Tension and Materiality in a Textile System; A Puppetry Perspective

Abstract The paper seeks to develop complementary strands of research and development through a puppetry perspective for designing with postdigital textile and soft material systems. It draws from the puppetry approach to designing and performing with different materialities. The paper analyses how the tensions present in a puppet system provoke uncanny relationships and use the concepts of “double vision” and “breathed stillness” to give a puppetry perspective on textiles in “textasis”. From this point of view, it reviews alternative design methodologies already developed by material researchers to produce new textile materials and begins to trace a new framework for designers engaging with postdigital materials. This paper proposes a foundation to develop new material qualities within textiles eliciting puppet making as a design method for bringing forth a world of interconnected and ambiguous agencies in a textile system in order to generate new forms of nonverbal communication with our environment.