Dialectric Series - Laura MacCary

I am a hand weaver studying electronics. My father, Lawrence MacCary, is a sculptor and longtime electronics experimenter. I grew up playing with electronic toys he made and sometimes I got to help wind coils or salvage parts. His “infernal machines” came out of the workshop for hair-raising demonstrations at parties. All of this gave me a sense of delight about electronics. When I decided to make a series of works which combine weaving and electronics, I was excited that he was interested in collaborating.
Weaving is a ubiquitous but little-noticed technology, viewed as unremarkable even though it is essential to human survival. Electronics is another technology that is becoming so omnipresent and so integrated with our lives that we will soon cease to notice it. However, electronics is sure to cross the boundary of our skin, and enter our bodies. Its fields already do.

It is this intimate interface between people and technology that I’m examining in this series of works. Each piece in the series consists of an electronic component woven of conductive or resistive materials, cast-off by industry, and a circuit designed around the weaving. By interacting with the weaving the viewer physically enters the circuit, and the circuit passes through the viewer, blurring the boundary between them.
Connection
Connection - circuitry detail
Connection - detail
Plutarch
The title of the series, Dialectric, is taken from the words dialectic, meaning the juxtaposition or interaction of two conflicting ideas or forces, and dielectric, an insulating substance or one in which an electric field can be maintained with a minimum loss of power. I see these as metaphors for the participants in an interaction, and the space between them.

Laura MacCary has been working with fibers for more than 20 years and showing fiber art since 1993. Initially self-taught, in 2004 she completed a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Visual Art at the University of Washington, where she won several awards and scholarships. She has been collaborating with her father Lawrence MacCary on a series of interactive electronic textiles for the last three years, and at the same time weaving a series of “deconstructed” textiles which she distresses after removing them from the loom. She enjoys working with unusual materials, techniques, and textile properties. While well-grounded in tradition, she aims to explore something deeper than technique, and strives to use fibers to express feeling and idea.