MAGIC LINING
Magic Lining is a collaborative project between an artist (Kristi Kuusk) and scientists from the areas of human-computer interaction, psychology and neuroscience (MAGICSHOES). The team works on a prototype that focuses on the possibilities for altering the perception people have of their own body through the garment’s inside. The project focuses on e-textiles to integrate sensory feedback close to the body. The work builds on the insights from scientific project MAGICSHOES and proposes a garment that allows the user to feel as if their body would be made of a different material. In this intersection of neuroscience research on mental body-representation, human-computer interaction and real-life smart textile applications. The project asks questions about the meaning of clothing.

More information:

Kuusk, K., Tajadura-Jiménez, A., Väljamäe, A. 2018. Magic lining: an exploration of smart textiles altering people’s self-perception. Published in: MOCO ’18 Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Movement and Computing. Article No. 47. Genoa, Italy — June 28 – 30, 2018.

Residency localizations:
Main localization: Universidad Loyola Andalucia, Calle Energía Solar, 1, 41014 Sevilla, Spain
DEI Interactive Systems Group, Departamento de Informática, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
HCI group, School of Digital Technologies, Tallinn University

Spellbound is an Estonian-based brand for conscious magic-lovers. The products are designed to shape the future fashion consumption towards sustainability. The items are developed and produced in Estonia. Spellbound explores new sustainable directions in textile and garment design. Simple textile items get interesting twists by the implementation of technology and innovative concepts. Spellbound stands for global knowledge and ideas while using high-quality locally sourced left-over materials and ethical principals for production.

We support sustainability in garment design by using left-over natural materials as the starting point for our product design. We introduce and promote the made-to-order business model in garment design to minimize the over-production and pre-consumer waste. Spellbound’s items are produced (from fabric to finalized garment) locally in Estonia (Europe) following ethics and high-quality standards. We value these sustainability grounds above seasonal fashion colors and fast-changing styles.

We love hidden stories and magic about and in the Spellbound garments. We communicate the textile story from the fabric to the final piece to raise the public awareness. We create surprising dynamic stories on the garments through color-changing materials. The owls start to fly in the night, the animals’ eyes shine in the night forest etc.

Spellbound stretches the borders of what garments can do to give them back their traditionally higher value. Join us to support sustainability, ethical production, magic and innovative routes in garments life cycle.

In Spellbound’s first series of products for Autumn/Winter, Glow-in-the-dark stories come to life on sustainable garments made from left-over fabrics from Estonian companies. The items are produced in Estonia and illustrated by artists based in Estonia and the Netherlands.

We hope you enjoy the journey towards a more sustainable garment design with us!

www.spellbound.ee

Textales Little Red Riding Hood edition is developed in collaboration with Unit040, Welspun and Kerstin Zabransky. Welspun India Ltd. is a fully integrated home textile manufacturer. It is one of the largest global home textile producers, with world class manufacturing facilities in India.

With Textales Little Red Riding Hood edition, we take the project another step closer to commercialisation. The version is developed for showcasing the possibilities of Augmented Reality storytelling on textiles to potential clients. In The Little Red Riding Hood edition of Textales, parents and children share the experience of the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood through Augmented Reality. The Textales application running on a smartphone or a tablet device detects the patterns on the duvet, pillow and carpet and shows digital fairytale characters. Digital dynamics are combined with textile sustainability. The project team intends to improve the details of the duvet cover as well as the digital application. The images are printed to a softer textile in this iteration, and allow therefore more colours and smaller details to be designed.

The Little Red Riding Hood story can be played with or without the subtitles suggesting theplot, as in the previous version. If the parent chooses to see the subtitles, a whole fairy tale is written throughout different scenes of the story. If the parent chooses not to see the subtitles, he can imagine his adventures for the Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. The application has a constant forest sound in the background with occasional overriding scene-specific sound effects, such as water dropping when Little Red Riding Hood is feeding the swans, or the wolf roaring when it finds the empty house of the grandmother. The fine and detailed graphics and animations add an extra magic layer to the textile.

In the very colourful story canvas, Little Red Riding Hood goes wandering into the forests on the digitally printed duvet cover, pillow and a rug (Figure 22). The wolf has his parallel adventures. The story reveals an alternative plot and ending to the traditional fairy tale. Through that, contemporary values and ways of communicating are put into a classic fairy tale.

Butterfly Lace by Kristi Kuusk (Eindhven University of Technology), Marjan Kooroshnia (The Swedish School of Textiles) & Jussi Mikkonen (Aalto ARTS)  is a Conductive Multi-Color Sensor-Actuator Structure that lies in the intersection of traditional craft and smart materials.

The lace senses how it has been touched, and outputs a programmed behaviour. The conductive yarn in the lace structure acts as a sensor and an actuator at once. After detecting the touch, it warms up to a certain degree and causes the thermo sensitive pigment to change the colour accordingly. The colour mix is optimised to show violet-blue at ambient temperature, orange at 27°C, yellow at 37°C and grey at 47°C.

The development of Butterfly Lace started and carried on as an extension of ArcinTex network workshop (Arcintex, 2014). Multi disciplinary team of researchers collaborated while situated in three countries, to realize conductive multi-color sensor-actuator structure. Over several prototyping sessions, Skype conversations and e-mail exchange, the lace is made in a traditional lace factory in Eindhoven, dyed in Boras and electronic component circle designed as well as assembled during a Berlin residency.

The work was presented at ISWC design exhibition, Osaka, Japan in Sept. 7-11 2015

The work describes background and methods involved in the development of Butterfly Lace.

Some visual insights from the long-distance collaboration:

Your body – My landscape is a collaboration choreographic performance between Gyula Berger who is an internationally renowned choreographer and has been making work in Hungary for the past 25 years and Roos van Berkel who teaches, performs and creates her own work in Holland since 2008.

Together with their scenography team, a costume with conductive thermo sensitive crochet was created. The costume was used by the dancers to build up parts of the scenography, while reflecting how the use of such material formed their choreographic practice, and the other way around.

The costume has crocheted conductive thermo sensitive lines on top, which can be heated up by the dancers through the needles they are holding in their hands. The needles are connected to a power supply that send 6 Volts of current through the thread. The thread cones its colour from black to grey by the heat created by the current.
Project info: http://ybml.wordpress.com/

Vibe-ing is a self-care tool in the form of a garment, which invites the body to feel, move, and heal through vibration therapy. The merino wool garment contains knitted pockets, embedded with electronic circuit boards that enable the garment to sense touch and vibrate specific pressure points on the body. By integrating vibration actuators in textile pockets the design enabled programming the exact areas and the way of stimulation on the body depending on the specific person’s need for rehabilitation and healing. Using fully-fashioned manufacturing technique becomes possible to customise the garment to the preferences of an individual body. The aim of this design was to inform a multi-disciplinary audience about the opportunities of integrating textile and vibration for self-healthcare services at home and in everyday activities.

Photo credits
Photography: Hanneke Wetzer & Bas Berends (Studio HUID & HAAR); Hair & Make-up: Jaimy Bontenbal; Model: Jos van der Weele

Project realised by: Eunjeong Jeon, Kristi Kuusk, Martijn ten Bhömer (TU/e), Jesse Asjes (TextielMuseum TextielLab Tilburg) and Metatronics.

Making of Vibe-ing