In partnership with Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), The Artists-in-Residence Program in Estonia brought together three Career Launcher recipients from 2020 who are OCAD U’s Material Art & Design (MAAD) and Digital Futures (DF) alumni – Khadija Aziz (MAAD), Charlize Nhung (MAAD), and Olivia Prior (DF) – and six participants from Estonia to ‘create’ together under the theme of ‘Analogue + Digital = Sensorial’. The residency took place at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn, Estonia, from August 15–19, 2022. It was organized and facilitated by Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat, Associate Professor and Acting Chair of Material Art & Design, Faculty of Design, OCAD U and Dr. Kristi Kuusk, Senior Researcher, Faculty of Design, EKA. The residency was funded by the International Programs & Collaboration Office at OCAD U and the European Regional Development Fund.
During this one-week residency, the nine participants were asked to work as a group of three to explore possibilities of merging analogue and digital materials to create sensorial artefacts. In this exploration, each individual participant constantly discussed within their group what ‘analogue’, ‘digital’, and ‘sensorial’ means to them across different technologies that were available during the residency in the following studios at EKA:
• Digital Weaving Studio and Textile Futures Lab
• Leather Accessory Studio
• Ceramics Studio
• Digital Prototyping Lab
• Virtual Reality (VR) Lab
The primary aim of the exploration was to understand how human senses and sensemaking in the process of working with materials in different forms across production technologies might lead to invention of sensorial artefacts. The second aim was to experiment various ways of connecting people and practices when working together on a collaborative project, particularly how the process of making might support the learning of differences, not only between digital and analogue material practices but also between the participants of various areas of expertise and cultural backgrounds.
Five Intensive Days
On the first day, the participants introduced themselves to the group by talking about their three previous projects whose photos and/or videos had been uploaded to a shared online folder prior to the day. By doing so, the participants got to know one another and gained some understanding of what each participant was capable of and interested in doing. This was expected to help form the three groups of three participants who would work together during the week. They also expressed their thoughts on the meanings of ‘analogue’, ‘digital’, and ‘sensorial’.
Next was the briefing of what the participants were expected to work on during the week which was followed by Nithikul and Kristi’s presentation of projects exploring similar themes to give the participants some ideas of what their possible experimentation could be. After that, the tours were given by the ‘workshop masters’ of the participating studios and labs in the EKA building, which was converted from a sock factory in 2018 into the premise of the only public university in Estonia (founded in 1914) that offers post-secondary, post-graduate, and PhD education in architecture, design, fine arts, cultural heritage, and conservation (fig. 1).
To form the groups, each participant was asked to write three keywords that identified their interest (fig 2). The matchmaking process resulted in three groups, each having one participant from OCAD U and two from EKA. It is worth noting that the participants had diverse cultural background and practiced in different art and design areas. In the first group, Charlize, a jewellery artist, was teamed up with Zane Šumeiko and Claudia Diaz Reyes, both being recent MA textiles graduates. The second group included Olivia, whose expertise lied in e-textiles, Juulia Aleksandra Mikson, who had recently received her bachelor’s degree in textiles, and Ingrid Viira, a fashion designer. In the third group are Khadija, a textile and digital artist, Azeem Hamid, a tech-savvy communication designer, and Ada Napiorkowski, a motion designer and illustrator.
Final Presentations
After the intensive five days when the temperature in Tallinn sore up to 32 degrees Celsius, the final presentations revealed each group’s sensorial artefact or a series of sensorial artefacts (fig. 5). The outcomes varied greatly: from tangible artefacts to completely virtual ones.
The first group, Charlize, Claudia, and Zane, came up with a series of textiles expressing the concept of migration (fig 6). Migration here was concerned with the migration of the makers from one place to the other; the constant migration of digital and analogue processes of weaving on a digital loom; and the migration of the woven textiles to other processes, such as vacuum forming, embroidery, and 3D printing, which involved other materials that would transform the properties and appearance of the textiles.
Fig. 6: Series of artefacts by Charlize, Claudia, and Zane under the theme ‘migration’. Photos: Nithikul Nimkulrat
The participants in the second group, Oliva, Juulia, and Ingrid, shared the same design direction of creating wearables that represented and potentially relieved anxiety (fig 7). Olivia created a vest that played haptic motors around the chest in the rhythm of the heartbeats, the idea of which was inspired by Julia’s work, a garment prototyped on a digital knitting machine using the pattern visualizing the data of her own pulse history taken from the smartwatch she wore. Ingrid created a series of leather wristbands and 3D printed anti-anxiety fidgeting elements that could be attached to each wristband for the wearer to move when feeling nervous.
Fig. 7: Olivia’s haptic vest (a); Juulia’s knitted garment (b); Ingrid fidgeting wristband. Photos: Nithikul Nimkulrat and Ingrid Viira.
Khadija, Ada, and Azeem in the last group were interested in the back-and-forth transition between analogue and digital materiality that could be experienced in the virtual space. They worked with found objects and focused on what they could do with them as well as with the gestures of manipulating the objects and drawing using analogue and digital tools and the expressions of materials. The end results viewed in the VR space showed material transformation, manipulation, and distortion from analogue to digital and a way in which tactility from physical objects was removed and reimaged into digital and virtual environments (fig. 8 & 9).
Fig. 8: Workflow of the third group showing the process of transforming physical objects created into digital artefacts subsequently being merged in virtual environments. Diagram: Khadija Aziz, Ada Napiorkowski, and Azeem Hamid.
Fig. 9: Khadija, Ada, and Azeem’s work viewed in VR.
Thank you, Estonian Academy of Arts, for being a wonderful partner. Special thanks go to the all workshop masters at EKA: Johanna Jõekalda; Madis Kaasik; Kelian Luisk; Lauri Kilusk; Liiina Leo; and Kadi Kibbermann, for generosity in giving the participants an opportunity to work freely in the studios/labs and technical support throughout the intensive week. Thank you to Nithikul Nimkulrat for this in-depth reflection and documentation