The following is a little thing I wrote and posted to Cohost in late 2023, intending to write more and then not doing so. Now that Cohost is ending (rip, I was barely on it but I mourn its passing) I thought I'd chuck it up here in late 2024.
You can see some things I've collected as "Virtual Textiles" here: Virtual Textiles? wtf?
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(Here's me barfing out a draft of a blog essay, doing a little "working with the garage door up." Whaddaya think?)
Virtual Textiles is a broad curatorial category for me, perhaps a more specific instantiation of my original "textile-adjacent" category developed during my first textile curation project. Textile-adjacency is a broadly defined "I know it when I see it" sort of category for things (that are obviously not technically textiles) but that draw on textile techniques, traditions, and forms.
Virtual Textiles are therefore textile-adjacent: Not truly textiles (they do not usually involve tying knots in thread, to mis-quote Anni Albers (doyen of modernist weaving), but having qualities of textiles.
(Note: For a second I was calling this category "digital textiles" in my head, but I've since learned that that already refers quite specifically to certain printed textiles (made with digital images), so I'll use "virtual" for my purposes. Perhaps this is even better: Some things are virtual textiles without necessarily being computer-y.)
Let's make up a scale: The Wombat-Jehosephat Scale of Textile Virtuosity. So-called so that I don't get ahead of myself and start thinking it's a useful scale, rather than a thought experiment intended merely so that I can figure out how wrong it is and then have a second, better thought.
The WJ Scale goes from 0 to 5. 0 is non-virtual; just a textile. 5 is incredibly virtual. Sleazily, schlockily virtual.
Okay, some examples:
Thoughts after the thought-experiment of making that scale:
Already, it feels like this is an evolutionary clade diagram, not a scale. It's not "more like" or "less like" and more "taking it in this direction or that direction". Let's call them "types."
Things I've listed so far are visual media(?) of one type or another. Where do interlocking structures (rules? branching/bushing narratives?) fit into this? I almost jokingly put these as negative numbers or as letters. See point 1. I just added Type 6 to the above.
I've made a list of types or a scale, taking things into the quantitative realm. What can I say about these things qualitatively?
Type 4 is the shakiest. A hand-drawn cross-stitch pattern is not a virtual textile, though it is textile-adjacent. If I recreate that pattern in Aseprite, then what?
Q: So where does this get me? A: Making a file of examples. Maybe a slide deck. Gotta keep developing these categories and coming up with good examples. Following where the examples lead.
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