workshop
- Threads & Yarns: health and wellbeing over the past 75 years
- Threads & Yarns Pamplet (PDF)
G.Hack Flower Power Team
Pollie Barden (MAT)/Nela Brown (IMC) – Project Management and Pcomp Support
Alice Clifford (C4DM) – Lead Audio Designer and Testing
Nanda Khaorapapong (MAT) – Lead Pcomp and Circuit Board Designer
Nicola Plant (MAT) – Lead Solder and testing
Sam Duffy (MAT) – Audio consulting
Kavin Narasimhan (IMC) – Pcomp support
The project is supported by the Wellcome Trust