At HOSOO GALLERY, the exhibition "QUASICRYSTAL - Exploring Textiles Through Code" is being held. Programming has been used to create "woven structures," which are then brought to life by the hands of artisans. The exhibition runs until Saturday, February 13, 2021.

HOSOO, a long-established Nishijin-ori weaver founded in 1688, is drawing attention for its proactive approach to combining weaving with new perspectives.

In 2019, they opened HOSOO GALLERY, a textile gallery that views weaving as a medium to express culture and history in three dimensions.

The exhibition "QUASICRYSTAL - Exploring Textiles Through Code" is currently underway at HOSOO GALLERY.

This exhibition showcases the results of "HOSOO STUDIES," HOSOO's research division, which has been engaged in multifaceted research and development on the enduring relationship between textiles and humanity, incorporating contemporary perspectives.

This project, initiated in 2017, has involved ongoing research and development into "woven structures"—the fundamental components of textiles—in collaboration with Ken Furudate, an artist and programmer.

Since 2019, three individuals—Shoya Doen, Raki Tomoyama, and Michinori Hirakawa—who conduct computational expression and research in diverse fields such as design, mathematics, and art, have been brought on board. Through long-term residencies in the workshop, they have developed new orders of woven structures using programming.

The "Quasicrystal" that serves as the subject of this research and development project draws inspiration from crystal structures that possess regularity but lack periodicity.

Textile structures are inherently composed of woven structures with regularity akin to crystal structures. Nishijin-ori, too, is primarily composed of three basic structures—known as "plain weave," "twill," and "satin weave"—and variations thereof.

By altering the way these structures are combined, patterns and textures can be skillfully varied. Over many years, woven structures have been cultivated and passed down through the accumulated experience of artisans, based on these three fundamental structures.

In this project, these woven structures were generated using computer program code. By integrating technologies available today into methods cultivated since ancient times, new structures with patterns reminiscent of quasicrystals were created.

The artisans at HOSOO, who inherit the DNA of Nishijin-ori—a craft that has pursued beauty for 1200 years—then took these newly generated codes and, using Nishijin-ori's unique materials and techniques, brought them to life as entirely new textiles possessing universal beauty.

By having computers create structures that exceed the limits of human lifespan calculation, and then finishing them with human hands and sensibility, the resulting works pose a question about the very nature of beauty.