2024

Woven Life Systems

Textile Society of America Symposium 2024 - Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, 12 - 17 November, 2024.

Abstract: What is it like to be at the intersection between the natural and technological? I see plants as living cloth – can we build cloth using human-evolved technology (weaving) and natural life systems? In this practice-as-research, I take growth models from plants such as ferns, then process these codes on a loom to exploring the emergence and narrative that develop. Looms are tools and technology evolved with humans to organise systems of strands, connecting in myriad ways to form something new. Plants are systems of organised cells, dividing and branching creating functional entities. The commonalities are individual elements and rules acting cumulatively upon the whole, evolving in emergent behaviour. By consciously asking the loom to connect, process and reflect on these commonalities, I am exploring deeper collaborative processes between human technology and nature. In my presentation, I share ongoing research into plant growth modelling, artificial life systems, emergence, experiments, and artists exploring human/technology/plant relationships. I discuss how I transition plant models to code then overlay them with multilayering weave techniques. Combining these methods with plant-based, metal, and synthetic materials creates variable motion at the warp/weft connections, with unpredictable outcomes. Using weaving as a research medium to explore the relationship, forms emerge hybridised, grown from natural evolution and evolved human technology, residing somewhere in between.

2023

Guest speaker for Cally Booker’s ‘Understanding Double Weave’

Cally Booker, November 2023.

Keynote: What if your clothes were alive?

New Zealand Festival of Fibres, Wellington, April 2023.

Biomimicry & 3D weaving

New Zealand Festival of Fibres, Wellington, April 2023.

3D weaving: Versatility in handweaving

New Zealand Festival of Fibres, Wellington, April 2023.

Field Notes: Melanie Olde

“Field Notes: Melanie Olde,” Warp and Weft, 9 January, 2023.

2022

Textiles & Tea Episode 52 Melanie Olde

“Textiles & Tea Episode 52 Melanie Olde,” Handweavers Guild of America, 10 April, 2022.

Melanie Olde - Unstable Design Lab: Experimental Weaving Residency Talk Series

“Melanie Olde - Unstable Design Lab: Experimental Weaving Residency Talk Series,” 51:15, 7 September, 2022

Creating Auxetic Structures in Three-Dimensional Weaving

Olde, Melanie, “Creating Auxetic Structures in Three-Dimensional Weaving,” Proceedings of Bridges 2022: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Culture, August 2022, pp 421–424.

2021

3D Interlock Innovations

Olde, Melanie, “3D Interlock Innovations”, Complex Weavers’ Journal, Complex Weavers, USA, October 2021, Complex Weavers, USA, 2021

Science and 3D Thinking in Weaving

Olde, Melanie, “Science and 3D Thinking in Weaving”, Complex Weavers’ Journal, Issue 125, February 2021, Complex Weavers, USA, 2021.

prior to 2020

The Maker's Marks: How to Learn from Japanese Weavers at the National Library

Olde, Melanie, The Maker's Marks: How to Learn from Japanese Weavers at the National Library, National Library of Australia, 2019

Digital Jacquard Design

Holyoke, Julie. Digital Jacquard Design, London, UK, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2013. pp images: title page, dedication page, 107, 126, 128 (listed as contributor)

From Leaf Stomata to Digitally Woven Cloth

Holyoke, Julie. “From Leaf Stomata to Digitally Woven Cloth”, Jacquard, Issue 72, 2014. pp 53-56