Tenuous Couplings: the metaphoric use of fibre and digital media

Abstract

Our fragile natural environment hangs in precarious balance. Humanity is an active ecological agent impacting on this volatile situation, due to our overwhelming anthropomorphic-centric behaviours. In the 21st Century it is imperative that we critically evaluate the ways in which we interact with our planet and that the relationships between nature and culture be renegotiated.

The combination of fibre-based materials and techniques with digital media is used to explore these issues. This provides a set of binary opposites which can be exploited to create tensions in works eg. handmade/machine made, old technology/new technology, unique/reproducible, poetic/rational. These tenuous couplings are metaphoric for other sustainable practices today. We need to embrace new technologies and ideas, but we must not discard all old technologies and ideas. Both should have a place in decision-making processes.

The body is central to these issues; as a tool which processes and transforms the materials and as the subject/object of works.