How can digital print technology prompt an analysis of pattern as a phenomenon, with application to examples in textile design?
Creators: name: Cie, Christina
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330315
subject: Textile and fashion design

description: This thesis analyses pattern as a phenomenon in print textile design, prompted by technological changes in the printing and appearance of patterns. It collates the technological differences between non-digital and digital printing as a lens for examining print pattern as a technological, theoretical, and social construct in textile design. The thesis contends that these differences present distinct non-digital and digital paradigms for print textile design. It argues that the customary expectations of print pattern as a form in textile design have been established by those pattern features most feasibly printed by non-digital printing technologies. It identifies the use of intermediate forms by non-digital printing technologies as a key technological influence on customary expectations of the pattern form and an associated supply chain based on mass production due to economy of scale. This thesis considers how digital print technology presents alternative modes of production, but also prompts questioning of customary, non-digital print influenced, expectations of pattern as a form.

The literature review confirms that print pattern as a theoretical form or phenomenon is an under-researched area. There is a gap in the textile design literature, with little evidence to date of comprehensive theoretical analysis of pattern as a form for print. Textile design is a relatively young academic subject so there is also a lack of theoretical frameworks as models for research. This thesis therefore adopts and adapts from phenomenology as a theoretical perspective and from selected research methods, finding these have significant potential as the basis for textile design research seeking to comprehensively analyse an issue from multiple perspectives. 

New perspectives are accessed through the phenomenological method of bracketing off customary and habitual perspectives that arise from a familiar phenomenon such as pattern. This thesis extends this method by using it in conjunction with scenario-based research, adapted from speculative design that uses it to examine the potential social impact of innovative technologies such as digital printing. The scenario of personal health recording supplies novel source material for patterns. However, this thesis expands the scenario beyond the supply of a novel design source to framing the making of patterns within the practice of health recording, and subsequent evaluation of resulting pattern records through the scenario's priority of clarity. This extended application of the scenario brackets off the designer/researcher's influence over the patterns' appearance and the customary aesthetic priorities of textile design. Suspending aesthetic input and evaluation is an innovative and challenging method in textile design but is necessary when analysing pattern as a phenomenon rather than the visual appearance or aesthetic effect of specific pattern designs or styles. 

This thesis contributes to a research methodology emerging in textile design from otherwise digitally based designers by using hand making as a research method. Hand making is conducted within the scenario through a series of iterative design experiments staged across the practice of health recording, adapted from action research. Informed by the researcher's former career as an archivist, stages in health recording are identified from the creation of systems for recording health through to the everyday practice of record keeping and the eventual long-term storage of health records. Each stage is paired with a theme identified by the literature review to provide research focus. These themes (Repetition, Surface, Order, Ornament, Colour, Symmetry) offer diverse perspectives on pattern as a phenomenon. They are developed further through linguistic analysis and relevant texts to act as research prompts. The scenario thus determines the design of the pattern forms, whilst the pattern themes determine the focus of the design experiments as research. Hand making results in pattern records as artefacts that physically and cognitively articulate the research, acting as repositories of earlier research thinking for access by later iterations. This reflection across time through the artefacts brings benefits to themes examined earlier or later due to the staging of the research, and it enables a lateral rather than chronologically linear model of iterative research.

The application of findings through a sample case study taken from textile design addresses criticisms about the subjectivity and transferability of phenomenological-style analysis. Triangulation across multiple methods, and identification of potential applications for research findings enables the research to address these criticisms and still benefit from a multi-modal experience of pattern with knowledge-gathering through senses other than vision. The case study on the role of textile print technology in the development of copyright concludes the example of a full analysis of the Repetition research theme, supplemented by summarised design experiments, analysis, selected findings, and questions for further research of the remaining research themes. The need to summarise part of the research is due to the volume of insight brought by its phenomenological approach, and the research's identification of multiple themes in pattern that appear to have little prior theoretical examination. The analysis of these themes, although summarised, enables the research to confirm their potential as research subjects and identify sample lines of enquiry for future research as part of the research contribution.

In addition to answering the research question of, how can digital print technology prompt an analysis of pattern as a phenomenon, with application to examples in textile design, this research makes the following contributions to new knowledge:

• Identification of pattern in the abstract as a research subject and contribution of a framework of themes as a prompt for analysis of pattern and questions for further research in this under-researched area.
• Articulation of pattern as a form, based on relationships rather than strict repetition.
• Reinterpretation of pattern in textile design by making new sense of how it functions as a technological form, and how the pattern form influences manufacturing and business models further along the supply chain.
• Extension of existing research through a phenomenological analysis of pattern that includes experience and understanding through senses other than vision.
• Development of alternative methodological approaches such as the suspension of aesthetic evaluation as part of the toolkit for textile design research.
• Recontextualisation aspects of textile design practice through a conceptual model of pattern as a theoretical form rather than specific visual styles.