← Computational Craft | Salil Parekh

Week 11 | Thermochromistry

This week, we played with thermochromic paints. The water soluble pigment, mixed with paint can be applied on fabric, and react to heat. When the dye goes beyond 33°, the dye becomes transparent.

I mixed close to equal parts green dye, yellow paint, white paint and transparent base to create a light green mixture, which when heated would turn lemon yellow as the thermochromic green would disappear. I created various swatches to explore how I could vary the colour change depending on the application of the paint on fabric.

This is a basic silkscreen on cotton cloth, with an even paint application. The layer of paint is fairly thin, but uniform, and as a result there isn't much of a change seen.

These are applied on thick–stripes of thick paint on muslin. On heat, it changes fairly dramatically and quickly. I wanted to see if laying on more than required would make a difference–and it did, at the cost of looking clumpy.

Applied on a matrix grid like pattern, the paint was applied using a paintbrush. The application is thin, and the relatively subtle shift in colour doesn't show up. The intent was to change colours across a grid, akin to a pixel display.

The large swatch serves as a screen of sorts, giving me the opportunity to use a grid like pattern of heating elements in order to paint on messages. The application is thick and it seeped through the other side of the cloth as well, giving it an interesting, hazy appearance.