Textile Responsive Artefacts and woven and knit samples using paper and UV-responsive yarns: colour and light. The artefacts are complemented by a collection of pictures that document their transformations. 

This exhibition is based on interdisciplinary research 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 the hierarchy of textile construction can help us to reimagine, materialise and finally realise new textile concepts and their changing aesthetics.

In the collection of artefacts presented in this exhibition, textiles are seen as active elements in their environments – being able to react to environmental stimuli by changing their shape, colour or other qualities, exhibiting behaviours similar to e-textiles but without using electricity. 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 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 levels of study – from developing new advanced materials for making yarns to exploring different textile crafting methods for producing diverse textile structures, construction and aesthetics, as well as moving towards shape-morphing 3D textiles, where exposure and disappearance of different properties as a function of changing textile shape can occur.