Nithikul Nimkulrat

• Doctor of Arts
• Professor at Ontario College of Art and Design

Review of: Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms, and the Expanded Frame, 1960–2000 , Michele Hardy, Timothy Long and Julia Krueger (eds) (2023) Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 248 pp., ISBN 978-1-77385-486-1, h/bk, $99.99 ISBN 978-1-77385-487-8, p/bk, $59.99 ISBN 978-1-77385-489-2, e-book (institutional PDF) ISBN 978-1-77385-490-8, e-book (...

This book brings together contributors from multiple disciplines, such as crafts, design, art education, cognitive philosophy, and sociology, to discuss craft and design practice from an embodied perspective. Through theoretical overviews of embodied cognition and research-based cases that involve the researchers’ making experiences, different phe...

This paper track examines the new and changing materiality of design practice , caused by digitalization and new fabrication techniques, and its challenges and benefits. Several areas of design practice and research involve processes of making things. More often such processes unfold in a hybrid form combining both making by hand and with tools, bo...

This pictorial illustrates the methodological tools for articulating the felt experience of chronic pain used for designing somaesthetic interactions. To do this, it presents the design process of a case study named Squeaky/Pain, a soma extension aiming to augment somaesthetic awareness of the pain involved in the appreciation of both pleasant and...

A través del estudio de caso de un diseño, examinamos cómo la conciencia somaesté­tica se ve amplificada por la intermediación de perturbaciones corporales y el cultivo de una transición desde una perspectiva de primera persona a una de segunda persona. El artículo se centra en el aspecto menos explorado del diseño somático: la media­ción de experi...

Textile craft media, such as crochet, needlework, and beadwork, have been utilized by mathematicians as a means of conveying abstract mathematical ideas with tangible objects. The use of textile objects facilitates the understanding of both mathematics and craft and provides textile practitioners with insights into the underlying mathematics. This...

This chapter investigates the intertwinement of analog and digital materials experience generated from within a process of handcrafting through digital means. It grounds an understanding of the relationship between materials (i.e., the substance of artifacts) and experience (i.e., a way to gain knowledge about the world) on the following three conc...

This Special Issue examines collaboration within research teams of professionals, researchers, and other stakeholders with diverse disciplinary expertise. It aims to understand how individual experiential knowledge – or knowledge gained by practice – is shared, how collective experiential knowledge is accumulated and communicated in and through col...

This article investigates how craft knowledge can be utilized and acquired in the handcrafting process using digital tools and digital fabrication methods. It is based on a study that seeks ways in which craft-making and handcrafted objects can be translated using digital technology and addresses the following questions: (1) What forms of knowing a...

This paper examines the collaborative practice between an analogue and a digital craft practitioner. It aims to illuminate ways in which digital tools can be used to translate handcrafted objects in collaborative craft practice and to address the following questions: 1) What forms of knowing and meaning making evolve in collaborative research throu...

This chapter examines the relationship between mathematics and textile knot practice, i.e., how mathematics may be adopted to characterize knotted textiles and to generate new knot designs. Two key mathematical concepts discussed are knot theory and tiling theory. First, knot theory and its connected mathematical concept, braid theory, are used to...

A textile practitioner works in collaboration with and a mathematician to examine textile knot practice and create novel knot designs using mathematical tiling methods, in particular the rhombille tiling. This paper reveals ways in which tiling notations were used to visualize novel patterns and structures.

At the DRS 2018: Design as Catalyst, the EKSIG track aims to examine collaboration within design research teams that comprise members with diverse disciplinary expertise. This is to understand: 1) how individual experiential knowledge, or knowledge gained by practice, is shared; 2) how collective experiential knowledge is accumulated and communicat...

Practice-led research has been under debate for three decades. One of its major issues concerns how the researcher who is also the practitioner documents and reflects on her creative process in relation to a research topic. This article reviews and discusses documentation and reflection in practice-led research through three cases of doctoral disse...

Soft Landing is a collection of essays that pinpoints where fashion and textile education is today and where it may shift in the future. Initiated by Cumulus’s Fashion and Textile Working Group, the essays in this volume address critical questions for fashion and textiles. They shed light on different ideas, approaches, problems, and solutions from...

This article presents a collaborative project between a textile practitioner-researcher (Nimkulrat) and a textile practitioner-mathematician (Matthews). Mathematical investigation of Nimkulrat’s craft knots through mathematical knot diagrams by Matthews revealed knot properties which were indiscernible from the work alone. This approach led to a wa...

A textile practitioner and two mathematicians with an interest in textile knotting carried out collaborative work to analyze textile knot practice and create novel knot pattern designs using mathematical tiling methods, in particular the Wang tiles. This paper shows how tiling notation was used to design knot diagrams and visualize novel patterns a...

