Just like all art forms, practitioners of fiber art strive to broaden the boundaries of fiber art, seeking new forms and languages in material, creation method, expression and presentation so as to gain a broader dimension of thinking about the fiber itself. They attempt to explore and discover the media of fiber in the name of art. While they explain repeatedly what they are doing and why it is valuable to do, there is also a group of practitioners who are going to the opposite direction. Their practice maybe be based on the understanding of images, spatial narratives, results of material experiments or the transformation of industrial chains brought by social and economic development. They intentionally or unintentionally use fiber as media to establish a strong or weak bond with fiber due to its artistic features such as texture, technique and methods. It is such association that breaks people’s mindsets about fiber and brings more possibilities of fiber art. The intersection of these different art forms makes it difficult to define the nature of artwork itself, but it is the ambiguity that raises new questions about fiber art and gives fiber new value.
Miguel Rosthschild, the media artist from Argentine, has completed the transformation from image experience to on-site experience in the form of photography installation. He mostly creates photography, video and painting. His work Elegy prints the waves from photograph on cloth and then suspends the work with nearly a thousand transparent threads to simulate the ripples of the ocean, creating a kind of static eternity. In this work, photography is not the focus of the work but the field to present the work to be particularly important. The photograph does not have to be printed on photographic paper due to the development of art micro-jet technology, but also can be printed on cloth with high precision. The intervention of cloth fiber changes the way the image was presented: the image was changed from being hung on the wall to being suspended in the exhibition hall. The characteristics of fiber adds plasticity to the photo, which be-comes a three-dimensional reconstruction of the subject rather than a flat display. The photo is no longer a photo but a soft sculpture due to the way the installation is present-ed. With the intervention of fiber, the photo has lost its own characteristics of reproducibility and transmissibility, and has becomes a specific spatial art installation that can only be experienced in a specific space.

Also based on image, Ji Wenyu’s and Zhu Weibing’s works are both like allegory and essays. Their works are full of satire to reflect social problems. Ji Wenyu’s early paint-ings are based on real-time observations of reality. The real life is drawn into the paint-ing in the way of “collage” to correspond to the absurdity of reality. At the same time, Zhu Weibing, once a fashion designer, who is tired of the flowing fashion design pro-cess, retains his affection for “cloth”. Their collaboration inherited by Ji Wenyu’s ap-proach to image processing and his realistic style starts from exploring the usage of cloth. Through the creation of works in the form of cloth carving, they put the absurdity of the reality in front of you. The work Look, God is watching us takes God's perspec-tive to examine this absurd world. In many cases, their work is closely related to the current situation and corresponding with the current political situation and living envi-ronment, which makes the context of their work more timesensitive. For example, the work Falling apart will make audience lauge while they understanding the current social and political situation. Their images are not images, their sculptures are not entirely sculptures. They reflect the relationship between people and society through artistic sce-ne, avoiding traditional fiber art works that emphasize on the characteristics of materials, such as decorative and abstract, and present artworks in a perfect way. They use fiber as media to highlight their narrative and make reality through local transformation from two dimensions to three dimensions.
The fiber no longer exists in work in the form of object due to the intervention of image. In the work Thread created by the artist Xing Danwen, the limitation of fiber itself has become a metaphor for the relationship between mother and daughter. Through weav-ing sweater in daily life and such a move of breaking free, it is a metaphor for the relationship between parents and children in the game. This relationship is abstract, and the characteristics of the fiber make a symbol of the relationship visible in the film. In the same way of using image as the carrier, the artist Lin Yi repeatedly embroidered a sentence of “there is nothing here” on the sub-belt of the belt, and then used the master belt to rub the embroidered text over and over again, finally leaving a messy trace. Through the deconstruction of the concrete thread, the paradox between language and reality is unfolded.
"Weaving allows me to explore time and space like lines in a painting. The lines gradu-ally build up into a plane where infinite space is created and gradually expanding as if forming a universe." -- Chiharu Shiota (Under The Skin, Hat-je Cantz, 2017)
For artists, fiber is not just a physical existence but also an emotion, a memory or a connection. The artist Chiharu Shiota uses the thread to weave everyday objects such as keys, shoes, suitcases, doors or boats to connect the personal experiences with public memories to form a complex resonance to explore life and death, anxiety and fear. Shi-ota’s works usually fill the empty space with largescale and complicated thread installa-tion where audiences are immersed and surrounded by the emotion of the works. In her early work “In Silence”, she turned her childhood experiences of neighbors catching fire and burning piano and chairs into her work. “The sound of a burning piano falling apart on fire is so beautiful, it's more beautiful than the normal keys.” (Under The skin, Chiharu Shiota, Hat-je Cantz, 2017)

