Tag Archives: lighted textiles

Is it smart fabrics or smart textiles? (Smart Fabrics + Wearable Technology 2013)

Cath Rogan is  Principal of Smart Garment People, and the author of a Nov. 27, 2013 article profiling the recently held (Oct. 29 – 31, 2013) Smart Fabrics + Wearable Technology Europe 2013 conference. Before excerpting any material from the main body of her conference review for Innovation in Textiles, here’s the description of her company and her work (from the end of the article),

According to a boutique consulting business that helps customers make clothing “smart” and technology wearable.  Cath has spent over two decades developing technical fabrics and clothing for some of the world’s leading outdoor and sports brands, including Karrimor, Berghaus, Barbour, Lowe Alpine, Henri Lloyd, TNF, Patagonia, Nike, Puma and Adidas. More recently, her work has taken her into specialist protective clothing for chemical, biological and ballistic protection, along with wearable health and fitness monitoring.

This image of a bio-mimetic textile is one of several image accompanying the article,

Daan Roosegarde's Intimacy Garment [downloaded from: http://www.innovationintextiles.com/smart-textiles-nanotechnology/smart-fabrics-europe-2013-conference-review/]

Dean Roosegarde’s Intimacy Garment [downloaded from: http://www.innovationintextiles.com/smart-textiles-nanotechnology/smart-fabrics-europe-2013-conference-review/]

Rogan offers a comprehensive review and I’ve chose to highlight only two items from it,. From the article,

Daan Roosegarde covered several different chromic materials in the course of his outstanding opening keynote presentation.  As an artist and architect, the diversity of his projects was striking, but their impact, both visually and in the way they connect people to places, and objects was much more so.  His “impact” dress, which transitions from opaque to transparent and can be triggered by voice recognition inspired another novel application which raised an appreciative smile from the audience; the “Yes But…” chair delivers an electric shock to the seat of the person who utters every designers’ least favourite phrase.  …

Rogan also comments on ‘lighted textiles’ at the conference,

The conference had a strong bias towards “lighted” textiles with no fewer than seven presentations covering these applications.  Conversely, and in strong contrast to previous conferences, there was almost no mention of textile based wearable physiological monitoring (other than in Prof. Daniel Berckman’s fascinating look at the algorithms behind such devices at M3-BIORES).  These two sectors probably account for most of the development and commercialization efforts in e-textiles to date, but with the recent surge in demand for monitoring products fuelled by a growing number of “hardware” devices such as the Fitbit, Jawbone UP, Nike Fuelband etc, the omission of wearable monitoring was surprising.

She goes on to mention Moritz Waldemeyer, a British/German designer and engineer (there’s more in the Wikipedia essay) who I heard speak at the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (SEA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland (as per my Sept. 9, 2009 posting). He does some really stunning work as can be seen on his website, I particularly like this work for the Olympics (I believe these were for the 2010 London Olympics),

Dancers during the Olympic closing ceremony [Downloaded from: http://www.waldemeyer.com/olympic-ceremonies]

Dancers during the Olympic closing ceremony [Downloaded from: http://www.waldemeyer.com/olympic-ceremonies]

Rogan briefly describes a number of different themes including bio-mimetic inspired responsive textiles, shape shifting devices, flexible batteries, DIY (do-it-yourself) and hacking all of which are illustrated with more images.

For anyone who’s interested, there’s an upcoming Smart Fabrics + Wearable Technology 2014 conference in San Francisco (California, US) from April 23 – 25,2014. (I believe the conference is run 2x per year with a North American version in the Spring and a European version in the Fall.)