HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT

Animating Textiles

May 12th 2015, 3 hour workshop at the RCA Information Experience Design department in London, UK

This workshop is only open to students of the university.

A three-hour introductory workshop to materials, tools and techniques for actuating textiles.

This brief workshop will start with an introductory overview to electronic-textiles, explaining materials such as conductive threads and fabrics, magnet wire, nitinol (a shape memory alloy) and thermochormic pigment. After demonstrating examples of different kinds of electronic textile actuation, students will proceed to build their own actuators.

The two different kinds of electronic actuation explored in this workshop are:
– Electromagnetism (motors, vibration movement, sound)
– Heat (melting/softening, thermochromic pigment/colour-change, SMA/muscle-wire/nitinol)

Electromagnetism

Motors

Lace motor >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5277
Simple motors >> http://kit-of-no-parts.at/?p=492

Sound

Speaker coils as textile membranes:
Woven speaker >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5509
Knit speaker >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=4465
Embroidered speaker >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=2936

Heat

melting/softening

Hot Hinge >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=2955

Tunable Stiffness Structures: muslin in wax
>> http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/media-arts-and-sciences/mas-962-special-topics-new-textiles-spring-2010/assignments-and-projects/final-project/final-project-tunable-stiffness-structures/

thermochromic pigment/colour-change

Using heat to actuate thermochromic pigment. Thermo = temperature, chromic = colour –> temperature actuated colour change!

Thermochromic pixel >> http://kit-of-no-parts.at/?p=1210
Cast pixel >> http://kit-of-no-parts.at/?p=1460

Thermochromic Paint on Paper Examples

SMA/muscle-wire/nitinol

SMA Smocking >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5276
Bending Petals >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=3396

Materials and Tools

speakers and motors:
– karl-grimm conductive thread
– conductive fabric
– neodymium magnets
– audio amp
– magnet wire
– diodes

heating and movement:
– steel thread
– thermochromic pigment
– nitinol/SMA
– fabric medium (for mixing thermochromic pigment)
– paintbrushes and pot(s)
– lab/bench power supply
– hair dryer
– shapelock/wax

general:
– regular thread
– scraps of regular non-stretch fabric
– fusible interfacing
– sewing needles
– scissors

Content by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson

The following institutions have funded our research and supported our work:

From 2013-2015 Mika is a guest professor at the eLab at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee

From July - December 2013 Hannah was a researcher at the UdK's Design Research Lab

From 2010-2012 Mika was a guest researcher in the Smart Textiles Design Lab at The Swedish School of Textiles

From 2009 - 2011 Hannah was a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab's High-Low Tech research group led by Leah Buechley

In 2009 Hannah and Mika were both research fellows at the Distance Lab

Between 2003 - 2009 Hannah and Mika were both students at Interface Cultures

We support the Open Source Hardware movement. All our own designs published on this website are released under the Free Cultural Works definition