Towards a New Surface—The Textile Appearance Research Group: A Multi-Year Collaboration between RISD Textiles and Cornell University Computer Science
Simulated virtual prototypes have revolutionized the design process in most engineering fields, eliminating much trial-and-error and enabling designs to be refined before real prototypes are built. As computational power becomes commonplace, a major emerging application of simulation is to design fields where the aesthetics of appearance, shape, and motion are primary concerns on a par with strength, weight, or efficiency. For some products, designers can already rely on renderings to predict appearance, and renderings can already convey appearance to a potential customer just as effectively as photographs. However, certain classes of materials consistently elude the available tools, and textiles form one of the most important examples.
Rhode Island School of Design Department of Textiles, Cornell University Computer Science and Stanford University Computer Science have formed a research group to investigate predictive fidelity in the virtual prototyping of textiles. Textile and garment production constitutes a trillion-dollar global industry that is rapidly becoming more high-tech and is ready to adopt virtual prototyping as soon as the right technology is available.
This collaborative project, which deploys experts in computational lighting, mechanics, appearance and textile design, is part of a multi-year project funded by the National Science Foundation Cyber-Human Systems Program. Co-PI Brooks Hagan will speak about the proposal process, collaboration between science and art+design, and the relationship between creativity, technology and tradition in textiles.
Associate Professor
Rhode Island School of Design
Brooks Hagan is a textile designer, researcher, and artist. He works with numerous industry leaders, including Pallas Textiles, S.Harris, Valdese Weavers, and Mulberry Silk. His recent project with computer scientists at Cornell University and Stanford University investigates advanced visualization for the design of constructed textiles and is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Hagan collaborates with many fine artists and works with the Dieu Donne Papermill in Manhattan to explore the fusion of paper encasements to industrial textile materials. He received his BA from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He has taught at RISD since 2006 and served as graduate program director and acting head of the Textile Department.
