Experimental Textiles - Fall 2022

Experimental Textiles #

A textile describes any material made from fiber (which is any material with a high length with width ratio). While textiles are ubiquitous in our daily interactions, forming the basis of clothing and upholstery as well as communications cables, agricultural scaffolds and composites, interaction designers and engineers have not deeply explored their possibilities for interactive applications.

This course is intended to shed light on how textiles can be used to create functional systems and can be engineered for highly specific purposes. The goal is to encourage students outside of textiles to consider how they might integrate textile structures into their research and prototyping practice, or, for textiles experienced students to learn how their knowledges can be useful for producing new kinds of sensors, actuators, and otherwise “dynamic” textile systems.

We focus deeply on weaving and possibilities of woven structures. This is a very central focus of Prof. Devendorf’s Unstable Design Lab and we will invite students to investigate it alongside of our ongoing research.

After Taking This Course #

Students will be able to:

  • Weave on both Rigid Heddle and Floor Looms
  • Design Custom Woven Structures to Suit Functional Requirements
  • Have a Broad Knowledge of Textile Techniques and their uses Through History
  • Have a Broad Knowledge of Textile Materials and their Functional Properties.
  • Embed interactivity into textiles, at the yarn-level.
  • Gain insight into the state of the art in textile structure design from leading experts.

Resources and References #

The following resources and references can be helpful for motivating the course and how the knowledge can be applied. Any of these texts that are assigned for reading during the semester will be available via canvas.

Interwined Histories of Textiles and Computing #

  • Harlizius-Klück, Ellen. “Weaving as binary art and the algebra of patterns.” Textile 15.2 (2017): 176-197.

  • Jefferies, Janis. “Pattern, patterning.” Inventive Methods. Routledge, 2012. 125-135.

  • Mclean, Alex & Fanfani, Giovanni & Harlizius-Klück, Ellen. (2018). Cyclic Patterns of Movement Across Weaving, Epiplokē and Live Coding. Dancecult. 10. 5-30. 10.12801/1947-5403.2018.10.01.01.

  • Nakamura, Lisa. “Indigenous circuits: Navajo women and the racialization of early electronic manufacture.” American Quarterly 66.4 (2014): 919-941.

  • Rosner, Daniela K., et al. “Making core memory: Design inquiry into gendered legacies of engineering and craftwork.” Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2018.

Weaving in Human-Computer Interaction #

  • Albaugh, Lea, et al. “Enabling Personal Computational Handweaving with a Low-Cost Jacquard Loom.” Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2021.

  • Lea Albaugh, Scott E. Hudson, Lining Yao, and Laura Devendorf. 2020. Investigating Underdetermination Through Interactive Computational Handweaving. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1033–1046.

  • Himani Deshpande, Haruki Takahashi, and Jeeeun Kim. 2021. EscapeLoom: Fabricating New Affordances for Hand Weaving. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, 1–13.

  • Devendorf, Laura, Sasha De Koninck, and Etta Sandry. “An Introduction to Weave Structure for HCI: A How-to and Reflection on Modes of Exchange.” Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 2022.

  • Devendorf, Laura, and Chad Di Lauro. “Adapting double weaving and yarn plying techniques for smart textiles applications.” Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. 2019.

  • Fernaeus, Ylva, Martin Jonsson, and Jakob Tholander. “Revisiting the jacquard loom: threads of history and current patterns in HCI.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2012.

  • Friske, Mikhaila, Shanel Wu, and Laura Devendorf. “Adacad: Crafting software for smart textiles design.” Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2019.

  • Pouta, Emmi, and Jussi Ville Mikkonen. “Woven eTextiles in HCI—a Literature Review.” Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS’22). ACM, 2022.

  • Sun, Ruojia, et al. “Weaving a second skin: exploring opportunities for crafting on-skin interfaces through weaving.” Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 2020.

Weaving How Tos #

  • Albers, Anni. “On weaving.” On Weaving. Princeton University Press, 2017.

  • Documents on Weaving, Textiles, and Related Topics Created for On-Line Publication

  • Oelsner, Gustaf Hermann. A handbook of weaves. Macmillan, 1915.

  • Julie Holyoke. 2021. Digital Jacquard Design. Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

  • Peggy Osterkamp. 2005. Weaving & Drafting Your Own Cloth. UNICORN BOOKS & CRAFTS, Sausalito, Calif.

  • Madelyn Van Der Hoogt. 1993. The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers. Shuttle Craft Books, Coupeville, WA

Course History #

Fall 2026 - ATLAS 4340/5340 - Experimental Textiles Taught by Laura Devendorf

Spring 2026 - ATLAS 4340/5340 - Experimental Textiles Taught by Etta Sandry

Fall 2024 - ATLAS 4519/5519 - Experimental Textiles * Taught by Laura Devendorf Support by Lily Gabriel

Fall 2023 - ATLAS 4519/5519 - Experimental Textiles * Taught by Laura Devendorf Support from Lily Gabriel

Fall 2022 - ATLAS 4519/5519 - Experimental Textiles * Taught by Laura Devendorf

  • shifted focus exclusively to weaving

Fall 2020 - ATLAS 4519/5519 - Soft Object * Developed and Co-Taught by Laura Devendorf and Sasha de Koninck Support from Shanel Wu (led post-course student interviews)

  • Surveyed textile techniques from knitting to weaving to felting. Taught online during COVID lock-down.

Support #

  • Nathalie Smith (of LulaFaye Fibers) donated looms and materials in 2026
  • Schacht Spindle Company donated books and materials donated in 2022
  • NSF CAREER Grant #1943109 supported courses from 2020 - 2024.