Material Selveges






“Indeed, our ancestors were material scientists” - Akinwumi Ogundiran


  1. Air. Atmospheric Dynamics
  2. Sound. Acoustical Structuring
  3. Mass. Graviceptive Force
  4. Smoke. Aerosol Transience
  5. Scent. Olfactory Ecology
  6. Time. Processual Temporality
  7. Temperature. Thermo-affective Fields
  8. Soil. Earthen Foundations
  9. Glass. Silicate Transparency
  10. Digital. Sensory Futures



About Material Selvedges


pronunciation: /məˈtɪəriəl ˈselvɪdʒɪz/
noun (used with a singular verb)

1. A radio-making project examining materiality through Global Majority First Nations perspectives, with a focus on Southern and West Africa.

Etymology: From material + selvedges (plural of selvedge, also spelled selvage), from Middle English self + edge. The term performs deliberate wordplay with salvage (from Old French salvage, meaning "to save"), invoking both the textile concept of a self-finished fabric edge and the act of recovering suppressed knowledge systems.



Field Notes

  1. A Cartography of the Invisible


About with another



Material Selvedges is based on with another’s third design principle:
‘Multi-Sensory Materialism’ as featured in: designmanifestos.org and designprinciplesftw.com.

In partnership with African Life-Centric Design + 16/16


Material Selvedges - Air Air. Atmospheric Dynamics


“Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.”- Anaximenes

Research summary:
Air is the medium that animates built space; architects and theorists frame ‘air’ or the void as an active design component (ventilation, acoustics, thermal flow, atmospheric modulation). Designers and makers treating air as material attend to flows, pressure, humidity, and the affordances of negative space as a compositional element.

Air as a material:
Global Majority ontologies often collapse object/subject and animate/inanimate divides: air is an animate medium; a carrier of ancestors, prayers, disease, and climate.
Rather than a passive container, air is a mediator and interlocutor. In a number of traditions, it qualifies as a material in practice: it transmits forces, traces, energies, and histories in ways that reshape bodies and social relations.

Ideas we are curious to explore:
1. Political ecologies of ‘air’ (who controls air in public/private space, colonial legacies of ventilation and exposure).
2. Methods for documenting and archiving ephemeral air-events (odor plumes, drafts) as part of material histories.

Senses:
Thermoception, Tactility, Audition, Olfaction, Affect.