This paper presents needs and potentials for wearable sensors inoccupational healthcare. In addition, it presents ongoing European and Swedishprojects for developing personalized, and pervasive wearable systems for assessingrisks of developing musculoskeletal disorders and cardiovascular diseases at work.Occupational healthcare should benefit in preventing diseases and disorders byproviding the right feedback at the right time to the right person. Collected datafrom workers can provide evidence supporting the ergonomic and industrial tasksof redesigning the working environment to reduce the risks.

This Short Paper is part of the Dialogical Bodies Conference Proceedings, a conference on artistic research in fashion design. Everything and everybody as material, April 2024. The aim of this artistic research is to explore AI in the fashion industry by supporting the design process for the reuse and redesign of recovered resources. Co author, Thomas Nilsson (Ledai)  Founded by Science Park Borås, project Microfabriker (Micro Factories)

In this report, we present an analysis of Swedes' attitudes towards diferent sustainable futures. How desirable do they find them? How likely? Why? And what futures seem actionable enough to make them happen? By answering these questions, we sketch out a map of the future

Digital Storytelling, with digital media such as images, text, music, audio and videos—is an effective medium to broadcast the social norms that are important for a sustainable fashion industry. F/ACT movement is one such project at the Science Park, University of Borås that promotes sustainable actions through the social media community, with the influencers who have pledged to become fashion activists. But the fashion industry that is driven by fast trends and consumption—has considerably invested in consumer’s ‘experience’ towards buying clothes. Be it of marketing campaigns, in-store as well as user-friendly e-commerce experience—and if experience can lead to buying that can be excessive, then experience should also potentially lead to retaining the clothing with consumers. Digital storytelling can act as a tool of social innovation, and therefore the purpose is to identify the role and importance of digital storytelling in social media by engaging in storytelling activities with F/ACT’s large social media community. It is further to identify values—that digital storytelling—might create to capture the experiences and form a positive relationship with existing clothing. The project is a qualitative action-research, by implementing storytelling as a data collection method and narrative inquiry as a writing and analysis method. As digital storytelling, is suitable for communicating complex information, sustainability in clothing as being acutely manifold, may also profit with media collaboration with fashion organizations.

This artistic research project delves into the innovative realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology as a tool for analyzing and redesigning garments, aiming to reshape the designer’s approach to sorting and designing based on discarded materials.

When working with redesign, what you have at hand is what you start designing with. The garment as material. No matter whether it is entirely unique or many more of the same exist, the redesign process can be repeated many times if more of the same material is to be found. However, the basic principle is - the material, i.e., the garment, comes first.

Every garment has its own problems and characteristics and shifting classifications – wear and tear, pilling, seams, pockets, colours, stains, prints, linings, zippers etc. Sometimes these hinder the redesign process; sometimes the process originates from these very specific things. When working with discarded garments the actual hands-on sorting from an expressive and aesthetical perspective is a crucial, yet a very complex time-consuming procedure. AI technologies might offer a transformative solution to the challenges associated with manual sorting, since computer vision algorithms can identify fabric types, colors, and conditions and therefore streamlining the sorting process in the recycling facilities. This also points towards novel classifications of these unpredictable, volatile material streams. A development of alternative terminology for expressive properties with aesthetical consequences for design.

In this specific research project 38 shirts have been photographed analyzed and shuffled in 1425 possible combinations. All based on the redesign principal “2 becomes 1” They are displayed randomly, eight at the time, in minor collections to demonstrate the capacities of imaginabledesign alternatives. Further in this ongoing research is the evaluation of “best blends” from a design perspective, and by doing so teach the machine which combinations preferred sor rejected from a designer’s perspective. This needs further research, however - AI's integration into garment sorting and redesign processes holds immense potential for optimizing various stages of a garment lifecycle and simultaneously challenges practitioners towards future spaces of fashion design.

What is particularly interesting is that redesign methodologies tend to be a very analog and craft-based, but with the integration of AI for sorting and redesigning with discarded textiles, this analog and time-consuming process has potential to be challenged and developed not only in favor for local waste streams but also a design tool within fashion practice. An unexplored esthetical evaluation for novel categories and material identities and based on discarded garments.