>> Link to online article: “Im Kabinett der Superhirne”

Sheep lights with different behaviors.

Video

This quilt is made up of an array of 41 textile tilt sensors. Each sensor is unique and demonstrates a construction variation, showcasing different materials and techniques that can be used to create fabric tilt sensors.

>> High-Low Tech Project Website

The Tilt Sensing Quilt took roughly a year to complete. It is a great demonstration of how the process of crafting e-textile technology requires handwork, patience, and concentration. The work is repetitive and soothing, yet frustrating if you aim to complete too much in one go. It proved a much better decision to work on the quite a bit at a time and to enjoy the process, rather than seeing it as a means to an end.

Applications

The quilt as a final artifact is a human-computer interface that can interact with a variety of custom applications. These include a super rough height-map application that visualizes the tilt of the individual tilt sensors. Another application allows you to manually interact with the individual tilt sensor positions in order to browse through a personal photo database to construct collages. This same application can be applied to a database of public images. Allowing you to create collages of events based on contexts such as year, event or location.

Height-Map

Video (ignore the background conversation:-)

Personal Photo Collage

Public Photo Collage

Construction

The quilt is made up of 3 layers (with an additional isolation layer between layers two and three):
1) Tilt sensors: 41 total
2) Rows: 9×6 rows connecting all 6 tilt sensor petals
3) Columns: 41 individual columns connecting all 41 tilt sensing beads via five 8-channel multiplexers

Along one edge all tilt sensor petals are interconnected. Along another edge all tilt sensing beads are connected via five 8-channel multiplexers. All traces finally connect to a LilyPad Arduino, which parses the array of 41 tilt sensors and sends the data via serial communication over Bluetooth (wireless) or via a USB connection (wired).

Tilt Sensors

Rows

Columns

Multiplexers

LilyPad

Very first prototype

Textile sensor and camera vision motion-capture technology for stuffed animals.

Camera Vision Motion Capture Costume

Video

Textile Sensor Motion Capture Costume

Video

Pictures on Flickr

If you’ve ever opened up an electronic device then you’ll know all about the secret life of cows. Transparent technology is about re-designing technology to better expose this universe in which cows and microcontrollers happily coexist.

The radio featured in this particular example is a re-design of the Fab FM, using transparent materials in order to expose secret life within.

The Secret Life of Cows

Transparent Fab FM Radio

Front and back views of radio

Inside view of radio

Opening up transparent technology

A set of scales that don’t react the way you’d expect to the differences in weight of the objects placed upon them. Yet their behavior is still dictated by the rules of physics and the materials they are made of.

These scales use knit stretch sensors to measure and compare the weight of two objects, sending this information to a microcontroller (mini computer) that determines which object is heavier based on the stretch of both sensors. The bar over which the scale baskets are connected is not free to move, but instead controlled by a servo motor, which tilts the scale bar such that the heavier object goes up and the lighter object goes down. Indicating to the viewer which of the objects is heavier, but only if they are expecting this scenario. All the materials and technology used remain in plain sight. Nothing is encased in a black box (except the microcontroller). The circuitry and the components are mounted on top of the structure.

First Prototype

The first prototypes of the scale use LED lights to indicate which side holds the heavier object. The final version will use a motor to tilt the scale in order to make this indication.

Hack your carpets!

Materials and Tools

Procedure

Video

Pictures on Flickr

Put your finger in the hole and move it around to control your mouse cursor. Reach for the button at the bottom of the hole to left click. Smile.

This workshop will explore the use of low-cost materials and tools to build textile-based interfaces that replace the current hard-shell computer mice or laptop touchpads that you use to navigate your screen.

>> Workshop Page

Eight Steps depicts the making-of a wearable instrument. Based on a series of workshops that focus on unveiling the black box of technology in order to demonstrate how everyday electronic objects can be opened up and modified to better suit our personal needs and desires.
In the workshops we make use of cheap electronic sound toys, combining their circuitry with the library of Textile Sensors that we have developed, in order to allow participants to construct personalized e-textile interfaces.

KOBAKANT project page >> Eight Steps

Eight Steps will be on show at the Designing Machines Exhibition at the Design Museum Holon from October 14th 2010 - January 1st 2011

Painting circuits on paper with conductive paint. This technique is documented in detail on the High-Low Tech Wiki.

