carolina Trinker
Textiles MFA
Parsons School of Design
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: Textiles - Knit / Textiles for Fashion / Textile Innovation/Textile Art
My location: New York, United States
carolina Trinker
First Name: carolina
Last Name: Trinker
University / College: Parsons School of Design
Course / Program: Textiles MFA
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: Textiles - Knit / Textiles for Fashion / Textile Innovation/Textile Art
My Location: New York, United States
Website: Click To See Website
About
Introducing myself is perpetually difficult. I am one of the odd, rootless people of a new generation: my mother grew up in Brazil, my father in Austria, and I, around the world. My if-somewhat-fragmented cultural experiences have been a true blessing, revealing different facets of humanities subjects, music, and hands-on creativity. Someplace between fashion, textiles, and art, I collect ideas from my surroundings and lived experiences. Exposed to many languages throughout my upbringing, I gravitate towards translating these ideas into knits as an expression of binary code. Using these approaches, I embrace critical design, questioning digital societal structures and human-material relationships.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, a time of severe physical isolation, individuals have resorted almost entirely to social existences via remote communication. Through a combination of textile techniques, particularly involving knits, this fashion system reflects upon the intangible digital spaces we now inhabit (replacing our physical realities with fragmented ones) and the languages that sustain them. Its aim is to help people navigate this new world together, using physical garments to connect them directly to spaces we can share in what feels like a fourth dimension. VIRTUAL PLATFORM - Inserted into every Stitches Apart garment is a QR tag. Upon scanning the tag, wearers are brought directly to the hidden Voices page of www.stitchesapart.com. There, an anonymous recording is available. Each week there will be a new voice - because the QR code is dynamic, it will continuously be functional until a new collection is released with a different code. Old QR codes will lead to Voice Archives. This incentivizes wearers to collect singular pieces over time, and to take good care of them. ONGOING DIALOGUE - Should a listener wish to contribute after hearing a recording, it is easy to find a link to the Voice submission form (on the same webpage as the recording). This way, spontaneous thoughts can be contributed, and an ongoing wearer’s dialogue is spurred. These digital interactions will have physical consequences: the dialogue inspires future collections' knit motifs. It also inspires future prompts for Voice submissions. FRAGMENTS & TRANSLATIONS - Stitches Apart plays on translations between the tactile and the abstract; for example, it compares the binaries of computing languages (zero’s and one’s) with the binaries of knits (knit and purl stitches). This will always somehow seep through visually into the brand, as well as the physical nature of the garments themselves. The discourse did, after all, begin with the exploration of remote connections and relationships between people - and these translations are what make it possible to sustain them. Photographed by Carolina Trinker Modelled by Billy Terry