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.
Paper presentation at the ACM Creativity & Cognition 2021 conference
Heat Quit aims to display data related to sexual violence in the city of Seattle along with examining our current state of data visualization and representation to find a more embodied and appreciative form of interacting with data.
Virtual artist talk, and guest performance by Lisa Simpson on her performance persona Agente Costura and the intentions, ethics and ideas behind working with diy techniques, upcycled artifacts and secondhand garments
Virtual talk and book presentation by Angelika Strohmayer on the intersection of technologies, craft, social justice, and feminisms
Virtual artist talk by Mika Satomi on e-textiles, wearable technology, and artificial neural networks in the context of DXARTS 472 Mechatronic Art, Design and Fabrication II
An e-textile piece discussing the shame that surrounds female reproductive health.
An e-textile exploration of the concepts of solitude and isolation.
Fifth meeting of the Wearable Narratives DRG focused on sharing student ideas and prototypes
Online event curated and moderated by Abby Aresty and Rachel Gibson at SEAMUS 2021 (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States), with the participation of Patricia Cadavid, Jess Rowland, Sam Topley, Asha Tamirisa and Afroditi Psarra
Fourth meeting of the Wearable Narratives DRG focused on discussing ideas about individual projects and looking at reference projects for inspiration and for building a work methodology
Third meeting of the Wearable Narratives DRG focused on handmade sensors and understanding how the different properties of the e-textile materials that be used to create variable resistance
Virtual artist talk by Maria Castellanos on wearable technology and interspecies communication in the context of DXARTS 472 Mechatronic Art, Design and Fabrication II
Second meeting of the Wearable Narratives DRG was spent talking about e-textile materials and learning basic stitching and soft-circuit techniques
Virtual artist talk by Ricardo O’Nascimento on his studio practice and his research on wearable haptics in the context of DXARTS 472 Mechatronic Art, Design and Fabrication II
First online meeting of the Wearable Narratives directed research group at DXARTS, comprised by Esteban Yosef Agosin (DXARTS), Grace Barar (HCDE/DXARTS), Rylie Sweem (HCDE/DXARTS), Xintong Xu (Art IVA/ DXARTS),
Zoe Grace Kaputa (Computer Science), and Sadaf Sadri (Art Photomedia), and led by Afroditi Psarra.
A project which explores the translations of sign language into light via a gestural interface.
An e-textile piece exploring environmental racism along the LA river
Research for a sound interactive fabric for live A/V performances using thermochromic pigments
Soilcraft is a design thesis exploring possible futures for damaged landscapes through imaginative nomenclature and textile-based objects
Responding to current concerns about the ubiquity of voice assistants, this artistic research by Afroditi Psarra, Audrey Desjardins, and Bonnie Whiting, focuses on building a series of performative artifacts that aim to challenge AI and ML technologies, and to examine automation through the prism of “ghost work” that constantly support these systems.
