ENTANGLED THREADS
Part of the opt:exp Research Framework
Entangled Threads is an ongoing artistic research project investigating how material, energy, and embodied interaction co-produce knowledge in dynamic, responsive systems. Within the framework of [opt:exp], textiles, light, and sensors are treated as active epistemic agents, not representational objects. Across multiple experimental systems, the project explores how feedback, latency, distributed agency, and emergent behavior arise from the interaction of body, material, and environment.
The research situates itself at the intersection of optics, post-digital practice, and system-based experimentation, emphasizing iterative, open-ended inquiry. Each system functions as a distinct research variable while contributing to a coherent trajectory of understanding how perception, movement, and energy interact within material-technical networks.
1. Folding Field (2025) / Body-Centered Feedback & Embodied Interaction
Folding Field is an experimental wearable system that investigates how movement, energy, and materiality shape perceptual experience through responsive light and sound. Developed during the FUNKEN × MAIN Residency at TU Chemnitz, the work draws inspiration from layered nanomembranes and origami structures, integrating translucent fabrics, embedded LEDs, and electromagnetic field recordings.
In performance, the wearable functions as a living interface, where body, light, sound, and space exist in continuous feedback. The system foregrounds emergent audiovisual structures, highlighting how motion, signal, and embodied interaction co-produce perceptual phenomena beyond authorial control.
2. The Golden Signal (2026) / Material Residue & Textile Feedback
The Golden Signal investigates how Zlatovez embroidery, movement, and responsive textiles generate emergent audiovisual behavior. Partial techniques, residual material properties, and energetic interactions are improvised both by hand and with machine in freeform embroidery, without templates.
Sensor-driven feedback transforms residual gestures into dynamic, signal-responsive systems, revealing hidden processes, perceptual thresholds, and latency in bodily-material interaction.
// systems:
3. Signal Drift (planned) / Environmental Coupling & Generative Feedback
Signal Drift will extend the research from body-centered to environment-influenced systems, exploring how textiles respond to ambient temperature, electromagnetic fields, humidity, and spatial dynamics. Generative 3D projections and visual animations will interact with wearable sensors, creating a multi-layered audiovisual environment.
The system investigates distributed agency, emergent rhythms, and perceptual thresholds influenced more by environmental conditions than direct bodily input.
4. Title (planned) / Multi-Agent Performance & Relational Systems
The fourth system will integrate performers, musicians, and responsive textiles, combining projection mapping, generative visuals, and live interaction. It investigates complex relational systems in which body, material, environment, and technology co-produce audiovisual emergence.
This system emphasizes multi-layered feedback, unpredictability, and distributed perception, creating conditions for posthuman, non-linear knowledge production within live performance contexts.