The Voice of the Shuttle is a project which started as a bachelor thesis at the Free University of Bozen Bolzano.
This project focuses on textiles waste and in particular offcuts, the pieces that due to their dimensions or shapes are considered useless and consequently end up in the trash. The focus of this thesis was finding a way to reuse these scraps, starting from the concept that something “broken” can add meaning to a work and deepen its value, this elements are not "leftovers" but possibilities.
The research focused on the traditional role of fabric, in its forms of tapestries, carpets, but also clothing, as elements with a strong symbolic charge. Using this communicative power intrinsic in fabrics, the result of this project is a medium that uses the nature of waste as a visual tool to represent our time.
Offcuts can be seen, indeed, as symbols: they are details of a wider frame and express a lot more that what one may think. They are the tangible representation of how dimensions can influence the beliefs of people: “if something small, of any kind, is thrown away then the impact will be irrelevant”. This happens because we are used to touch with hands the final product but we do not have experience or knowledge of the process behind.
Therefore, the result of this thesis wants to be a discussion piece, which visualizes the impact the textiles we disposed of have during their production. Enlightening those numbers, which often remain in the background and translating them in a more understandable form, the medium aims to recode raw data, in order to get the user closer to the topic.