#Blog 1: Soft Switch & Reading Response
EXERCISE: SOFT SWITCH
Pocket switch⬆️
The main problem I met is that I have to make sure there is no short circuit due to the exposed conductive thread and fabric. The first one I made was too small, so there isn’t enough room to lay out the threads properly. And also, I was using conductive thread in unnecessary places, which also adds to the difficulty. So, the next one I made was bigger and I used normal threads as much as I can.
If I need to turn on two LEDs, I would choose the parallel circuit because, one, if one LED is broken, it won’t affect the other. Two, if they are in series, the LED would be dimmer because they would have to share the voltage.
READING REFLECTIONS:
+What is fashion for you? and why are you interested in fashion?
To be honest, I still feel that fashion is really far from me, even though we say things like fashion is just representing yourself through clothes. Fashion for me is luxury that needs effort and aesthetic competence, on the foundation of technology and craftsmanship. The reason why I am interested in it is similar to why I am interested in many other subjects, that is, it is the intersection of various factors including politics, culture, personal status, and many more that make it hard to be fully understood, which attracts me to try to figure it our.
+What kinds of things do your clothing say about you and your values?
I think it communicates about my emotion (tired or energetic, happy or bored), my family, my aesthetics and a bit of my attitude. Most of the time, it reflects a biased portrait of me and my values. For example, because I don’t have a lot of money to buy clothes myself, many of the clothing I would actually wear is from my parents or relatives which I don’t really like. So, in this sense, it may only reflect my family’s taste or the financial status. I think fashion belongs to people with enough freedom to choose what they wear if we consider it a tool to show people who you are.
+What are your main learnings and take aways from the readings?
I really believe that for fashion to be meaningful it needs to be deeply experimental. Fashion isn’t some random clothing people put on everyday. It can reflect a vague state of mind with low semanticity and context-dependency. Fashion “manages through symbolic means to resonate tensions and moods of the public, lending expression to them that shape and define them.