The samples explore the design possibilities of solar-responsive yarns (light-emitting, color-changing, and shape-changing yarns) in textile design using knitting and weaving constructions. The textiles developed in the project Rhythms of Sunlight connect to the rhythms of nature; they form a visual representation relating acts of use to different climate conditions by being sensitive to continuous changes of light. In this process, natural phenomena are included as co-designers, allowing each piece to exhibit multiple expressions and gently completing the process the designer has opened. Beyond the textile design, the collection of artifacts generates new questions and speculates different ways of daily living with light-responsive textiles.

Moving beyond the conventional understanding of solar energy as a power source, this presentation will discuss the constituents of solar energies and their capacity to act as an agential material, i.e. one that interacts, mediates, and facilitates change in smart textile designs. The concept of agential materiality suggests that phenomena such as solar energies are not passive forces but are active participants in the co-constitution of natural and designed environments. Solar energies comprise sunlight and its constituents: visible light (through which we experience illumination and colour), ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths, and infrared wavelengths. These each contain inherent variabilities in their qualities, expressions, intensities and temporal patterns that can directly influence textile material properties and the interactive and responsive aspects of smart textile design. This perspective draws from a ‘more-than-human design’ theoretical framework, which argues for the recognition of non-human actors in the design process. Through this lens, solar energies inform the properties, behaviours, and expressions of textile design materials and challenge conventional hierarchies between the animate and the inanimate.

This panel examines the intersections of generative AI with material and installation art practices through three distinct studies, each highlighting a unique dimension of AI's role in contemporary creative processes. The first panellists explore AI's capacity for creating physical sculptures, reflecting on the intricate combination of AI capabilities and human craftsmanship necessary to materialise digital forms into physical sculptures. The second one investigates how textile and fashion designers integrate generative AI into creative workflows, revealing a gap between digital outputs and the tangible realities of material-based design, which calls for novel tools and methods. And the final panelist delves into "Language Is Leaving Me," a cinematic AI installation that critiques AI's inability to fully capture cultural and epigenetic memory, drawing attention to biases in large language models. Collectively, these studies emphasize AI's potential and limitations in artistic practices, underscoring the critical need for human oversight and creative intervention to bridge digital outputs with physical, cultural, and affective dimensions in diverse material contexts.

This project aimed to suggest possible knitted textile designs using biopolyamide yarns that expand when subjected to infrared light or heat-stimulated structures. Through exploring the design potential of responsive kinetic textiles using these novelyarns, the research raised the following questions to inform their use in textile objects: “How does kinetic motion in textiles influence our emotional response?” And: “How can kinetic textiles be designed in meaningful ways for everyday life?”

Inspired by nature's capacity for change, the project proposes an alternative approach to designing smart materials with shape-changing properties powered by green energy. Natural phenomena, e.g., light, are explored to trigger changes in textiles rather than using electrical circuits and energy, which are often used in smart textile design. The project relates material science to textile design through an experimental research methodology to generate responsive materiality, bridging developments in material science, textile craftsmanship, artistic research, and design.

Nowadays, ethics and care for the environment have shifted paradigms in smart textile design towards responsible energy use and preservation of natural resources. In this research, we aim to relate material science and engineering to textile and interaction design in discovering a vibrant responsive materiality triggered by ultraviolet (UV) energy. The research addresses a bottom-up approach entangling scientific development in material science, textile craftsmanship, and design to the understanding of human use and the capacities for change of this natural phenomena. Compared to a conventional textile design process where material and form composition connect in a final expression, this research positions designers and scientists as enablers of material relations. The artefacts, therefore, exhibit multiple states and forms, transforming dynamically through use and sensitivity to natural phenomena. The selected textile artefacts are seen as relational; they open for different conversations and materialize entanglements of materials, techniques, methods, and research methodologies that relate experimental research to human-centered and more-than-human approaches.

This research project explored solar energies beyond their traditional role as a mere power source, examining their capacity as agential materials (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2020) within smart textile design. It emphasized the active participation of solar energies—encompassing visible light, ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths, and infrared wavelengths—in shaping both the material properties and interactive behaviours of textiles. These energies are framed as co-constituents in the dynamic interaction between natural and designed environments, influenced by a “more-than-human design” theoretical framework (Barzdzell et al. 2021; Giaccardi et al. 2025; Wakkary 2021).

With this exhibition presentation at the BICCS Conference 2025, we wish to discuss the role of textile crafting in the research project Nordic Network on Smart Light-Conversion Textiles Beyond Electric Circuits, 2021-2025 emphasizing the importance of textile crafting in a cross-disciplinary partner consortium focusing on materials development. We argue that textile crafting may serve as an entrance point to equal dialogue across highly different research fields and thereby pave the way for ethical and sustainable considerations for the benefit of the environment and the way we act as human species in a planetary context. The research addresses the following themes: 1) UV energy as agent for shape change, 2) UV energy as agent for slow colour change, and 3) UV energy as agent for immediate colour change. At the exhibition we display artefacts applying textile craft techniques such as bobbin lace,multi-layered weavings, knitted, printed and dyed textiles.

In the presented collection of artefacts, textiles are seen as active elements in their environments – being able to react to environmental stimuli by changing their shape, colour, or other qualities. Drawing parallelism to biological materials, some of these changes are two-directional and thus can lead to reversible changes, whereas some are linear and irreversible, such as ageing. As examples of two-directional changes, textile designs based on UV reactive properties: colour changing, light emitting, and self-cleaning, as well as textile constructions based on newly developed yarns capable of reversible shape changes upon exposure to heat are exhibited. On the other hand, the colour changes of natural dyes dictated by the ambient environment and the heat-response of new PLA yarns bring about elements of irreversible change. When two-directional and linear changes coexist, the appearance (and thus aesthetics) of the artefacts is constantly altering. The timescales contained in these textile transformations vary significantly creating an interesting interplay of diverse and sometimes intersecting qualities. These concepts are approached from different viewpoints – from developing new advanced materials for making yarns, exploring different textile crafting methods for producing diverse textile structures, and to engaging with aesthetic sustainability. 

This exhibition shows work in progress in the Beyond e-textiles project which bases on interdisciplinary research work involving contributions from physics, crafting, materials engineering, and textile design. Partners are Aalto University, University of Turku, University of Borås, VIA University College, and Iceland University of the Arts. Employing methodologies from these various disciplines and conducting research at different levels of hierarchy of textile construction can help us to reimagine, materialise and finally realise new textile concepts and their changing aesthetics

Sustainable design thinking challenges perspectives on approaches to material development that are considerate of resources from the natural environment. This involves limiting energy consumption and re-purposing materials’ use, qualities, and functions for an extended life span. Using a practice-based research methodology, this research proposes an alternative framework for sustainable textiles with a strong emphasis on designing a material’s expressive qualities related to its extended use values: co-creation and wear. The experimental practice looks at the interplay between a material’s inherent properties and its craftmanship, as well as aesthetic and expressive values which could extend the duration of use. The research takes a bottom-up approach to sustainable design thinking and exemplifies the design of diverse material strategies through a curated library of responsive textile expressions. The responsive textile samples developed in this research illustrate rich ways of responding and adapting to user actions and their environmental surroundings. The textiles’ extended multimodal attributes suggest an alternative framework to design for prolonged lifespan, and exemplify materials that enhance daily life by conserving energy and allowing for customization and location-specific applications.