textile workshop

wearable design

On October 13, 2003, we held a one-day workshop with 7 students at the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås. Taking the context-aware technology platform used in the Sonic City project, the goal was to engage students deeply experienced in craft technique in developing wearable concepts that closely integrate complex behaviors of computational and textile materials. Taking a more generalized notion of the Sonic City system, our intention was to extract or further develop particular aspects. For the purposes of the workshop, we assumed a future notion of potential technological solutions for a system such as Sonic City, where future smart fabrics could effectively 'disappear' such physical manifestations of computation. This allowed us to focus on concepts of the use experience – in this case, wearable and interaction qualities for sensor-based urban mobility. We would like to acknowledge and thank Lena Berglin and her class at the Swedish School of Textiles at the University College of Borås for their great participation in the workshop.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

The first phase of the workshop involved communicating significant aspects of the project. Since the actual system could be overwhelmingly complex and 'technical' for the purpose of this workshop, we focused on communicating the sensor-based computational qualities of change over time and space through video footage of an initial test + video clips. This focused attention on the 'look and sound' of the experience, and technology in an understandable way in terms of environmental and sound qualities. The second phase of the workshop involved group-work, where participants collaboratively shared their impressions and thoughts and documented them in scenario formats on worksheets. Brainstorming was structured around three possible directions to 'materialize' in textiles the qualities and behaviors of the system – social communication, gestural language, and cultural effects. The last half of the workshop involved rapid low-tech prototyping in textile materials, which were presented in enacted scenarios to convey changes or dynamic behaviors of the artifacts in relation to recalled sites or contexts of use.

CONCLUSIONS

The challenge with this workshop format was to strike an appropriate balance between abstraction and inspiration in regards to the technology. The format seemed to get the right balance, though depending on the 'application' versus 'materials' orientation of each group, qualities explored were geared either towards lifestyle and fashion qualities or dynamic expressions in the materials. The workshop resulted both in new use and lifestyle concepts, as well as deep exploration of material behaviors to feed back into the Sonic City project development. In considering Sonic City as a new experience platform, this workshop helped us to expand a specifically-developed prototype into more general interaction concept, where a variety of product concepts could be imagined – in this way, we identified a number of potential future directions for developing the project ideas.

GROUP 1

This group took a relatively application oriented approach – inspired by notions of play and context-awareness, they developed a series of sketches for socially-based Sonic City technology to enhance childrens play. In their presentation, they drew and colored storyboard sketches to demonstrate expressive light-based patterns in clothing items which would reflect patterns of social relations and group interactions.

GROUP 2

This group took a deep focus on the expressive qualities of the Sonic City concept in relation to qualities of material contstruction techniques and interactive behaviors. Beginning with some experiential concepts, they worked with behaviors for fabrics such as tensing woven structures in response to certain sensors - in their final presentation, they demonstrated the fabrics changes and showed how it could feel by role-playing a situation where a wearer of such a garment would feel qualities of physical constriction alongside sonic qualities and contextual aspects of use.

GROUP 3

The third group was inspired by the characters we had developed in the + experience scenarios, and created a series of fashion concepts to enhance the experience of each character. For instance, for 'Maria', they developed a protective hood as a safe and emmersive space for her to experience Sonic City in public palces. For 'Jean' they imagined additional sensors for picking up his pulse and the subtle material changes in the things he touched with a pair of gloves. For each, they created a complete product concept focussed on specific aspects of Sonic City, each directed a particular lifestyle concept.

wearable design