25, 26 July 2009
Constant, foam, okno, nadine
Brussels, Belgium

To explore the possibilities of bringing electronics closer to bodies and plants we are organizing a workshop in which you will learn how to use textiles and electronics to interact with humans and plants.

Human bodies and plants are not rigid, but flexible, soft and pliant. Computers, keyboards, mice and peripherals, all rigid, fixed, made from plastic or metal, will be objects for surgery in order to salvage parts that can made flexible. Activities could range from building gigantic felt push buttons, to obtaining information on how a leaf turns towards the sun, to integrating electronics into clothing. We will work with conductive and resistive textile, arduino and all manner of electronic components.

Participants will explore the relationship between body movements and feedback, getting to know the characteristics of fabric sensors and soft circuitry. The workshop will introduce conductive fabric traces, connections and the construction of fabric sensors to detect pressure, bend, tilt, stroke and position. These techniques will be combined to build custom wearable interfaces that can connect to a computer running a simple visualization application. We will discuss what movements of the body can be detected and how these can be mapped to control sound and visuals.

Wendy, Sara, Naomi, Riek

Sam

Erika

Sarah and Lina

Annemie

Nik

Hans

Donna

Michel

Caroline

Downloads

There was some processing/ Arduino sketches, and a max patch used during the workshop. You can download it from www.kobakant.at/downloads/code/BrusselsWS.zip
ArduinoSend >> Arduino program that was uploaded to Lilypad/ Arduino to get 6 sensor inputs and send to computer via serial (USB) port. If you do not have Arduino but want to experiment more.. you can download Arduino environment from here >>Arduino.cc
sensorRead>> Processing sketch that was used to receive data and draw a graph and ellipse (the example we were showing on projector). If you want to play more with processing, but do not have one, you can download it from here >>processing.org
soundTrigger.maxpat>> small max patch that was used to receive sensor inputs and trigger sound for carpet project by Wendy, sara, Naomi and Riek. Unfortunately max/msp is not a free software, but you can still play around with it with runtime. Here is the link to download runtime>> http://www.cycling74.com/downloads/max5
(make sure to install only runtime if you do not want to start the demo period)
capac>> Arduino program Nik was working on to read capacity. Perhaps it is also interesting for other people?? Here is more information from Arduino site >>http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/CapSense

Photos on Flickr

>> Photos by Clementine