Yahoo! Anwers to your insecurities from Claudine Lamothe on Vimeo.
My project deals with how insecurities that are masked in the real world can be brought to life in the anonymous world or the internet. More specifically, I worked with the narrative of teenage girls who may appear in real-life as self-confident about their sexuality, but that really are scared and clueless on the inside.
It fascinated me to browse questions and answers on Yahoo! Answers. Therefore, I centered my project around this portal specifically. Using thermochromatic dye as a medium, I painted strips on panties, much like sensor bars, and with thread a similar color as the dye in it’s initial state, I embroidered individual questions. When worn, the dye reacts to the body’s temperature and changes color to baby blue, and the dark fuchsia thread creates a contrast with the new color, making the question now apparent.
Issues
Countless problems arose with this project. Firstly, the dye is quite old, which is why I got it for free. After running tests for weeks, I concluded that it could still be used, but for some reason it would never dry, even after intense drying and curing processes. Initially, I wanted to dye the entire panties in fuchsia, but the no-drying issue made it impossible, and I had to quickly change my tactic to only a strip of dye on each panties. Beforehand, I also tried silkscreening words unto the panties that are usually found on teenagers’ underwear, like “SEXY” or “CHERRY”, but, because of the texture of the dye, the letters were always bleeding unto the fabric and it looked sloppy. So I went back to making strips, although, even after 3 days of drying with heaters and fans, the whole thing never truly dried, and much of the color was lost.
Also, because of the age of the dye, it’s sensibility to heat and reaction time were greatly affected. I wanted people in class to be able to hold the panties in their hands and see the message appear, but it works far better if you put the panties under your armpit for a few seconds… which is quite weird and unrelated to the project.
Finally, the part that broke my heart the most about this project is that I couldn’t use it in the embroidery machine. The panties’ fabric was too stretchy, and because of their odd shape it was impossible to stretch the fabric well enough to put in the machine. Having faith in my embroidery skills, I decided to do everything hand made. This did not turn very well because the dye was still wet (which made the operation harder) and very stretchy, even through a hoop. Therefore, the embroidery is of very very poor quality.