Netzwerk

There are nets made of textiles, networks for distribution, and natural and social networks. We know the structure of the net from fishing nets, the nets of spiders’ webs, mosquito nets, net shopping bags, hairnets, and net stockings, catching and goal nets, public transportation networks, street or railway networks, gas and water networks, and also mobile telecommunications networks. We are networked and connected.

The structure of the net is the sign of universal interconnection, mutual relations and exchange. It is unlimited and can be infinitely combined and expanded. It is not hierarchical and top-down, but spread across a surface. Everything is connected with everything else, often by means of a side branch. Nets and networks are basic and primeval structures that we find in nature and that have been copied and used by humankind for thousands of years, and that have become a fundamental structure in our thinking and actions – we live in the metaphor of the net.

A group of students in the programme in textiles design at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and at the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design at the University of Stuttgart has been exploring nets and networks, looking at connections between organic nets and mathematical grids, as both a confrontation between and also a togetherness of nature and technology and of the physical and the invisible.
Nets and networks and with them the complexity and flexibility that shape our societies today are made visible and tangible, from the fishing net to the network of construction sites in the city of Stuttgart, from the nervous system in the human body to the cosmic web of the universe.