Abstract
Engagement with intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is increasingly framed as experiential rather than representational. However, textile ICH—particularly structurally complex forms such as Miao Piling Embroidery—is still often presented through documentation and visual display, limiting access to its embodied, processual, and perceptual dimensions. This paper develops a situated, practice-led generative approach that explores how textility can be translated into generative and embodied experience. Using Miao Piling Embroidery as a case study, textility is defined here as a conceptual construct that synthesises material, making, structural, and cultural connotations, understood as a system of relations including unit formation, layering, and repetition. These relations are operationalised as generative parameters within a shared visual basis, which is subsequently developed into embodied spatial experience. Across two iterations of this system in varied exhibition contexts, the study examines how spatial conditions reshape embodied perception and produce distinct experiential modes. The paper contributes a situated, practice-led approach for translating textile ICH into generative and embodied experience, positioning textility and embodiment as design guides for structuring generative and spatial engagement.
Keywords
Textile thinking; Generative systems; Embodied experience; Textile intangible cultural heritage
DOI
10.21606/TI-2026.169
Citation
Lin, M.(2026) From Textility to Embodied Experience: A Practice-Led Generative Approach to Textile ICH Engagement, in Jane Scott, Sophie Skach, and Rebecca Stewart (eds.), Textile Intersections 2026, 17-18 September 2026, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2026.169
Conference Track
researchpapers
Included in
From Textility to Embodied Experience: A Practice-Led Generative Approach to Textile ICH Engagement
Engagement with intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is increasingly framed as experiential rather than representational. However, textile ICH—particularly structurally complex forms such as Miao Piling Embroidery—is still often presented through documentation and visual display, limiting access to its embodied, processual, and perceptual dimensions. This paper develops a situated, practice-led generative approach that explores how textility can be translated into generative and embodied experience. Using Miao Piling Embroidery as a case study, textility is defined here as a conceptual construct that synthesises material, making, structural, and cultural connotations, understood as a system of relations including unit formation, layering, and repetition. These relations are operationalised as generative parameters within a shared visual basis, which is subsequently developed into embodied spatial experience. Across two iterations of this system in varied exhibition contexts, the study examines how spatial conditions reshape embodied perception and produce distinct experiential modes. The paper contributes a situated, practice-led approach for translating textile ICH into generative and embodied experience, positioning textility and embodiment as design guides for structuring generative and spatial engagement.