Paper Piano

RGB Controlls

Paintable Electronics Workshop

>> Link to workshop page

Augmented Flying Spaghetti Monster

“You press the button, we do the rest”
This slogan, used to sell Kodak cameras is defining of the anticipation that, if we press a button, something will happen.

Ever since people used technology, the button stands for a simple action that triggers mechanical or electrical functionality of various complexity. Push Button is a series of three installations in public space that play with this anticipation.

While Push Button is intended for installation in public space, it is currently installed as a prototype at the MIT Media Lab in buildings E14 & E15.
>> Project Website

First Iteration

In the first iteration a simple red button is installed in a public location, without specific context. The button counts the number of times it is pushed, but does not communicate the number back to the operator. It investigates the button as a magic device, the simplest of all interfaces. It plays with our relationship to buttons in our everyday life in which every interaction with them is met with a physical reaction. This button though, is an interface to something we do not see and have to imagine.

Second Iteration

In a second iteration, the Button is linked to a display that shows the amount of times the button was pushed. Here, the situation inherently changes, as operators will have direct feedback and the button itself and it’s operation are not the focus of the piece anymore. Instead, motivation and anticipation are shifted to the context of numbers. Will people press the button more often if the numbers ascend or descend? Will they anticipate reactions when appraching certain numbers

Final Iteration

A final iteration connects the button pressing and the counting by adding social context. Multiple buttons are placed in public places defining specific areas like Harvard, Cambridge and Central Square. The counters now not only display the number of times each button has been pressed at its current location, but also how many times the buttons in other locations have been pressed. This additional layer of context lends itself for competition and connects this simple interface with reasoning about one’s surroundings, feelings of home and place and personal relationship to public space.

An inter-district game that involves pushing buttons

Competition and competitiveness is very much part of our everyday. We frequently use numbers in order to compare competitive results. Such as the number of goals scored in a soccer game, the number seconds it took to run 100 meters or the number of votes it took to win a seat in congress.
Push Button is an inter-district game that involves pushing buttons and increasing scores. Buttons are mounted in different districts and every time a button is pushed, the number associated with the area it is located in increases by one. This number is displayed on a screen that is mounted in sight of the button. Current numbers from all locations are displayed on this screen.

There are no rules to the game and no instructions. This setup allows for an interactive pubic game that works simply by providing a scoreboard for inter-district competition. The numbers themselves don’t imply anything, they are an extremely reduced form of information. Yet the relationships between the numbers and the locations they represent address our competitive nature, insuring that they will be interpreted with meaning beyond the pushing of buttons.
No matter where you live you develop relationships with the districts and areas in which you spend time. You might live in one district, work in another, have friends in another and go for walks in yet another. With each of these districts you associate different feelings and are attached to them for different reasons. So what if these districts were to compete against each other? If things became serious and you had to pick sides, which district would you support?

The interface is reduced to the basics necessary for the game to work. The red button and the display are mounted on a street signpost. Inside the display box there is a small computer with WiFi capability. The computer transmits and receives information about current scores to a central server so that all displays show the same scores simultaneously.
The game aims to reach a population that has ties to the locations “participating” in the game. Our current choice of districts are: Harvard campus, Central Square and MIT campus. In addition to displaying the current scores from each district on the displays on site, the scores will also be displayed on a website. The installation lasts until the first district reaches the max score which is currently set to be ten thousand. We expect to reach this score within two weeks of installation.

A day-long workshop during which participants can come and go, contributing to knitting textile composite objects, furniture and installations.

Circular knitting machines are used to knit tubes that can be fully or partially dipped or otherwise drenched in wet plaster. These can then be sculpted into various forms using cardboard and inflatable structures to give them shape and volume. As the plaster sets, the structure is maintained (see images). These sculpted composites can then be integrated in the existing environment.

The aim of the workshop is to bring people together to participate in an outdoor activity that explores the hard and soft properties of textiles in order to make big and small, delicate and sturdy structures.

