_ concealed
tag: [work] [phygital] [digi]
date: 20220901
classification: 12th from Lausanne to Beijing International Fiberart Biennale Exhibation installation
location: Yunnan Provicnal Museum Yunnan China
collaborator: Fanglu Lin
team: Yibo Yuan
Concealed was developed for the 12th International Fiber Art Biennale as an experiment in phygital fabrication. The project begins with textile structures and material behaviors typically governed by standardized production workflows, then disassembles and reconfigures those logics through digital simulation.
Rather than using digital tools to imitate textile appearance, the project reconstructs material behavior strand by strand. No normal maps or displacement maps are used, and no digital cloning occurs at any stage. A single digital file is maintained from initial modeling through final fabrication, allowing the same geometry to move continuously between simulation, visualization, and production.
This continuity shifts the role of the digital model from representation to material instruction. Fiber density, curvature, overlap, compression, and deformation are treated as active design variables rather than surface effects. The resulting forms retain the visual memory of textile construction while departing from the repetitive logic normally associated with industrial fabrication.
The project therefore asks what happens when a standardized material system is allowed to misbehave. Instead of forcing matter to conform to an idealized digital model, Concealed uses simulation to expose alternative behaviors already latent within the material logic itself.
What is concealed is not the object, but the range of possibilities suppressed by conventional methods of production.