Facing Touch

Textiles

2011

Lia Cook (American, born 1942)

Lia Cook has long been interested in how the human brain reacts to the desire for touch. In the early 2000s, she began to work with neuroscientists to compare the brain’s response to viewing a woven image of a face versus a photograph of the same face. They discovered that seeing the woven image triggered greater activity in the part of the brain most affected by touch. Facing Touch illustrates this experiment: in it, a girl wearing a cap with sensors attached reaches out to a woven portrait also by Cook, Binary Traces: Young Girl, from 2004.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Textiles

Artist: Lia Cook
Title: Facing Touch
Place: California (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 2011
Medium: Cotton and rayon, weaving on digital hand loom
Dimensions: 137.2 × 130.2 cm (54 × 51 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Textile Society
Reference Number: 2016.79

Lia Cook, Weaving & Innovation, Digital Fibers Converse with Neural Networks, exh. cat. (Madison, WI: Ruth Davis Design Gallery with University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2013), cover (ill.).
Lucy Johnston, Digital Handmade: Craftsmanship in the New Industrial Revolution (London: Thames & Hudson, 2015), 49 (ill.).

Madison, WI, Ruth Davis Design Gallery at the School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Weaving & Innovation, Digital Fibers Converse with Neural Networks, Feb. 1-Apr. 7, 2013, cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Elizabeth F. Cheney and Agnes Allerton Textile Galleries, A Global View: Recent Acquisitions of Textiles, 2012-2016, Apr. 8-Sept. 5, 2016.
Art Institute of Chicago, Elizabeth F. Cheney Textile Galleries, Threaded Visions: Contemporary Weavings from the Collection, Feb. 24-Aug. 26, 2024, no cat.

The artist, Berkeley, CA; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2016.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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