In the evening, lights can be mounted inside the hangings, illuminating their structures

Sweat Lodge

The first iteration of this workshop took place during the SOCS Sweat Lodge Event on Friday 21st May 2010 outside the MIT Media Lab.
>> Sweat Lodge

>> Download PDF

>> Download PDF

Realized as part of the ten day SCU+MIT workshop in Taipei, Taiwan. A collaboration between Shih Chien University and MIT Architecture and Media Lab departments
Team members: Yi-Chun Lu (Sasha), Cetus, Kao Chieh, Ming-Chun Liu, Cheng Ru Li (Kim), Lisa Hsieh, Jen Hisn Ying, Sarah Hirschman, Ho Kwan Yip (Mavis) and Hannah Perner-Wilson

ICEBREAKERS - Connecting the Masses in Transit

Icebreaking interventions on Taiwan’s MRT public transit system. Every day Taipei’s MRT mass transit system transports one million passengers (40% of the population), but despite boasting 94% customer satisfaction (compared to San Francisco 65%, Chicago 80%) the routine act of being transported from A to B is perceived by many to be lost time, a hole in their day. The Icebreakers believe this absence presents a unique opportunity for social activism on the most basic scale. The Icebreakers believe in the positive benefits of breaking the social ice that exists within the public space of mass transit.

Project website >> http://scumiticebreakers.wordpress.com/

The MRT Brown Line is a unique platform within the overall Taipei transit system. Narrower cars, above-ground travel, and a variety of program destinations mean that the Brown Line attracts a wide section of the community, and contains it more compactly than on any other line. This is an ideal site for public activism to promote interactions of any type.

Icebreaking agents are activists. They are upset with the lack of interaction happening on the MRT and take initiative by creating, installing and hacking the space in order to facilitate communication among the masses. We distribute our endeavors via how-to instructions that detail how to make, install and administer these interventions.

Three example installations demonstrate various levels of intervention. All of them aim to break the ice within the MRT. Ideally, interventions are located such that they will be encountered in routine acts of holding on to the handles and poles already present in the MRT, on the windows, and on the ceiling, where the eyes might wander in an attempt to avoid direct eye contact in a crowded car.

Beginner: Hand Puppets

This project is suitable for beginner Icebreakers. It involves buying puppets and modifying them to fit the handles of the MRT car.
The project situates itself in the realm of intervention, offering a quick and easy way for anybody wishing to break the ice to act. Existing puppets are simply modified to fit the handles within the MRT car. few or almost all handles may be covered. The intention behind this project is to offer passengers an avatar through which to engage in interactions with fellow passengers. Drawing upon the power of dress-up and theatre to bring people out of their usual set characters, this project offers them an alternative persona through which to ‘break the ice.’ This project also subtly plays on the fact that in the digital age, we all have our online screen names through which we fluently interact with strangers almost every day on the internet.

Intermediate: Piano Pole

This project is for intermediate Icebreakers. It involves hacking a toy piano and sewing a textile electronic interface that can be attached to the poles within the MRT car.
Installed by wrapping it around the poles within the MRT, this textile musical installation occupies space intended for holding tight. Standing passengers need a place to hold on, and might first experience this installation by accident. Once encountered, they can then decide whether to engage further in the musical experience. The choice to map a very concrete musical score to the pole creates not only the initial shock effect of accidentally triggering a first note, but also offers the opportunity of playing with it as an instrument. Unlike a game there is no concrete goal, but there is a wrong and a right way to play a song and this can create a certain incentive to continue playing beyond the initial surprise of discovery.

Expert: Give Me A Hand

This project is for expert icebreakers. It involves programming interactive animations that can be displayed on the MRT LED screens (currently being proposed to the MRT for advertising purposes) and promote interaction among and between passengers. These interactive animations will not be triggered unless five or more handles in any one carriage are being held.
Occupying the ceiling space of the car, this project situates itself where one usually focuses in a crowded car to avoid direct eye contact. This installation makes way for a range of different applications that, in the context of icebreaking, aim at connecting individuals. The handles in the subway car act as collective input devices.

Workshop documentation

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 8

Handcrafting Textile Mice workshop at the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference in Arhus, Denmark

May 2

Electronic Quilting workshop during the Cambridge Science Festival in Cambridge, MA

May 1

Paintable Electronics workshop during the Cambridge Science Festival in Cambridge, MA

March 24-26

Presentation of the Tilt and Time Sensing Bracelets and Handcrafting a Textile Sensor workshop at the Student Interaction Design and Research conference (SIDeR) in Umea, Sweden

March 15-18

Wearable Sound workshop at Atelier Nord in Oslo, Norway

January 26

Handcrafting Textile Sensors from Scratch workshop at TEI in Cambridge, MA

January 15-24

Participant in workshop collaboration between SCU and MIT Architecture and Media Lab departments held in Taipei, Taiwan