Daily Pattern Project

With the constant flow of information surrounding us at all times, the world in one way has become smaller, but also more complex. Using the daily news as content and inspiration, this mass of information can be visualized in textile design, reappropriating traditional approaches to pattern making in order to embed meaning. Too often textile design is approached from a purely aesthetic perspective. This project explores approaches to textile design that serve not only a stylistic, but also a communicative function in which the resulting form is the direct product of the content itself. The goal is to explore the potential of interior designs to move beyond stylistic concerns to reveal, directly or latently, deeper layers of meaning.

The project began by creating a database which collected news from six different newspapers from around the world:The Guardian, The Australian, The Citizen, Shanghai Daily, The Washington Post, and the New York Times. News content would be gathered from these sources several times daily. A variety of other online resources as well as the printed newspaper were also used for content. Annika Syrjämäki worked together with a programmer to develop processing applications to analyze and generate patterns from this information.

The result is a series of unique textile works, on show in the Antwerp,  Designcenter de Winkelhaak from Thursday the 7th of February till Saturday the 9th of March. The opening takes place on Thursday the 7th of February at 5 PM.