11th December 2015

Interview: Seetal Solanki, Founder of Matter

– by Ali Gitlow

Graphene. Binchotan. Nanostone. Speaking to artist and designer Seetal Solanki is a crash course in all sorts of weird and wonderful materials that most of us don’t even know exist. Parlaying this love of the tangible world into a career path, Seetal recently founded Matter, a platform for exploring materials via research, consultancy and events. She cares deeply about the processes and people involved in creating physical objects and aims to study, highlight and create awareness of as many of them as possible.

This past September saw Matter’s launch at the London Design Festival, which comprised an exhibition called Living in a Material World plus five days of workshops and talks based around the five senses at independent shop One Good Deed Today in Shoreditch. The show included a vast range of work, from Amy Radcliffe’s ‘scent camera’ to Soderberg Mills’ turquoise and magenta mirror to Kia Utzon-Frank’s twisting window blind prototypes. Events included live performances in partnership with NTS radio for the ‘sound’ evening, a demonstration by East London-based waste food purveyors Save the Date Café for the ‘taste’ day, and a presentation by Will Yates-Johnson about ‘Polyspolia’, his proposal for a new manufacturing model in which an object can be broken down and reconstructed over and over, for ‘touch’.

The scope of all this may seem very ambitious, but is actually quite natural with Seetal at the helm – she considers Matter an organic outlet for her varied interests and working practices. In the past she’s crafted wearable tech for Hussein Chalayan, art directed and styled shoots for clothing company Lazy Oaf, and designed fabric for limited edition Air Jordans around the theme of water. Now that Matter has been up and running for a few months, we had a chat with her about how it’s been going, her personal favourite material, thoughts on gift-giving and what’s coming up for her in 2016:

How do you feel things have been going so far with Matter?

I’m definitely feeling really good about it. The people I’m meeting are so diverse. I’m meeting scientists, ethnographers, anthropologists, different artists, people that work in food, electronic companies, aviation companies. It’s incredible. I think launching at a platform like London Design Festival has really enabled me to get out there and have the potential to meet loads of people from different industries. Because design is kind of everything.

Matter has quite an ambitious, open-ended brief to it. Has that been exciting or challenging on a day-to-day level?

Both. I think keeping the momentum up and keeping up to date with what’s going on research-wise as well as having the balance of meetings and work and income is quite challenging, but also really exciting. It’s a time to develop new ideas and work with people that I wouldn’t necessarily have worked with before. It’s always going to be a bit of a balancing act, I think, until I can have a team around me.

What projects are you working on right now?

There’s quite a few I can’t talk about. I’ve been working with Toogood recently. They’re a really great studio to be working with because they see everything from a very holistic point of view. They do clothing as well as interiors and furniture. They’re very much about it being a vision rather than just pigeonholed into one category. I’m going to be doing some material development with them and then helping them on the technical side of things as well.

Your work is heavily concerned with materials and understanding the processes that go into making things. How did you first get interested in this?

It’s a natural way of working when you’re working with materials. If you understand how something is made, you can then apply it to lots of different things. When you’re working with materials, you’re working across lots of different departments. You’re working with manufacturing, production, design, sampling … everything. You’re this little bridge in between all of these departments to get things moving. It’s quite a natural way to work, for me. I think it’s like that for most material designers.

How did you decide to jump from your art and design background into founding Matter?

I came to a point in my career where I was like, ‘What does this all mean, and why? And is there a link between everything I’ve been doing, because everything’s been quite diverse.’ I haven’t really taken one route. It was the material that was the main link between all that I’ve been doing. ‘What matters to me?’ was the question I was asking myself. That kind of formed Matter. It’s all about people – I love people – it’s all about materials, process, and having a place where materials can be understood and that people working with materials can be part of.

How did you come up with the concept for your website, which features an awesome interactive periodic table of ideas that people can explore?

The whole idea of Matter is that everything is made of something. For me, that sums up the periodic table quite nicely. Also the branding was very much driven by scientific and textbook education, in a more contemporary way. The whole idea with it is that you’re collaborating with the Internet, as well. We’ve credited everything because a lot of the imagery isn’t our own. When you click through you find the source of the image. What happens on Tumblr sites and Pinterest sometimes is you don’t really know who the image is done by. For me it’s a bit of a frustration because you want to research it and find more. That’s quite important for us.

What is your personal favourite physical material to work with?

I’m quite liking nanostone at the moment. It’s a flexible stone surface which is kind of strange to think about, because you see stone as being solid and thick. It’s basically shavings of stone put onto a glue film and therefore it is flexible and you can use it on surfaces and architecture, and possibly automotive and interiors. It’s quite endless what you can do with it.

Were you pleased with the reception of the launch at One Good Deed Today?

It was pretty overwhelming. I didn’t expect that kind of response at all. I didn’t expect that many people to turn up, especially on the launch night. I was buzzing for a long time after. To physicalize it was really important as well. Although we exist online, it was a good way to make people understand what we’re doing and what we’re about. To have that conversation with people was really important, I think. To see physical objects was great. Though I love the digital world, and the Internet is one of my favourite things.

Do you personally prefer digital things or analog things?

They have to meet. I don’t think it has to be one or the other. For me, it’s about both and tying them together.

It’s almost the end of the year and the holidays are approaching. What has mattered to you in 2015?

When it comes to the end of the year for me it’s a lot of perspective and reflection. I don’t really tend to buy gifts at Christmas; I know that might be a bit Scrooge-like. I just like spending time with people, so what I suggest is we go for dinner, or they come over to my house for dinner and we just hang out. I think time is the most valuable asset. A lot of people don’t have time. For me it’s important to value people and time and spend time with them. That’s kind of my gift, I guess.

What are you looking forward to with Matter for 2016?

We’re just going to continue collaborating in a cross-discipline and inter-discipline way, and approach everything from a really holistic point of view. And also do more events, which will be a lot of fun. We’re going to focus on one subject matter and delve into that a lot deeper rather than doing a whole bunch in one go. I might be doing monthly events in different places, and more consultancy. Hopefully we’ll have a physical space where people can come and grow the team a bit more. It’s been nice to finish off the year like this.

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You can check out more from Seetal in the latest issues of Riposte and Viewpoint Magazine, both of which she’s written for.

1. longitudinal arrangement, woodgrain 2. vault – The Broad Museum interior by architects Diller Scofidio and Refro in Downtown LA 3. veil – The Broad Museum interior, Downton LA 4. carbon fibre weave for aerospace industry, Fothergill manufacturers 5. hues of Yosemite National Park 6. engineered fabrics, Fotherhill manufacturers 7. weathering of COR-TEN steel 8. calcium formations 9. sea foam