The way we construct our immediate surroundings and our ways of living determine how we relate to the whole world as we know it and how we view our lives in relation to it. In other words, our perspective of the wider world and our role within it is shaped by how the things we use are designed and depends on the ways in which we are permitted to interact with our world through these things. This is the focus of this work, which suggests three interaction design principles to support the process of forming and strengthening the relation between us and the basic conditions of life. These principles are based on the observations made and experiences had during three field trips in areas of wilderness in northern Scandinavia that examined how interactions with essential resources such as water and heat affected the relations of people to these resources. Accordingly, the proposed design principles concern the relational aspect of design in terms of how the actions carried out affect these relations, rather than how the quantities of resources used can be communicated to people through a design or how an interaction will be experienced or engage people. The principles bring up design aspects such as relatedness, value and adaptability.

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.

The 3rd edition of the TEXTILE INTERSECTIONS conference explores and celebrates the nature of collaborations in textile design research through six themes: Textiles and Architecture, Textiles and Sports, Biotextiles and Sustainable Textiles, Interactive and Performative Textiles, Advanced Textiles Materials and Processes, Critical Textiles.

The exhibition is held at Loughborough University London 20–23 September 2023, and organised by the Textile Design Research Group at Loughborough University in collaboration with Royal College of Art, London, UK, the Swedish School of Textiles University of Borås, Sweden, and Elisava, Barcelona, Spain.

The explorations done is a try out to understand the material of textiles and the like, mainly from an interaction design perspective. What is that material? Not only as a highly visual and tactile expressive material that can define a garment or an interior object though patterns, texture, shape, connotations and meanings. Not only as a highly functional material being able to give shelter, for instance, as a tent fabric. Rather, simply as a basic performative material with an agency also in itself. For instance, it seems to be a material that by for instance dividing, through colouring light or by being a surface for sound defines space in a flexible, changeable and relative way. 

In this architectural research exploration, we challenge the notion of an interactive architectural surface as single-layered, two-dimensional interaction interface. Instead, we propose the notion of Interactive Voluminous Substance, which moves the interaction experience into four dimensions, shifting it from far-field, proximity-based interaction to a near-field, tactile one. We present four features of architectural expression that could potentially sustain the embodiment of this Substance: spatial positioning, geometry, expression, hybrid material composition and interaction design. If the future architectural interiors and exteriors are made from Voluminous Architectural Substance, how will it be to dwell with them? We propose two physical prototypes and two interaction stories as speculative objects probing this question.

The Pliant Flesh is a piece built up with a semi-firm body onto which two layers of thinner skins are attached with electronics in between. Pressing hands onto it, it will answer pliantly however with some resistance being experienced as firm but not completely stiff. When touched the piece reacts with small vibrations and lights. The vibrations and lights are then spreading out following their own pattern. 

In the Pliant Flesh the electronics are partially visible pointing out that architecture and the technology of a building could be merged and respond to peoples actions. The piece materializes questions on what it is to experience this hybridity. The black Pliant Flesh is a complementary work to the yellow greenish piece Soft Body.

The bowels of the piece are soft with encapsulated electronics that are enclosed by a silicon skin. When pressing hands onto it the hands sink into the body. From deep within there is a respond to the pressure of the hands, slow gentle vibrations of the inner building up interaction patterns that define the tangibility. 

In the Soft Body the electronics are hidden and not clearly located. This fact together with the sense of a highly responsive and fluid material brings the Soft Body far away from what we are used to encounter within architecture of today. The piece materializes questions on what it is to experience highly tactile architecture with material and interaction inner substance and corporal connotation.  

Artistic research in design is relatively new compared to experimental research in the natural sciences but it has matured a great deal over the last decade. Its extensive development has brought new challenges to professional practice, and also raised questions regarding how knowledge should be imparted in academia. By examining the field of textile design, which has traditionally been taught in close synergy with professional practice, we can discern the emergence of doctoral theses that have brought not only new perspectives to textile practice but also a new role to the design educator as a researcher within the academia. One of the challenges that design education program are facing, however, relates to creating a better connection between research and education in order to continually enrich curricula with new developments in the field, so that basic knowledge and novelty can interact. By looking closely at the development of the research environment at The Swedish School of Textiles and the interaction with undergraduate and postgraduate education, this chapter describes how research has informed the development of textile design education.

When used within textile printing, smart colours have expanded the design possibilities for textile patterns as relates to both motifs and, more importantly, uses. Smart colours suggest new functionalities and provide specific perceptions, reactions, and activities in terms of usage. At the same time, the need for peripheral information sources that are less intrusive than many of the everyday devices of the present has continuously been addressed to improve wellbeing, e.g. by making life more manageable and meaningful through the use of technology in everyday life. We aim to increase knowledge of the design qualities of smart colours, which is of use in relation to creating non- or less intrusive ways of displaying peripheral information. This paper focuses on the character of colour transition and discusses different colour-changing possibilities with regard to surface patterns; that is, from the perspectives of different levels of change and complexity and in relation to levels of intrusiveness and information comprehensibility. 

Presently, digital sketching environments have come to be used as a complement to the traditional manufacturing techniques for textiles; the research presented here looks into the area of time-based patterns and their relation to digital tools and textile structural techniques. Thus, the aim of this work is to expand on the existing methods used by designers, and to explore ways for capturing and expressing the complexity and temporality of pattern changes in textiles. Furthermore, our result sketches a method for using dynamic colors to design complex surface patterns for textiles by utilizing methods that facilitate the hiding and/or revealing of multiple colors and shapes on the printed surface of the textile; this method is discussed in connection to the different expressions that can be achieved by using knitting as media for print.

