Making textile sensors from scratch

This workshop will explore the use of low-cost materials and tools to build textile-based interfaces. We will introduce a range of methods for handcrafting textile sensors and circuitry. Participants will learn techniques developed by the workshop leaders and will also be encouraged to use our material library to design their own custom sensors. The goal of the workshop is to familiarize participants with available electronic textile materials and introduce them to a variety of sensor and circuitry construction techniques

Recipes for materially diverse, functionally transparent and expressive electronics

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-96).I demonstrate a new approach to building electronics that emphasizes the expressive qualities of diverse materials as well as the skill and creativity of the builder. I believe that a more insightful and skilled process is also capable of producing more intelligible and personal results. Conventionally electronics that are built from a kit-of-parts have been optimized for speed, efficiency and repeatability of assembly. While this approach demonstrates the power of modular systems that have made many of the technologies we rely on possible, it also constrains us to particular styles of building, influencing what we build as well as impacting how we come to think about electronics. In order to promote a different approach I have developed a series of techniques that allow us to build electronics using a variety of craft materials and tools. A collection of electronic samples showcases the results and the potential of these techniques, and a public website documents these techniques in the form of "recipes". Besides containing instructions on how to build electronics these recipes are also detailed accounts of my development process that aim to promote further exploration and material investigation, instead of straightforward replication. After developing this collection of new techniques, documenting and publishing them, I ran two workshops in order to observe how my approach fared in practice. Workshop participants were invited to build their own electronic projects from a new and diverse set of materials and tools. Observing participants' process led me to reflect on their different styles of building and evaluate to what extent a Kit-of-No-Parts approach supports a building style that is more understandable, and allows individuals to work more freely and expressively with the materials and tools involved. Currently our approach to building electronics is shaped by industrial standards and discrete components. The Kit-of-No-Parts counters this approach by introducing the notion of craft and putting emphasis on skilled use of tools, intimate knowledge of materials, with the aim to produce more diverse and intelligible results.by Hannah Perner-Wilson.S.M

Future master craftsmanship : where we want electronic textile crafts to go

Craft, both as process and resulting artifact, implies notions of care, foresight, human skill and investment. In this paper we examine the practice of creating E-Textiles as a contemporary craft, and we ask ourselves what will become of this craft when the first fully automated machine for E-Textiles production hits the market. Will the craft in E-Textiles survive, and why do we care that it does

E-Textiles Exchange Swatchbook 2013

Selected E-textile sample for the E-Textiles Exchange Swatchbook 2013. The exchange compiles individual work samples into a format for sharing and exchanging research and designs. The physicality of the swatchbook puts emphasis on craftsmanship and quality of work by providing access to the real thing, and not a digital representation thereof. The collection of samples in the 2013 swatchbook were produced by 24 individuals with diverse links to the etextile community, including academic researchers, textile designers, industrial designers, artists, electrical engineers and enthusiastic makers. Each individual who participated in the exchange worked to produce 24 multiples of their work so that everybody received a complete set of samples

Experiments with Algo-governance and Future-Making: STS Scholars as Designers [Workshop Abstract]

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Sonoflex: Embroidered speakers without permanent magnets

© 2020 ACM. We present Sonoflex, a thin-form, embroidered dynamic speaker made without using a permanent magnet. Our design consists of two flat spiral coils, stacked on top of each other, and is based on an isolated, thin (0.15 mm) enameled copper wire. Our approach allows for thin, lightweight, and textile speakers and does not require high voltage as in electrostatic speakers. We show how the speaker can be designed and fabricated and evaluate its acoustic properties as a function of manufacturing parameters (size, turn counts, turn spacing, and substrate materials). The experiment results revealed that we can produce audible sound with a broad frequency range (1.5 kHz - 20 kHz) with the embroidered speaker with a diameter of 50 mm. We conclude the paper by presenting several applications such as audible notifications and near-ultrasound communication

Ants as indicators for vertebrate fauna at a local scale: an assessment of cross-taxa surrogacy in a disturbed matrix

We examined the spatial fidelity in the pattern in species richness, abundance and composition of ants, birds, mammals and reptiles in a Eucalyptus vegetation type in Australian tropical savanna woodland. We sampled 32 sites representing intact (uncleared) vegetation, and three treatments of different clearing age (2, 12 and 18 years). We investigated whether each fauna taxon could act a surrogate for pattern in the other, and whether they responded in parallel to time since clearing. Reptiles and mammals were\ud combined into a single group. The correlation between taxa was low for abundance (the best being between rept/mamm and ant abundance R = 0.34) and moderate for species richness (varied from 0.36 to 0.44). Mantel tests identified a moderately strong relationship between bird and rept/mamm composition (R = 0.48). Recent clearing (2–12 years)\ud depleted both abundance and species richness of the vertebrate fauna, whereas ant abundance spiked. Ant species richness was consistent over time since clearing. ANOSIM\ud revealed that clearing age was a strong a priori predictor of birds and rept/mamm composition (Global R = 0.48, 0.65, respectively), whereas it was not for ants (Global\ud R = 0.20). Pair-wise comparisons suggested that for birds, rept/mamm, there was consistent changes in composition from intact woodlands to different aged clearing. This was not the case for ants; most distinct variation in composition occurred between treatments of increasing in clearing age (2–18 years R = 0.69, 12–18 years R = 0.65). The results of\ud this study do not support the use of ants as a surrogate of vertebrates at a local scale in a cleared and intact vegetation mosaic. We acknowledge that identification of universal surrogates and indicators are difficult to find, but funding and political expediency that demand rapid solutions to conservation planning necessitate continued investigation of the merits of using surrogate species