functional textile collection Kaamos
project Nature 2:0
2014
The impulse for this project came from the law in Estonia and in Finland. This law requires pedestrians to wear safety reflectors when walking during dark conditions. The safety reflectors are mostly not very elegant, but they aids visibility of a person visible to on the road. For that reason are they kind of protectors for accidents. In Nordic countries there is no much light in wintertime. This time of the year, when it it's pretty dark is called Kaamos in Finnish, which is the word to describe the Polar Night, but also this dark period. The Night sky in Kaamos reference to views of celestial bodies such as stars, the Moon, and planets. Natural light sources in a night sky are moonlight, starlight and airglow.
Moon is the biggest retro-reflective phenomen in nature. At Night it delivers enough light so it is possible to orientate oneself. In the past there were no artifical light, and nightly Reflections came only from Moon. However stays most of the visible world in the dark and moonlight drives it in to the ambiguous mysterious atmosphere.
The Nightreflections create interspace between visibility and invisibility, being identified and being unidentified. Fading into the night works like camouflage, but it let get your own identity out of the control and will call up another, the dark side. Attractive designs and beautiful patterns of these fabrics reflect surfaces of moons, but they are't from the Earth's Moon, they are from unfamiliar, distant Moons of Jupiter. In fact they can be seen, but not identified.
This project was led by Dr. Prof. Zane Berzina.
DOCUMENTATION.PDF