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Exhibition: ‘Weaving Futures’ | London Transport Museum

Dates: 22 November 2016 to 18 February 2017

‘Weaving Futures’ is an exhibition at London Transport Museum highlighting the importance of woven textile design to the London Transport system. The exhibition explores the process and making of digital woven textiles, as part of the Museums’, Designology season.

Each week, visitors will be able to see invited designers/artists in residence in the Designology studio, who will be working on a project brief and interacting with a weaver. The weavers will be interpreting  the residents  work live  into digital woven textile prototypes and final works on a state-of-the-art TC2 digital jacquard loom.

51977-049‘Weaving Futures’ is  curated by design & research industry experts, Philippa Brock and Samuel Plant Dempsey

The Weaving Futures season will start with Wallace Sewell, who will be in residence in the studio from Nov 22nd – 26th 2016

Other residents participating in the season  include: AssembleBeatwovenPhilippa BrockCamiraCentral Saint Martins, BA Textile studentsSamuel DempseyLinda FlorenceGainsborough Weaving CompanyEleanor PritchardRare Thread : aka Kirsty McDougall & Laura Miles, Josephine OrtegaIsmini SamanidouStudio HoundstoothJo PierceTakram & Priti Veja

Resident artists and designers have been invited to respond to a project brief; exploring the role of textiles in modern transport now and in the future. They will focus on ‘untapped’ sources of data generated by, or helpful to, the transport system. Their responses will then be interpreted into woven textiles, live for museum visitors.

The weavers for the season are Rosie Green & Hanna Vinlöf Nylen

Creative responses may span from future speculations on data capture and its textile use, to new methods of digitising human interactions, to creative interpretations and visualisations of existing TfL data sets.

Design & artistic approaches may include drawing, photography, film, sound, mark-making and model making.

wallace-sewell-overground-weavingThe Weave Shed will highlight each resident each week of the season with images, biographies and contact details.

The Weaving Futures: Data and Transport project brief given to the Designers & Artists explores the significance of Jacquard loom weaving beyond textiles, looking at how the Jacquard loom punch card system led to the development of computers and digital data, and how these have affected transport systems as a whole.

The season will also bring to the fore London’s most loved urban fabric – moquette. Many people who have travelled on the London transport network will be familiar with the patterned seating fabric on Tube trains, buses, DLR, the London Overground and Croydon Tramlink, but they may not know of its rich history as integral to the design of the capitial’s public transport since the 1920s.

Derived from the French word for carpet, moquette is a type of woven pile fabric, in which cut or uncut threads form a short dense cut or loop pile. As well as giving it a distinctive velvet-like feel, the pile construction is particularly durable, and ideally suited to applications such as public transport.
Digital Weaving Norway has sponsored the installation of a TC2 Digital jacquard loom for the duration of the exhibition.

The programme is also supported by CamiraThe Worshipful Company of Weavers and Pointcarré.

Weaving Futures events will take place every week in the Museum’s pop-up Designology Studio from 22 November until 18 February.

All day-time events are drop-in and free to attend with the annual London Transport Museum admission ticket. There is also a Late Debate on the evening of 26 January 2017.

The Designology studio and Late Debate series of events, including Weaving Futures, are part of London Transport Museum and Transport for London’s Transported by Design season which is supported by Exterion Media.

The 18 month programme of events and exhibitions explores good design on the transport network and its role in the lives of the millions of customers who use it each day.

The Weave Shed will cover the exhibition on @weavingfutures twitter and @theweaveshed instagram
@ ltm #designology

wallace-sewell-underground-moquette

Images: Wallace Sewell ( moquettes and loom), Digital weave Norway (image 2)