The Future of - Kristi Kuusk

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The Future of
Textiles
b y
L y n n e
B r u n i n g
The artist as inventor generates new methods
and applications that question the embedded
but intrinsic, value and use of materials, natural
resources, geographical locations, and communication methods. Working at the cutting edge of
innovation, the challenges can become overwhelming. Who will support our art? How will we find
creative space? Where will we be able to show our
work? Who will understand our language?
For those combining electronics and
textiles, computers and fibers, the push forward
has been especially challenging because the two
mediums are rooted in vastly different materials,
languages, and tools. These artists are building
bridges and laying the foundation for tomorrow’s
interactive surface design. Fortunately, the pioneers
of this forward-thinking practice have persevered by
inhabiting universities, hacker-spaces, and galleries
to incubate their emerging thoughts while fostering
the growth of eTextiles and paper computing.
The following artists are blazing the path in
fusing technology with textiles. In the process, they
are redefining our abilities to control interactions,
resulting in creative means for new expressions.
Erin Lewis allows us to visually experience
typically unseen wind patterns through Vessel, her
LEFT: ERIN LEWIS Vessel Nylon monofilament, fiber optic cable, LEDs,
electronic circuitry, clear acrylic, wood canoe cradle, Arduino microcontroller
and custom software, machine knitting, 12' x 3' 2012.
Detail ABOVE. Photos by the artist.
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Surface Design Journal
knitted mono-filament and fiber optic canoe.
This poetic informational visualization artwork
is driven by daily data collections from the
National Buoy Center on Lake Ontario. Purely
statistical information is then downloaded via
the internet to a custom-coded Arduino electronics platform and pulsed through LED lights
and fiber optic cables.
The viewer experiences the everchanging wind patterns through the canoe’s
mesmerizing light show. As the wind velocity
increases, the fiber optic lighting becomes
more frenetic, altering the viewer’s tangible
sense of safety for this flimsy vessel of
conveyance. When the winds on Lake Ontario
calm, the canoe gently glows, leaving the viewer to imagine floating peacefully across the
water’s placid surface.
It is the traditional metaphor of the
canoe as a way-finding vessel and romantic
means of exploring the frontier that makes this
art piece so sublime. Much more than a pretty
light show, Vessel expressively explores the
emerging idea of The Internet of Things (IoT) in
which electronically-tagged objects can communicate with each other to provide users with
new information.
Today’s Wild West is the increasingly
complex and interwoven Web, fraught with
information overload. Lewis’s mythical and
metaphorical canoe morphs factual scientific
data into an ethereal light sculpture, joining
together the simplicity of the past with present
technology.
Akira Wakita’s lab at Keio University
in Tokyo explores the fusion and interaction
between traditional Japanese paper techniques such as Ukiyo-e woodblock printing,
lithography, and calligraphy with current paper
computing materials and methods. The lab’s
TOP LEFT: KOHEI TSUJI Anabiosis Paper, liquid crystal ink, thermochromatic ink, silver paste, carbon paste, other conductive
materials, Arduino micro-controller and other custom electronics, polychrome printing, 2011. Detail TOP RIGHT.
BOTTOM LEFT: KOHEI TSUJI Transience Paper, liquid crystal ink, thermochromatic ink, silver paste, carbon paste, other conductive materials,
Arduino micro-controller and other custom electronics, calligraphy, 2012. Photos by the artist. Detail BOTTOM RIGHT.
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work is influenced by Leah Buechley’s investigations with conductive ink and the adaptation of
computer hardware to pulp-based computing in
the US at the Hi-Low Tech Lab at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
Although paper has been a basic
communication method for many cultures
throughout human history, its global use in the
digital age has diminished for reasons of ecology
and convenience. Yet, there is great beauty in the
texture, weight, and color of paper that continues
to entice. Its portability, availability, and ease of
use tempt makers to explore how to seamlessly
integrate paper with today’s electronics.
