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 - Gravity Mass.  Graviceptive Forces



“Mass tells spacetime how to curve +  curved spacetime tells mass how to move.”- John Wheeler 

Research summary:
Gravity is the universal acceleration field that gives mass its weight; neurophysiological research shows gravity functions as a perceptual “strong prior” in Bayesian models and is encoded via multisensory and vestibular systems (otoliths, semicircular canals). Perceived weight and bodily schema shift when gravity cues are altered.

Gravity as a material:
In First Nations cosmologies, gravity (or its equivalents) is entwined with cosmology and personhood: the Earth’s pull is part of kinship and orientation. Within these knowledge systems, gravity is a substrate of embodiment and moral geography; beyond being a physical parameter it is also an ontological condition shaping action and meaning.

Ideas we are curious to explore:
1. Cross-cultural vocabularies for “weight” (emotional, moral) that are not reduced to Western metaphors of burden.
2. How other cultures’ embodied practices map affect to graviception.
3. How different landscapes teach different forms of balance.

Senses:
Proprioception, Vision, Audition, Tactility, Kinaesthesia.