Joanna Berzowska

Electronic Textiles: Wearable Computers, Reactive Fashion, and Soft Computation

Abstract Electronic textiles, also referred to as smart fabrics, are quite fashionable right now. Their close relationship with the field of computer wearables gives us many diverging research directions and possible definitions. On one end of the spectrum, there are pragmatic applications such as military research into interactive camouflage or textiles that can heal wounded soldiers. On the other end of the spectrum, work is being done by artists and designers in the area of reactive clothes: “second skins” that can adapt to the environment and to the individual. Fashion, health, and telecommunication industries are also pursuing the vision of clothing that can express aspects of peoples personalities, needs, and desires or augment social dynamics through the use and display of aggregate social information. In my current production-based research, I develop enabling technology for electronic textiles based upon my theoretical evaluation of the historical and cultural modalities of textiles as they relate to future computational forms. My work involves the use of conductive yarns and fibers for power delivery, communication, and networking, as well as new materials for display that use electronic ink, nitinol, and thermochromic pigments. The textiles are created using traditional textile manufacturing techniques: spinning conductive yarns, weaving, knitting, embroidering, sewing, and printing with inks.

Pulp-based computing: a framework for building computers out of paper

In this video, we describe a series of techniques for building sensors, actuators and circuit boards that behave, look, and feel like paper. By embedding electro-active inks, conductive threads and smart materials directly into paper during the papermaking process, we have developed seamless composites that are capable of supporting new and unexpected application domains in ubiquitous and pervasive computing at affordable costs.

Kukkia and Vilkas: kinetic electronic garments

This paper describes our first experiments in developing kinetic electronic garments, within the context of fashion and personal expression. We have integrated the shape memory alloy Nitinol in textile substrates to create Kukkia and Vilkas, two animated dresses that move or change shape over time, using resistive heating and control electronics. We describe fabrication details, including Nitinol shape setting and felting of the textile substrate. We suggest various models for programming the behavior of such an artifact, including animated, reactive, and interactive models.

Memory rich clothing: second skins that communicate physical memory

This paper examines the development of wearable technologies that display a garments history of use and communicate physical memory. We explore how trends in digital technologies and conventional wearable research contrast the ways our bodies and clothing register memory at a personal and social level. Our research concentrates on the production of garments that take into consideration aspects of playfulness and that reflect more subtle or poetic aspects of our identity and embodied history. The pieces described here are part of a larger series called Memory Rich Clothing and employ several soft computation techniques developed in our labs.

Very slowly animating textiles: shimmering flower

Materials for display such as light emitting diodes (LEDs), electroluminescent (EL) material or woven optical fibers coupled with high brightness LEDs offer potential for wearable displays or animated fashion. Non-emissive materials that simply change color – such as electronic ink (E-INK) and various photochromic or thermochromic pigments – are more interesting. Textiles with emissive displays are visually appropriate for evening and youth wear, whereas non-emissive textile displays remain closer to the tradition of weaving and textile printing.

Programming reality: from transitive materials to organic user interfaces

Over the past few years, a quiet revolution has been redefining our fundamental computing technologies. Flexible E-Ink, OLED displays, shape-changing materials, parametric design, e-textiles, sensor networks, and intelligent interfaces promise to spawn entirely new user experiences that will redefine our relationship with technology. This workshop invites researchers and practitioners to imagine and debate this future, exploring two converging themes. Transitive Materials focuses on how emerging materials and computationally-driven behaviors can operate in unison blurring the boundaries between form and function, human body and environment, structures and membranes. Organic User Interfaces (OUI) explores future interactive designs and applications as these materials become commonplace.

Karma chameleon: bragg fiber jacquard-woven photonic textiles

Karma Chameleon refers to a series of textile prototypes woven on a Jacquard loom, using photonic bandgap fibers that have the ability to change color when illuminated with ambient or transmitted white light. The use of double weave structures and complex Jacquard patterns allows us to further modulate the color and patterns on the textile.

Jacquard-Woven Photonic Bandgap Fiber Displays

We present an overview of photonic textile displays woven on a Jacquard loom, using newly discovered polymer photonic bandgap (PBG) fibers that have the ability to change color and appearance when illuminated with ambient or transmitted light. The photonic fiber can be thin (smaller than 300 microns in diameter) and highly flexible, which makes it possible to weave in the weft on a computerized Jacquard loom and develop intricate double weave structures together with a secondary weft yarn. We demonstrate how PBG fibers enable a variety of color and structural patterns on the textile, and how dynamic imagery can be created by balancing the reflected ambient light and emitted light. Finally, a possible application in security wear for low visibility conditions is described as an example.

SMOKS: the memory suits

This paper describes SMOKS, a pair of electronically enhanced suits that acts as an experimental platform for constructing individual and collective memories, for creating and nurturing social networks, and for personal communication and intimacy.The suits combine and overlay different interaction methodologies explored in our larger research project called Memory Rich Clothing. Moreover, rather than deploying a single social electronic artifact, we created garments in pairs, balancing the interaction affordances between users and creating conditions for the emergence of playful social networks surrounding the body.By capturing physical memories, representing traces of human touch, recording and playing sounds, and by providing hiding places for physical mementoes, the SMOKS use fashion and our interactions through clothing to accumulate and display traces of physical memory in personal and playful ways.

Memory-rich clothing

This paper describes a series of reactive body-worn artifacts that display their history of use and communicate physical (or embodied) memory. These electronically enhanced garments strive to promote touch, physical proximity, and human-to-human interaction. We explored distinct input, mapping, and output methodologies that deal with different models of autonomy, memory, and interruption granularity.The pieces described are part of a larger research project called Memory Rich Clothing. By concentrating on garments that reflect more subtle, playful, or poetic aspects of our identity and history, our enquiry attempts to redefine some of the assumptions that technology designers traditionally make under financial and cultural constraints about how people interact and communicate with each other.