Presence in a space has own rhythm of change; it is organic,but it can be expressed structurally by the textile forms. The textile acts as a mirror between spaces that have been separated; the textile collects and spreads information through changes in structure. Motion sensors embedded in the textile are tracking the movement in one space, after a short time the textile starts to rotate the knitted modules in a slow pace repositioning its patterns.

This article presents three scenarios in which we explore different possibilities for interactive textile hangings, textile hangings that are knitted and attached to servomotors. We have identified a series of variables that address the relationship between the expressions of the changeable pattern, created by rotating motors, and the unchangeable textile pattern. We use these variables, combined with contextual dichotomies, to discuss the relationships between the textile expression, the temporal expression, the place and the interactions for these scenarios.

We are developing a dynamic textile wall hanging as an interface to the atmosphere of a room. Atmospheres are elusive. An atmosphere is the result of an ongoing negotiation between the activities in the room and the expression of the material objects, the lighting, the temperature, and the boundaries of the room [4, 8]. The wall hanging will play an active part in that ongoing negotiation. The activities in the room will influence how the textile wall hanging changes structure, form, color, as well as the pace with which it happens, and the activities in the room may in turn be influenced by the expression of the wall hanging.

In art and design practices, materials and technology are means of expression as well as sources of inspiration. On the other hand, in technical development processes art and design provide meaning, direction and expressions of functionality. In some sense this duality of perspectives is what defines the loci where art, design and technology meet. Over the past ten years, the Swedish School of Textiles have taken part in the ongoing discussion on how practice-based research can further develop our understanding of the expressiveness inherent in new materials and new technology. In this context it is clear that art, design and technology meet in the lab and in the workshop. However, for discussions across borders between the perspectives of art, design and technology we need meeting places outside of the labs and the workshops as well. The Ambience exhibition is an exercise in building such a meeting place, but also an exercise in providing conference space for interaction between artistic practice and theory. As designers and artists working within a research setting, we often work in parallel with writing, presenting conference papers and exhibiting in different arenas. It is then only natural to include two ways of presenting results at a conference for artistic research; to let paper presentations and exhibition interact to create wider perspectives and deeper understanding. All exhibition contributions have been subject to a peer review process similar to the review process paper submissions are subjected to. And just as for paper submissions, reviews focus on originality and skills with respect to both results and presentation. This exhibition is the first in the series of Ambience conferences. The conference is organized by the University of Borås in cooperation with Tampere University of Technology and is a part of the Smart Textiles Initiative – www.smarttextiles.se In this catalogue you will find images, artist statements and/or project descriptions presenting the works displayed at the exhibition. Welcome to the Ambience´11 exhibition!

The Ambience’11 conference focuses on the intersections and interfaces between technology, art and design. The first international conference in the Ambience series was held in Tampere, Finland in 2005. In Tampere the basic theme was “Intelligent ambience, including intelligent textiles, smart garments, intelligent home and living environment”. In Borås 2008 it was “Smart Textiles – Technology & Design” in focus and in Borås 2011 it is the new expressional crossroads where art, design, architecture and technology meet.

Imagine that the table is set and dinner is ready. It’s time to sit down and share the moment. That is what we do also in terms of sharing a one time pattern change in the tablecloth, and in terms of sharing each others’ mobile phone activity. Incoming phone calls and messages are not notified by the phones themselves, but through a burned out pattern in the tablecloth, in between our plates. The Burning Tablecloth serves as a design example of the design technique for irreversible patterns, expressing colour and structure-changes in a knitted textile. The Burning Tablecloth changes colour and structure according to mobile phone signals (calls and text messages) with burned out patterns and acts as a medium for raising questions about interactive tactile and visual expressions in textiles. The project is a design example of research into three fields, knitted circuits, textile patterns and peoples’ relation to computational technology. The tablecloth is knitted with cotton yarns and a heating wire in a Stoll flatbed knitting machine. The pattern that appears when using the tablecloth is built up as squares with the potential of becoming chess-patterned over the whole tablecloth surface. The table-cloth is connected to a microcontroller and various electronic components. The heating wire knitted in the table-cloth is the active material; when heated it is able to change the colour and structure of the table-cloth. The burning tablecloth reacts to mobile phone signals by getting warm so that colour and eventually structure changes is appearing in the tablecloth. The experiment demonstrates a design example where visual and tactile interactive properties are expressed in a tablecloth by mobile phone signals. Combined in a material structure, textile circuits are controlled by external stimuli adding an aesthetical value to the textile expression. With a foundation of experienced knowledge from latter experiments, the tablecloth shows an example developed by the design technique for irreversible patterns. The Burning Tablecloth also demonstrates how information can be expressed in an esthetical way through textiles, acting as an interactive colour and structure changing ambient textile display.

In this practice-based experimental design research project a tablecloth reacting on external signals is designed. The tablecloth is connected to mobile phones and reacts to incoming calls and messages with burned out patterns. Due to the mobile phone activity, changes in colour and structure appear in the table-cloth. The tablecloth is a way to explore visual and tactile changes in a textile surface. It is also a way to investigate how our relation to mobile phones and mobile phone technology is affected by the way the phones are being expressed.

Textile can be more than just patterns and washability. Today it can have other functions, visible or hidden and they can be interactive. Textile has simply become high-tech. What used to be considered science fiction is today reality. The exhibition TEXTILE POSSIBILITIES focuses on experiments that explores the possibilities that modern textile materials offers. There are no actual products on display in the exhibition, instead the latest research from textile is shown. For instance, visitors can experience how electricity, heat and movements alter colours and structures within the textiles. The exhibition shows the research process and lets the visitor interact with the different textile prototypes. The exhibition TEXTILE POSSIBILITIES aims to inspire, convey knowledge and to visualise a possible textile development. It shows a way for how experimental design research through collaboration with the commercial community can affect and build it’s own future here in Sweden.