Interactive installation during the Everything and Everybody as Material: Dialogical Bodies at The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås

The installation is a work from the design partnership The Pet Project created by Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir and Marta Heiðarsdóttir 

You walk into an ordinary classroom. What can you already see as soon as you picture the classroom? There are probably some desks and chairs, a projetor or a screen. Can you remember how they are to the touch? A classroom can be full of material objects that we have stopped giving notice to and that simply fall into the background of our fast-paced everyday routine. The same goes for our everyday environments that have become the slaves of routine. Care, comb, connect... Learning to Care is a site-specific interactive installation that encourages participants to care for their material surroundings by doing. By dressing the familiar classroom table in fur clothing, it alters the objects function through materiality and how we should interact with it through our bodies. The fur needs to be cared for, combed, and connected with. Here sits an imperative opportunity to learn from a material. The installation takes inspiration from the fact that the conference is held in a school, where classrooms are in abundance and classroom tables are a vital place of learning. Therefore, we would like to welcome all to class.

Where all can learn to care in a soft learning environment.

The Pet Project

Gæla, or the Pet Project, is an explorative design research studio operated by fashion designers Marta Heiðarsdóttir and Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir. The foundation for the Pet Project originated from a fur coat. They are a unique piece of garment and fashion history that can have a significantly stronger and emotionally charged meaning compared to other wearable materials. Fur coats and other fur garments are more likely to get repaired or altered and can be passed down through generations as an object of value, both emotionally and economically. This added value interpreted through a material or garment caught our interest and we have been exploring this relationship since starting the project in 2019. By using the long-haired Icelandic lamb fur, a demand for attention is created. Our main attraction towards the mate-rial is because it needs to be kept and maintained, as well as the fact that the material used to be a part of a living being. The material of fur has immense interactive properties that can be implemented into the design of various products to study the relationship between body and object through tangible communications and affection inspired by how we care for hairy things and beings. The Pet Project therefore challenges the relationship between consumer and product from the perspective of the owner and the pet to explore the life-cycle of material objects.