Hacking the machines 

TextileLab Amsterdam researches how “hacking the machines” of a classic Textile (or Fab)Lab can create new opportunities for craftspeople, to innovate the craft of printing on textiles through natural colours and their traditional processes. Our goal is to create an alternative protocol for these processes where craftspeople maintain their creative / knowledge holding role, while creating new technological interventions to enable hybrid craftspeople and equipment that valorises both the craftspersons, the tools & medium necessary for the craft to take place and the technological advances available, through code and the machine hacks.

These technological interventions allow us to offer new degrees of freedom and new degrees of collaboration between the craftsperson and the machine. To further embody the craftsmanship approach in these technical setup, we include haptic inputs – tangible sensors to guide and tweak the language and actions of the machines.

At the core of this interventions around printing textiles we bring together our expertises on natural dyes, machine communication protocols and creation of haptic sensors.

About Tracks4Crafts

Tracks4Crafts examines and transforms the transmission of traditional crafts knowledge (TCK) to enhance the societal and economic valuation of crafts and align them with a future-oriented heritage approach in Europe.

As intangible cultural heritage (ICH), crafts and TCK can be seen as resources for competitiveness, innovation, and sustainable development and quality of life, contributing to SDG 4, 8 and 11. Yet the tools, formats and instruments needed to foster the transmission and employment of TCK are lagging behind, which hampers the full development of its potential. Our objectives are to enhance and transform the transmission of TCK for a more effective economic as well as societal valuation of crafts.

This is achieved in 4 Tracks, in which we

  • transform learning processes in physical spaces in which crafts people collaborate (in hi-tech environments, including fablabs and maker spaces etc.), (2) develop new digital technologies that enhance and transform transmission of TCK,
  • produce tools and instruments which enable capturing and optimising the value of the produced TCK (business modelling, certification and property protection), and
  • create networks to foster and disseminate the societal and economic value of TCK (e.g. through the CHARTER-alliance).

The output is based on experiments in 8 craft ecosystems in which we develop and test formats for learning and tools for certification and validation in which

  • the economic and cultural barriers related to traditional TCK-transmission are addressed (i.a. the lengthy nature of learning, the fear of the craft getting lost…) and
  • the full potential of technology is tapped (i.a. for turning embodied TCK in open-source knowledge).

To ensure that the solutions bridge the heritage perspective and the economic and societal needs and that our solutions are shared and transferable, our approach is deeply interdisciplinary and based on processes of multi-stakeholder co-creation (including action research).

More information on this project can be found here.

Horizon Europe

Tracks4Crafts – T4C project is funded by the European Union under grant agreement No 101094507. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission.Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. 

Pilot Team

Cecilia Raspanti

Cecilia Raspanti is co-founder and lab lead of Waag's TextileLab Amsterdam. She is a creative researcher in fashion and textiles, and a digital fabrication expert. With the TextileLab, she leads the creative research and technological development of new concepts and alternatives for the textile and clothing industry.

Michelle Vossen

Michelle Vossen works for the Fablab, TextileLab and Maker Education Lab as a maker and maker educator. She graduated from ArtEZ in Fashion Design in 2019. She then started as an intern at the Fablab, and continued as an assistant at the Fab Academy the following year. She also works for the TextileLab as a Fabricademy instructor, mainly in the field of digital fabrication and electronics.

Aslı Aydın Aksan

Aslı Aydın Aksan is an instructor and researcher at Waag Futurelab with a background in architecture. She specialises in shape computation, computer-aided design, digital fabrication, design education, craft studies, material and making processes, and fabrication of experimental prototypes.

Marloeke van der Vlugt

Marloeke van der Vlugt studied Theatre Science at the University of Amsterdam. In 1997 she graduated - cum laude - with a practical research of the relationship between costume, scenography, video and movement. She studied Scenography at Goldsmith’s Academy, Choreology at the Laban Center (both in London) and took diverse camera and editing courses. Since then she works as a autonomous artist and designer of various audiovisual and theatrical productions and exhibitions.

Isabel Berentzen

Isabel Berentzen is project manager with Waag's TextileLab and the Hacking the machines pilot. Here, she leads projects on the crossings of textiles, ecology, innovation and digital fabrication. She is specifically interested in making (learning by doing), and the role designers play in changing existing power structures.