Over the last decade, we observe an ever-increasing interest in creating and designing with new materials (Karana et al., 2016; Rognoli et al., 2015; Wilkes et al., 2015). Suzanne Lee uses microbial cellulose composed of millions of tiny bacteria to produce clothing in her bathtub (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=WVW-jSdhILs); Carol Colette, in “T...

‘Material’ has been a central point of research and practice agendas for decades in design. In the field of art, Focillon (1934) and Dewey (1980) emphasized the unique role of ‘material engagement’ in one’s process of thinking and reflecting. Material engagement in craft is a means to logically think, learn and understand through sensing and immedi...

A mathematician and a textile practitioner both with an interest in textile knotting and a focus on research in textile design have collaborated to analyze textile practice and realize novel knot designs through mathematical characterization. The design process has made use of century-old drawing techniques used to represent knots and braids. This...

In an era of increasingly available digital resources, many textile designers and makers find themselves at an interesting juncture between traditional craft process and newer digital technologies. Highly specialized craft/design practitioners may now elect to make use of digital processes in their work, but often choose not to abandon craft skills...

The paper presents an ongoing collaborative project between a textile practitioner-researcher and a textile practitioner-mathematician that investigates the relationship between mathematical knot theory and knotted textiles. It examines how multiple monochrome textile knots may be characterised using mathematical analysis and how this in turn may f...

Expertise, connoisseurship, and experiential knowledge have been discussed as integral to professional practice by professionals and scholars inside and outside their professional domains. However, the notions of expertise, connoisseurship, and experiential knowledge have not been discussed explicitly in relation to practical activities. This speci...

This paper describes an ongoing collaboration between a textile practitioner-mathematician and a textile practitioner-researcher, and their investigation of certain knotted textiles from a mathematical viewpoint. The paper examines (1) how mathematical diagrams that characterize an individual craft knot may facilitate the design and production of a...

The 5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR 2013) Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, 26–30 August 2013

Three examples of Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSS) realized from conducting yarns and bare copper wire on textiles are considered. The FSS arrays are produced using the techniques of weaving, handlooming, and embroidery. There is good agreement between predicted and measured transmission responses of a rectangular loop FSS structure, and for comp...

Drawing, a fundamental tool in most art and design disciplines, has recently become a widely discussed topic within the context of artistic research. The variety of contemporary research into drawing has demonstrated that drawing is an activity that has almost boundless potential applications and roles within design and artistic practices. However,...

Two examples of fabric based frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) are presented. The FSSs are produced by using screen printing and weaving. Both measured and simulated data are presented showing excellent agreement and performance for the FSSs when compared with the simulated data. The performance of these samples points towards a useful screening...

This article aims to discuss the position of art and design artifacts, and their creation, in a practice-led research process. Two creative productions and exhibitions featuring my textile artifacts were intentionally carried out in order to tackle a specific research problem, and these will be examined here as case studies. These cases cover the p...

Over the last two decades, craft practice has played a considerable role in practice-led design research, especially as the subject and the vehicle for theoretical inquiry. This article aims to reveal how craft as a way of thinking through material can be incorporated into practice-led design research. The author’s completed dissertation exploring...

When practitioners adopt craft as the major diligence of their creative practice, they naturally create work for not only the design context but also the art one. The nature of craft that involves direct experience, personal vision and mastery of a medium retains 'material-based' fields of practice, such as ceramics and textiles, for which practiti...

Practice-led research has been under debate for nearly three decades. One of the major issues of this form of research concerns how the researchers who are also the artists/designers can reflect on and document their creative processes in relation to their research topic. In this paper, we review and discuss reflection and documentation in practice...

Nithikul Nimkulrat is a Thai textile artist, designer and researcher currently working as a lecturer at the Loughborough University's School of the Arts. She earned a Doctor of Arts Degree from the University of Art and Design Helsinki in Finland in 2009. Her research interest is rooted in her textile practice, reaching across conceptual issues in...

Following the integration of artistic disciplines within the university, artists have been challenged to review their practice in academic terms. This has become a vigorous epicentre of debates concerning the nature of research in the artistic disciplines. The special issue " On Reflecting and Making in Artistic Research Practice " captures some of...

Craft art discourse has centred on the use of physical materials. In Finland, craft art students are trained to understand various techniques and the materiality of their chosen medium. However, the materiality is often taught in terms of physical properties (e.g. tensile, elasticity, etc.). Conceptual or expressive properties (e.g. feel, impressio...

A tangible material is a primary element in the everyday creative practice of any craft artist. Although craft artists implicitly understand the expressive aspects of the tangible material they use to create their artworks, they rarely discuss or give a written account of them. In this paper, I present a way in which my practice-led research on the...

Practice-led research in the field of art and design usually involves a study of the interplay between a researcher-practitioner and her artistic work in process. This article seeks to illustrate that documentation of art practice can be a means to record that interplay and it can be used as relevant material in practice-led research. The article w...