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Dear Kathryn I wrote a reply to this topic and had my email system eat it in my face. So perhaps I will give a less direct response this time? I know the Alexander stuff, but I am not an expert. The embodied literature is mostly about poets and VOICE. Great poets shift sounds within patterns with extraordinary skill. Late Shakespeare is a master of the English tongue in ways that make it silly to ask school kids to scan his lines looking for simple iambics. The best example of Alexander's concepts of pattern can be found in John Milton's Paradise Lost. The first verse block announces the generative pattern for the tens of thousands of lines that follow. T.S. Eliot complained about Milton because Eliot saw Milton destroying English. The real issue, for Eliot is that Milton could use a singular complex pattern whereas Eliot had to use fragments and interruptions - like listening to a radio on a train. Eliot pointed out that Shakespeare's sounds were based on rowing (short lift, long stroke). For modern poets, Eliot pointed out we now use trains, and cars etc as the generative rhythm. When poets get together they can all start speaking in strict iambic, then drop into spondee and so on. For days afterwards I can speak in the patterns of fellow poets. In my textile work I do both geometrics and free form. These have generative and emergent patterns that include the palette. Logics tend to arise through problems and solutions. hope some of this is of use. cheers keith >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Hi Keith I really like the idea of textiles you bring up. Clearly for you language functions viscerally. However from what I have read in and about design that is rare. As soon as you mentioned textiles there was a natural resonance coming from something I suspect unites the body with language. Would it be possible to read something you have written that speaks to this? Have you read Christopher Alexander's work? (The Timeless Way of Building) He seems to work with these ideas from the point of embodiment. This is the subject of my dissertation so I am listening carefully as all of us are coming to this from diverse design, cultural and intellectual backgrounds offering what we have found. Looking forward to hearing more. Textiles, they remain the one mystery still capable of enveloping a culture, an idea and a beingness that takes in both worlds, art and design without being lessened by either. Kathryn Simon Adjunct Professor Fashion History and Fashion Theory Parsons School of Design -- VERMILLIONmedia