This Member Monday features interdisciplinary artist Laura Splan, whose conceptually driven practice bridges textiles, science, and digital processes. From reimagining viruses as lace to transforming data into woven forms, Splan’s work invites curiosity, wonder, and playful engagement with complex, often invisible worlds. In this interview, she reflects on formative textile memories, the productive power of perceptual confusion, and how emerging research—from Jacquard technologies to fungal dyes—is shaping her vision for the future of textiles.
Computerized machine embroidered lace mounted on velvet
Photo courtesy of Laura Splan
(TSA) I want to start with the age old first question: what is your process?
(LS) My process is conceptually driven, so I work with a lot of different materials and techniques. In many ways, however, textiles were my first medium and remain the one I move through the most easily and experimentally in the studio. I was raised in a family of women that sewed their own clothes and stitched their own quilts, often entirely by hand. Watching my grandmother transform discarded clothing into heirlooms gave me a profound understanding of material transformation, grounded in a sensibility of collage and pattern.
Today, my research-based studio practice and interdisciplinary collaborations culminate in multimedia exhibitions and events. Recent projects have included immersive multisensory experiences, participatory sculptures, and intimately scaled objects. With an approach grounded in what I call the “tactical tactile”, my work cultivates intuitive comprehension of the interconnectedness of scientific phenomena and the everyday. Often combining craft with digital processes, my artworks have reimagined viruses as lace, data as weavings, and discarded materials as fabric. These uncanny combinations offer new possibilities for understanding complexity through curiosity, wonder, and play by creating tangible encounters with seemingly intangible worlds.
(TSA) Do you have a favorite textile memory?
(LS) I attended a public high school in Tennessee that offered a lot of vocational classes. I was able to take an inspiring course called “Textiles and Apparel” that reframed what was otherwise considered unpaid women’s domestic work as a professional, technical, and scientific pursuit equally available to all genders. We had wonderful conversations about the unique qualities of different fibers. I’ll never forget the teacher saying “cotton breathes” and its poetic implications for the animacy of textiles. The class undoubtedly influenced my “Trousseau” series, technically and narratively–heirloom garments constructed from remnant facial peel. And my virus “Doilies” series was an early example of my attempts to use lace as an agent of camouflage, hiding stories of disease and domesticity that only emerge upon close inspection.
Mixed Media: detail of remnant cosmetic facial peel cast from hands
Photo courtesy of Laura Splan
(TSA) Do you encounter any misconceptions about your work?
(LS) I make a lot of intricate drawings of lace as well as etchings and prints of biometric waveforms that people often mistake for threads. I not only embrace the confusion but go out of my way to create it. Any time our sense of perception is destabilized, it creates a fleeting cognitive state where anything is possible and therefore, we are actively looking for possibilities. This is how Art is “functional”. It opens our minds to all that could be in order to discern what is. But the possibilities revealed in this process continue to resonate through the artwork itself.
Computerized Jacquard weavings with data-driven patterns created with EMG recordings of bodily movement
Photo courtesy of Laura Splan
(TSA) Do you have any textile-related books that you recommend?
(LS) “Jacquard’s Web: How a hand-loom led to the birth of the information age” by James Essinger was really inspiring to me when I was creating my “Embodied Objects” series of computerized Jacquard weavings. This book first introduced me to Ada Lovelace’s writings on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine as a computational device that “weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.” “Radical Fiber: Threads Connecting Art and Science” published by the Tang Teaching Museum is a beautifully illustrated book exploring how fiber arts have influenced science and medicine in the past and continue to shape how we imagine the future. I’m honored to have my “Rhapsody” sculpture, made with hand-spun laboratory animal fiber, included in this incredible book. Both books have continued to influence recent projects like my “Tangible Variations” weavings, which visualize molecular processes involved in epigenetics and were made in collaboration with theoretical biophysicist, Adam Lamson.
Detail of archival pigment print with patterns made with electromyography data
Photo courtesy of Laura Splan
(TSA) How do you imagine that humanity might engage with textiles in the future?
(LS) Hopefully, the future of textiles will look very different from today! There’s an urgent interest in the upcycling and repurposing of waste that we find pervasive in so many textile industries. There’s also an increasing rejection of chemical processes that pollute the environment. I’m currently an Artist-in-Research at Open Fung where I’m collaborating with scientists to imagine new possibilities for fungi not only as a subject or material, but as a dynamic framework for exploration. I’m finding a lot of exciting innovations emerging with biodegradable fungal dyes and pigments, as well as the use of fungi to break down toxic dye waste. I’m looking forward to experimenting with this research as an artist and as a way to speculate on more environmentally sustainable futures for textiles.
Site-specific installation with sound, tactile transducers, textiles sculpture made with hand-spun laboratory llama and alpaca fiber
Photo courtesy Laura Splan
(TSA) What projects are you currently working on / looking forward to?
(LS) I’m currently working on an expansive new body of work entitled “Cryptic Lineages” that includes live performances with costumes and sculptures. It’s very interdisciplinary work that has primarily been grounded in video, sound, text, and movement. The expanding costume and sculptural elements of the work will undoubtedly involve both handmade and digitally fabricated textiles.
Photo courtesy of the Laura Splan
Laura Splan is a New York City based artist working at the intersections of Science, Technology, and Culture. Her internationally recognized artworks and exhibitions have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Brooklyn Museum (NYC), Musea Brugge (Bruges), Museum of Arts & Design (NYC), Santa Mònica Art Centre (Barcelona), Onassis ONX (NYC), Nantes Museum of Arts (Nantes), SÍM (Reykjavík), Galerie FOFA (Montréal), and The Nobel Prize Museum at Liljevalchs (Stockholm). Her work is represented in the collections of the Spalter Digital Art Collection, Thoma Art Foundation, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Commissions include projects for the Museum of the Moving Image, CDC Foundation, Vanderbilt Planetarium, Beall Center for Art+Technology, and Bruges Triennial. Her artist lectures and talks have been presented by The National Arts Club, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, SciFoo at Google, and University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Splan has held academic appointments at Stanford University and her workshops have been hosted by the Fredrickson Family Innovation Lab and Coalesce Center for Biological Arts. She has been a studio practice advisor for San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Art, Arts Council England, and Plexus Projects and a visiting critic at The Crit Lab, University of Cincinnati, and UNC Chapel Hill. Publications featuring her artwork include “Radical Fiber: Threads Connecting Art and Science” published by the Tang Teaching Museum and “Life Eternal” published by The Nobel Prize Museum. Reviews and articles including her work have appeared in The New York Times, Nature, Wired, BOMB, Discover, and Frieze and she has been featured on Science Friday, MicrobeTV, and Voice of America. Her research has been supported by the Simons Foundation, Flatiron Institute, Jerome Foundation, Creative Australia, uCity Science Center, EY Metaverse Lab, University of California Irvine Park Lab, Open Fung, and NEW INC at the New Museum. Her contributions to contemporary art have garnered numerous awards including Wave Farm’s Media Arts Assistance Fund for Artists Grant and AS220’s National Endowment for the Arts Digital Arts Fellowship. Laura Splan lives and works in a posthuman wasteland near several superfund sites, in a building that has been both a pharmaceutical factory and a knitting factory. Laura Splan has been a member of TSA since 2018.
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