EBONY***
Tactile fabrics
Vision reveals what the touch already knows. We could think of the sense of touch as the unconscious of vision. Our eyes stroke distant surfaces, contours and edges, and the unconscious tactile sensation determines the agreeableness or unpleasantness of the experience.” (J. Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin)
The holistic theory of the world assumes that people experience all phenomena with the help of the five senses. Meanwhile, in Western culture, we have stopped seeing the body as a whole. Since the Enlightenment, we have been “living in our heads”.
We were supposed to be rational first and foremost, and sight was the tool that supposedly offered us complete information. Ocularcentrism also allowed us to keep distance from irrational feelings.
The challenges of modern times, with all the traumatic experiences on the macro- and microscale of human existence, mean that we all increasingly need to live in harmony and contact with our senses, not only looking, but also feeling and touching. The pace of life and the number of stimuli are so high nowadays that we are all tired and stressed. Design wants to support our efforts to achieve wellbeing. Increasingly sought after in today’s world, wellbeing is defined as a state of comfort, health and happiness. It also involves thinking about materials that are healthy and stimulate the senses. Both designers and users are looking for tactile experiences. This trend will become even more important in the future.
Contemporary design, enriched by all the experiences resulting from the popularisation of industrial, mass production, returns to widely understood manual traditions. Touch returns in the form of new technologies, such as haptic devices and touch screens. In the era of emotions and experiences, the image alone is no longer enough. Year after year, the value of craftsmanship, experimentation with materials, knowledge of materials and their possibilities is becoming increasingly important.
Synaesthetic design, which focuses on stimulating and engaging more than one sense, requires objects, planes and textures to be not only pleasing to the eye, but also stimulating in tactile, aromatic and auditory contact.
Understandably, these trends are particularly noticeable in textile design, and their role in contemporary architecture and interior design is being increasingly pronounced. There is clearly a growing interest in sensual and tactile experiences. Designers are beginning to think more manually, creating designs that extend and enrich haptic experiences. They teach users how to use their senses to read textures, softness, density, weight and temperature of the materials with which their bodies come into contact in various spaces. Aesthetic considerations in the design process are just as important as the multi-sensory experience offered by fabrics.
Charakterystyczna dla tkanin struktura powierzchni wynika z właściwości fizycznych przędzy, z której jest zrobiona albo sposobu jej ujarzmienia.
Fabrics can be smooth, like polished steel, or smooth like wet animal hair. When touched, they bring relief to the body yearning for coolness. They can be rough, wavy, knotty, uneven, wrinkled, pleated, etc. Their texture is often defined by comparison to another material that has a specific and generally recognisable surface pattern (for example, velvet, leather, or linen). It is customary to call a texture coarse if it is far from smooth.
Furry, fluffy fabrics, which are pleasant to the touch and have a yarn that bends when touched by fingers, have an enveloping effect on the senses and are reminiscent of the original human-animal relationship. Such surfaces trigger a stroking and cuddling reflex in the user, thus having a therapeutic effect. Heat-formed, permanent folds, pleats, creases, etc. on the surfaces of synthetic fabrics are not only visually but also tactilely intriguing. We like to touch such fabrics, trace lines, discover the intricacies of geometry. Stimulating senses in contact with the objects around us delights us on different levels. Contemporary design draws inspiration from the surrounding nature, providing stimuli in the form of shapes, planes, and surfaces that affect our senses with a whole array of possibilities.