In 2011, Keio University PhD student
Kohei Tsuji created Anabiosis, which is based
upon the lithograph series The Macrolepidoptera
of the World by German entomologist Adalbert
Seits (1860–1938). Tsuji’s display of paper butterflies and moths seems almost real in its quality of
pictorial reinterpretation, enticing viewers to
touch the interactive artwork. When they do, the
polychrome paper insect wings react and change
colors—as if resurrected by human touch.
The viewer instigates this magical
moment by activating temperature-sensitive
liquid crystal inks contained within microscopic
capsules on the paper. The process is similar to
a capacitive touch screen on your smart phone.
A thin sheet of copper foil placed on the body
of the butterfly acts as a capacitance sensor.
Conductive traces of silver paint connect the
copper foil to a carbon heating element that triggers the thermochromatic paint in the butterfly
wings to change its reflective qualities.
Tsuji’s Transience further links paper’s
cultural history and materiality with unseen technology by using thermochromatic inks to paint
Japanese calligraphy. A mechanical heating
mechanism activates a dynamic color change
in the story text to express the passage of time.
The pulp technology canvas creates vitality
while expressing the stream of time and an ever
changing aesthetic.
Kristi Kuusk, a PhD student at the
University of Technology in Eindhoven,
Netherlands, began her textile explorations at
home in Estonia. She learned about the country’s
rich textile culture from her mother, a tailor.
Kuusk’s current research into Quick Response
(QR) codes is rooted in traditional folkloric
embroidery and knitting patterns. To understand
the familial or regional significance of a textile in
the past, one had to be a community member or
know someone who could share this information.
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Today, with the use of smart devices, anyone can
access Kuusk’s embedded textile QR codes.
Her first QRs told the story of the garment
—where the wool was from, who the artisan was,
where was it sold, if it had a previous use, and
how to recycle it. With the help of the Dutch
funded creative industries scientific program
CRISP Smart Textile Services, her research evolved
into Bed Time Stories, a child’s bed sheet set coded
with woven imagery that activates augmented
reality characters on a viewer’s smart device.
It was important to Kuusk that the code
be woven directly into the fabric to achieve the
natural, traditional textile feeling and quality. She
collaborated with Johan van den Acker
Textielfabriek and Studio Toer to select the colors
and techniques that would best suit the woven
surface. The custom software program was developed with Unit040.
The time and effort spent on crafting the
physical object is important to extend the textile’s longevity. The augmented reality of the
story’s digital characters will be recast and
refreshed indefinitely, resulting in a new form of
heirloom fabric. As a sustainable craft-tech
design, these bed sheets must be as durable and
desirable as the ever-growing story-code its users
are continuously fabricating.
In the fall of 2012, Anouk Wipprecht
partnered with Daniel Schatzmayer of the
METALAB hacker-space in Vienna to create a
series of performance-art robotic dresses. While
ensconced in this highly creative and technologydriven social space, they brainstormed, developed,
and built Spider, which both enchants and
terrifies.
Drawing us into the darker side of futuristic fashion, Spider is the antithesis of wearable
computing’s sugar-coated illumination glow. The
designers focused on the interactive nature of its
robotic reactive system, allowing the textile dress
to be a dark towering shadow. The project utilizes
proximity sensors and servo-controlled mechanical legs contained within the host’s shoulders. As
the viewer approaches, these legs float with an
easy crawl but soon jump into a state of protection. The robotic dress “attacks” when it senses a
viewer approaching too fast or coming too close.
By thrusting its sharp edges outward to invade
the viewer’s personal space, Spider delivers a
psychological jolt that engages our fears of
intimacy, comfort, trust, and privacy.
Spider doesn’t want to stay safe and be
adored from a distance. Rather, it wants to crawl
through the physical realm, drawing attention to
Surface Design Journal
ABOVE: KRISTI KUUSK Bedtime Stories Cotton bedsheets woven with Quick Response (QR) code designs
recognized by smart tablets and phones, 2012. Detail in BACKGROUND.
BELOW: The woven QR code designs being recognized by a smart tablet. Photos by the artist.
