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I reaaally wanted to animate on the Thread Controller 2 Loom. I saw it was possible when I came across the beautiful woven animated work of Kate Nartker.
The video above documents my process of experimentation and discovery.
I had to figure out what kind of animated loop I wanted to try.
I went with something that I could produce quickly and edit easily, and that would hopefully reproduce with clarity as it was all in silhouette so despite the noise and shimmer of the woven texture, the viewer’s eye would have a clear shape to track.
I had to figure out how small I could get away with creating the frames. The warp and weft are the resolution of the image, so how low-res could I go? I realized right away it would be more successful if it were bigger.
As a beginner on this loom, I also was working with a limited set of weaving structure pattern swatches and a single shuttle (one color in addition to the black warp) since this was basically the first thing I had woven besides a little warm up to better understand aspect ratio. The amount of warp vs. weft showing in the various structures would determine how much contrast there is between the subject and background. I did several samples with different combinations of satins and twills and a basket weave & plain weave border to distinguish the frame edge. I abandoned any worry about aspect ratio here because I had already sampled with a specific yarn that I found in the weaving lab, and I was worried there wouldn’t be enough to weave the whole animation if I kept weaving samples to perfect the aspect ratio. I decided just to go for it!
