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Aug 21, 2023

antonia gauss & eva benhamou's pen plotter

‘off the grid’ is a collaborative project led by industrial designer Eva Benhamou from Bezalel Academy and textile creative Antonia Gauss from ABK Stuttgart. Together, they have developed a new dyeing

‘off the grid’ is a collaborative project led by industrial designer Eva Benhamou from Bezalel Academy and textile creative Antonia Gauss from ABK Stuttgart. Together, they have developed a new dyeing system with a pen plotter to explore the intersection of digital technology and textile craftsmanship. This conceptual approach is cbased on the background that textile arts and crafts originated from domestic handicrafts and have been gradually alienated by industrial mass production. But according to Antonia and Eva, ‘the integration of new digital tools and techniques into traditional craft processes is changing the manufacturing process. It is creating new opportunities to become creative oneself, bringing back automated production processes and making them accessible to all. The combination of both disciplines allows us to work on the process from a textile as well as an industrial design perspective.’

‘off the grid’ by Eva Benhamou & Antonia Gauss | image © Lihi Berger

Antonia Gauss (and here) and Eva Benhamou developed the industrial part using a pen plotter system and dye brushes adapted to textile processes. The fabric component, meanwhile, is inspired by researching the dyeing technique of silk painting and mixing it with acid dye. Process-wise, the duo begins by placing a white silk fabric in the machine and rolling it up; the material is thus stretched and painted in a wet state frame by frame (the width of the format is 40 cm), making it possible to print in infinite length.

The resulting patterns reveal geometric linear shapes combined with the brush placement’s flow points. The grid inserted in the machine creates resistance points where the paint can flow out. ‘The visual outcome can be related to the limits of the dyeing process as well as to the interaction of digital and hand. In a way, the prints tell the story of the printing process,’ comments the duo.

The color flow is controlled by hand, as is the positioning of the brush height; this allows irregularities to remain, giving the design its unique character. Ultimately, the result is ‘equally reminiscent of digital and analog processes. It shows the precision and repetition of industrial processes as well as the manual characteristics of randomness and uniqueness,’ conclude Eva Benhamou and Antonia Gauss.

image © Lihi Berger

image © Lihi Berger

image © Lihi Berger