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LEFT: ANOUK WIPPRECHT AND
DANIEL SCHATZMAYER Spider
Plexiglass, laser-cut thermoplastics,
servo motors and controllers,
microcontroller, sensors, black vinyl,
stretch webbing, 20 wireless servo
motors,teensy microcontroller 3.0,
2012. Model: Barbora Rihak.
Performance view BELOW.
Photos: Anna Cervinková.
capture the audience with its interactive otherworldliness.
Working within the creative gallery
space of V2—Institute for Unstable Media in
Rotterdam, Netherlands, Ebru Kurbak and Irene
Posch developed punchcards to control the patterns for a Brother KH 860 knitting machine. The
goal during their three-month artist residency
was to create textile-based electronic equipment.
The result is Drapery FM, a radio transmitter
fabricated from wool, cotton, copper wires, Karl
Grimm’s conductive thread, Habu Textile’s silk and
stainless steel yarn, and conductive yarn from
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LessEMF. The final installation of this knitted FM
transmitter, which consists of a knitted capacitor,
resistors, and coils, sent radio waves through air
that were heard from regular radio receivers
placed throughout the gallery.
The installation demonstrates the artists’
successful reappropriation of a mechanized
production tool into an artistic method for the
creation of textile electronics. This tactile breakthrough is similar to that of the democratization
of 3-D printers and laser cutters that now allow
laypersons to create tools, parts, and products of
their choosing. By designing and creating specific
Surface Design Journal
ABOVE: EBRU KURBAK AND IRENE POSCH Drapery FM (Layout of knitted
electronic components) Wool, cotton, copper, silver, stainless steel, silk,
BC337 Transistor, 12V power supply, audio source, radios, punch card
operated machine knitting, custom-made punch cards, 138" x 27.75",
2012. Installation view TOP LEFT.
Photos by the artists.
pattern-code punch cards to yield functional
electronic objects (resistors, antennas, inductors,
and capacitors), Kurbak and Posch pose exciting
questions: What will happen if we craft electronic
parts from soft materials? Will this change how
the consumer perceives the safety, use, and repair
of electronic hardware? Will these hybrid objects
shift societal values of electronic and computer
components?
As artists, we are the enchanters. We
actively inhabit the interstitial spaces and build
the bridges between technology, science,
biology, chemistry, code, color, fiber, and texture.
We create the interwoven patterns connecting
these ideas, methods, and materials to craft a new
surface of interaction—and understanding. These
students have big dreams and enormous goals to
reinterpret current materials. Their ongoing artistic efforts provide us with energizing lessons for
future projects.
Spring2013
ABOVE: EBRU KURBAK AND IRENE POSCH Punch Couture Experiments in
knitting capacitors, wool, enameled copper wire, Karl Grimm Conductive
Yarn, punch card operated machine knitting,
custom-made punch cards, 2012.
TOP RIGHT: EBRU KURBAK AND IRENE POSCH Punch Couture
Experimenting with custom-made punch cards and
machine knitting, 2012.
To learn more about these artists and watch videos of
projects in action, visit:
Erin Lewis: www.erinlewis.ca
Kohei Tsuji: web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~tsuji/
Kristi Kuusk: www.kristikuusk.com
Anouk Wipprecht: www.anoukwipprecht.nl
Daniel Schatzmayer: www.danielschatzmayr.com
Ebru Kurbak: www.ebrukurbak.net
Irene Posch: www.ireneposch.net
Artist, educator, and author Lynne Bruning will be a featured speaker and conduct a 2-day post-conference
workshop at in•ter•face, the 17th International Surface
Design Association Conference in San Antonio, TX
(June 6–9, 2013). To read the brochure and register
online, visit www.surfacedesign.org/2013conference.
—Lynne Bruning is the creatrix of exclusive wearable
art, eTextiles, and adaptive technologies. She jets thru
the universe creatively cross-pollinating the worlds of
science, textiles, fashion, and technology with her art,
online how-to videos, and in-person workshops.
Visit Bruning online at www.lbruning.com and
www.etextilelounge.com.
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