The black silk thread in the exhibition hall conveys sadness, such as fire devours the piano or the the sound of burning piano being fall apart in fire. The silk thread connects the adjacent chair to create an uneasy “sound field” where audiences walk through the works and embraced by line-forming device. The multi-level metaphor of the thread makes the audience feel like they are in a silent concert where the sound is visible but not perceived. Shiota has visualized what has happened in the past, and it’s not only the reproduction of memory but also the establishment of resonance through every detail of image, sound, emotion and association with the audiences with the help of thread. Fiber has become a tool to visualize abstract memories. In this Triennial of Fiber Art, Shiota’s installation work, Hand to Hand , features red wishing paper wrapped in a web of blood-colored threads. On the red paper it says the inner desire - hope to meet someone important in life. Artists believe that there are connections among people, and threads are like those connections. Like relationships, threads can be entangled, knotted, tied, stretched or cut. People can’t see these connections with their eyes, but if we take a glance at them, we will see a red visible space – all human beings connect as a whole.
Of course, the encounter with fiber not only comes from providing a new way of pro-cessing for images or photograph to make new breakthroughs in the media, but also from the experiments on materials to give us a new understanding of fiber. Dutch artist Bart Hess, who graduated from the School of Fashion Design in Design Academy Eindhoven, is not interested in designing a suit. Instead, he interests is in the casual ex-perience brought by daily materials and their new application. Instead of making a wearable piece of clothing, he hopes that his design will eventually be presented in the form of contemporary art. That' s why he defines himself as a material designer rather than a fashion designer. His experiments, like photograph, installation and costume, are all eventually turned into art works. He made his outfit out of shaving foam, cultivated green plants to wrap models, and place models in wax pools to make clothing, or just reconstruct the image through a copied shot with the help of software AfterEffects, which is to make different outfits in video. Most of his experiments have nothing to do with fiber itself but with its texture, function or logic. His useless experiments detached from the material and suggested the possibility of fibers.

“Unknown Fields” (UK/Australia) is a design research studio co-founded by Kate Davis and Liam Young, who attempt to explore the dark side of modern city and reveal the industrialization and the precarious desolation caused by technology and culture. In this Triennial of Fiber Art, they look at the destructive impact brought by the develop-ment of fashion industry on traditional fiber craft from an industrial perspective. Their documentary Collapse uses the dramatic scenes to depict the entire textile industry. It is both a film and a collaboratively completed textile art work that reveals the threat faced by traditional indigenous craftsmanship from the fashion industry. The work starts from the cotton fields in India and extends all the way to the textile mills, dye workshops, garment factories and shipping docks. “Unknown Fields” looks at the evolution of the industry from a macro perspective and the crisis that new industries bring to traditional fiber processes.
The experiments and reflections on fiber art by artists and designers in different fields have broadened the understanding of fiber. Their encounters in the half way is to create more diversified attempt in fiber art and thus redefine the boundary of fiber art. As Marshall McLuhan mentioned in his book Understanding Media, “the moment when two media are mixed or intersected is the moment of discovering truth and enlighten-ment, the new media form is generated thereby. Because of their similarities, we stay at the boundary of the two media.” (Understanding Media -- On the Extension of Human Beings, Commercial Press, 2000, Translator: He Daokuan) Miguel Rosthschild’s works reused the power of fiber to give photography a new way to look at even though it is quite difficult to define as photography. By using the plasticity of cloth, Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing’s creation extended from two dimensions to three dimensions, which made them obtain the way of expression between image and sculpture. Xing Danwen and Lin Yi use thread as metaphor to complete the narration in their images. The thread also connects the memory of different regions for Chiharu Shiota. Bart Hess’s experiments explored the possibilities of fiber in the way of its absence. “Unknown Fields” used documentary, modern technology and big data to rethink the destructiveness of traditional fiber industry brought by fashion industry and their internal logic. The so-called boundless alienation is to explore the intersection between other media and fiber art from the creation of diverse artists so as to liberate us from the traditional perspective of fiber art and make it have a more contemporary perspective.