The DXARTS SoftLab is a studio and an online platform whose mission is to examine the role of workmanship in artistic research, to redefine the use of crafting in the post-digital era, and to explore the body as an interface of control and resistance. It is part of the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington in Seattle.
A trans-local, offline web server that houses family oral histories within story cloth
A research project speculating about climate crisis, labor, and transpacific migration through a soft embodied archive
Moon Tapestry is a speculative vision of a FemTech; a 28-day calendar that one can use to produce and document their daily Basal Body Temperature
An interdisciplinary collaboration between the DXARTS Softlab and Studio Tilt (interaction design research studio run by Audrey Desjardins in Design), that manifests in the form of a print and web publication probing the connections of working with data-driven approaches and crafting physical artifacts
Ongoing experiment in using conductive fabric as magnetic tape to record data
A research project mapping decentralized forms of communication
An interactive denim jacket that plays music, poems, and stories of Black residents' urban struggles, but also moments of joy and successes in fights for justice
An exploration into the paradoxical function of tactical vests
Tangible experiments in the creation of free-standing lace kirigami antennas using digital embroidery
*Born to Unwilling Parents: A Weighty Exercise* reflects my ongoing interests in human reproduction and parenthood, situated at a time in the US where individual bodies and human lives are subjected to increasingly banal politicization and objectification.
Thailand’s Lèse Majesté law data visualization on e-textiles and digital fabrication
Virtual artist talk by Jess Rowland on flexible embedded circuitry for sound composition, paper speakers, and interactive graphic scores.
Virtual artist talk by Ioana Vreme Moser on the pathway of an ex-ballerina through fluid computers, plant espionage, cosmetic synthesisers and electronic lollipops.
Exploring generative narratives and interfaces through machine embroidery and AI.
Developing new workflows for CNC machines often requires writing code to translate different representations of data into a format understood by the machine. How might we do this in the embroidery machine ecosystem, where file formats and machine software are generally proprietary and closed-source?
I wonder, if we were all Hermit Crabs, what would our houses sound like when interacting with rain? The idea of making a percussion system portable feels imperative, so as to explore different circumstances, specifically geographies, that could eventually turn into an artistic study of the rhythm of rainfall. It feels right to aim at constructing a system that can be inhabited and worn and the same time, an architecture similar to the house of a Hermit Crab.
There are several reasons why CNC milling remains a tricky fabrication method. One of them is a fundamental design assumption at the core of CNC machines and CAM softwares: that the user seeks to realize a design that has been developed on the drawing table, not in the interaction with the machines. The machine only executes the design, the plan.
Eat This Cake If It Makes You Happy explores food as a metaphor, as an emotional shelter, as a portal through which one may get away and get to many places.
Virtual artist talk at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) Arts Department of Kinetic Imaging
‘Ventriloquist Ontology’ explores the limits of control and points of hybridization between the human and the machine through the relationship of a performer and a wearable entity. This ventriloquist modular soft entity speaks through text generated using a GPT-2 language model, trained on a dataset of texts around biopolitics, algo-governance, the surveillanced body, and queer theory.
