Hi all
I'm a PhD student at Birmingham Institute of Art & Design. I've read the list with interest for some time, and would like to ask for your help.
I am a practising knitwear designer, creating both finished garments and hand-knitting patterns. As part of my research, I am developing 'treatments' which could be carried out by amateur hand knitters, to 'intervene in' their own knitted garments. In practical terms, that might mean embellishing, unravelling and re-knitting, inserting pockets etc.
Because each person will be working with a different garment (size, gauge, shape, yarn, aesthetic) - and because I want to encourage individual variation - the treatments need to be 'open' and embrace contingency. However, they need to provide sufficient guidance to be of use. Because this is not a usual way for a knitwear designer to design, I'm hoping to create some new knowledge about the design process, as well as producing a menu of prototype intervention treatments.
I am looking for any existing literature that would shed some light on this design process - research that deals with the general subject of how you design treatments/activities to be interpreted by (amateur) others, and (more specifically) the process of designing the unfinished/open.
I'm aware that examples might be outside design - for example, in 'The Poetics of the Open Work', Umberto Eco compares traditional music (where the performer interprets the composer's instructions according to their own discretion) with some pieces of contemporary music (where the performer 'must impose his judgement on the form of the piece, as when he decides how long to hold a note or in what order to group the sounds').
I see a nice parallel with knitting here - with the traditional music being like a conventional knitting pattern, and the 'open work' being like my re-knitting treatments. Eco's writing provides insights to how the performer/audience might relate to an open work, but less so about the process of composition (or design).
Any ideas?
Thanks
Amy
Amy Twigger Holroyd
PhD candidate, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design
Designer, Keep & Share
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