Still, Missing You (1559)

Traveling through time and lace
 
Electroluminescent wire, silver coated thread, electrical wires, flesh body, void
2021

Still, Missing You (1559) is an immersive light-lace environment, tackling craft conservation through a queer approach to textile making.

What does craft conservation look like in the 21st century?

How do we preserve historical craft knowledge while manifesting textile futures?

Applying a queer approach, the guiding principles are radical hybridity: traditional/innovative, garment/environment, object/subject, textile/light technology. The work uses Venetian lace patterns from one of the oldest known lace pattern books, Le Pompe, published in 1559. These patterns are worked in an electroluminescent wire, a light emitting material, creating a large scale lace environment. It is an open circuit meant to be completed by the touch of a human body. As you touch the different lace sensors in the environment, a variety of light patterns are triggered all around them. Using a non-fiber material with traditional lace making techniques, it pushes the boundaries of what is a textile. It injects traditional textile making into the realm of lighting design, interaction design and hi-tech. Further applying a queer approach, it offers eroticism as strategy: light, touch and sensors in the shape of hands seducing you, drawing you in for an immersive sensory experience.

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Installation at Urban Zen, NYC. Photos by Shahrez Syed

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Conductive lace touch sensors

Custom Tools for Queer Lace:

3D printed resin eastern European-style bobbins | Silicone cast large bobbins for EL lace | Beads and wooden skewers shuffle&match bobbins

Making one EL lace panel: 10 hours 20 minutes

Research and Process

For more writings and images of previous iteration of the light-lace environment, click here.