Traditional handcraft may seem obsolete nowadays, but its emotional, perceptive potential and possibilities to fuse with 21st century technologies are still under explored. This Open Source Platform investigates a Crafting 3.0 approach in the field of fashion, industrial and interaction design to explore digital tactility of sound through the body.
Crafting 3.0 states a concept that combines traditional craftsmanship techniques with new technological possibilities. Technologically-infused textiles (Crafting 3.0) will influence our relationship and approach to craft but also fulfil two pressing human needs in the future.
The first need is related to the trend Low-Touch in which handcrafted products incorporate human resonance and the sense of cultural belonging.
The second is associated with the trend Hi-Tech and its technological advancements; to experience the virtual environment and to extend the five senses.
Digital Tactility is a new hybrid trend field that promotes a Learning Web Revolution where Tech is reworked by Hand and represented by the increasing phenomena of sharing techniques and processes: Open Source Labs, Makers Movements and DIY. This new hybrid field adds a new layer to traditional handcrafting techniques, to extend our senses and perception of the environment as a body extension.
The result is the creation of Crafting 3.0 prototypes, an interactive sound-embroidery and DIY tutorials.
CRAFTING 3.0
How can technologically-infused fashion
influence our relationship and our approach
to craft?
CRAFTING 3.0 and Interactions meaning
The term refers to an interactive, modernised handicraft. Each culture possesses different crafting techniques, and traditional handicrafts represent a cultural attachment. Crafting gains an additional function of expanding our senses when these traditional techniques are combined with modern, universal technology. This is perceptive Crafting 3.0.
Digital Tactility proposes innovations in the textile industry by reinterpreting traditional techniques with the help of interactive, modern technologies. For example, the archetype of traditional handicraft undergoes a transformation, turning from a mere ornament to an activator of stimuli and senses. Embroidery is combined with technological conductive yarns, the shape-memory alloy Nitinol, and Arduino, transforming into an interactive and tactile ornament. Thus, Crafting 3.0 represents a new and performative element.
This hybrid approach between crafting and technology breaks down all categorisations. I wish for them to no longer be separated but to merge together. Lipovetsky and Serroy (2013) state that "in the time of hybrids, everywhere boundaries are breaking down and hierarchies of genres and subjects, positions between high and low are disappearing. While the old boundaries are evaporating, a new type of design made of interweaving and transversality is emerging".
Interaction means the ability of traditional handicrafts to blend into modern society. They are driven together by the need for new design, which allows us to experience our bodies and through them the world around us. By expanding the body through textiles, as a body extension, we can experience ourselves in a hypersensitive way as we have never felt before. This research aims to analyse how a textile can change our perception of intangible elements by dealing with the fabric as a communications medium that influences the way we perceive our world.
ANDREA WOLF-SIMONE
A teacher of Fashion Design since 2017, stresses to her students the importance of maintaining a historical overview of crafting techniques and bringing to them a hybrid approach by combining them with new technologies. This approach of uniting these rarely-used, forgotten crafting techniques with groundbreaking, unfamiliar technologies is very stimulating for the students as they simultaneously acquire cultural knowledge, new skills, and crafting techniques.
A Fashion designer since 2002, she learned her way into the fashion business through experiences at Balmain and Vanessa Bruno, in Paris. She graduated in 2007 with her first Masters degree in fashion and design in France at the Université Lumière Lyon II Université de la Mode, Lyon.
She pursued her second Masters of Arts in Design at the ZHdK, Zürich. Her curiosity to explore new fashion possibilities using smart materials to embody new perceptive and sensational interactions for the wearer, led her to open minded approaches, and experimental teaching formats.
FOCUS
Its about the existing relations between craft, emotions
and technology.
Traditional handicrafts, such as embroidery, lace-making, and macramé, have occupied an important place in our lives for several centuries. As instruments of cultural mediation and most importantly as a means of disseminating know-how, traditional techniques have had a direct influence on people's behaviour in the past and have been decisive economic factors.
In today's world, we are exposed to new models of consumption that are shaped by the emergence of new ways of life. This model is the direct result of our society’s evolution, which is accompanied by numerous technological advances and new aesthetics in which crafts struggle to find their place. What happens when that link is broken and knowledge is at risk of becoming lost?
Digital Tactility Open Source focuses on one issue: the ability of traditional handicrafts to blend into modern society.
They are driven together by the need for new design which allows us to experience our bodies and through them, the world around us.
By expanding the body through textiles, as a body extension, we can experience ourselves in a hypersensitive way as we have never felt before. Our aim is to experiment how a textile can change our perception of intangible elements by dealing with the fabric as a communications medium that influences the way we perceive our world.
With the advent of new technologies, it is now possible to develop textiles with new functions, such as perception and communication. Electronic devices made with conductive threads and sensors aid in developing fabrics that react to an external stimulus.
MISSION
Implementing Digital Tactility:
A hybrid approach to share traditional handicraft combined with new technologies with the new generations.
Embroidery is combined with technological conductive yarns, the shape-memory alloy Nitinol, and Arduino, transforming into an interactive and tactile ornament. Thus, Crafting 3.0 represents a new and performative element.
This is an independent research platform as an attempt to bridge the gap in between traditional handicraft and new technologies. This hybrid network acts as an educational network and an open database from different handmade techniques.
Funded out of a believe in unrestricted access to information and knowledge, it is strongly driven by a community that finds equal inspiration in digital creation and physical making.
Here, everyone can learn valuable knowledge of old traditional crafts and at the same time, infuse them with new technologies. The results of which are often clothing, interactive handicraft and wearable interfaces.
In the future, we can expect our clothing as a body extension, to become ever more connected to our surroundings by evoking new emotions in our consumers and meeting their ever evolving needs.
This research shows a new hybrid market for experiences and explains how nowadays, we can connect new technologies directly to our body and thus expand perception and how we can replace and expand the senses.
Will textiles continue connecting and interacting people with their surroundings? Which needs will interactive textile answer?
Future becomes the present with the development of interactive textiles. In this sense, textiles are reinvented and interlaced with emotion, resulting in users that become active “imagineers” through their own designs.
This open source envisions interactive technology with traditional crafts within the same spheres: the aim is to modernise and revitalise traditional handicrafts in order to motivate their use by new generations so that they will not be lost.
This can be done by merging techniques no longer in use with yet unknown technologies, creating interactive examples to be shared.