Abstract:

The rise of ‘maker culture’ over the last decade has enabled the social construction of artefacts and a sharing of practice primarily motivated by fun and self-fulfilment. Do it yourself (DIY) - ‘maker culture’ allows anyone the chance to ‘learn through making’ and is an emerging framework for e-textile and smart textile practice. There is an emergent open source approach and sharing of physical work demonstrated through an innovative e-textile swatchbook (2014). The co-created book contains physical examples of e-textiles, and is kept in physical form by each co-creator as a resource for education or research, in addition to being available through an online resource. The e-textile swatchbook is the first of its kind to physically demonstrate the diversity of smart textile research and practice. A textile-based ‘maker culture’ approach offers a social and inclusive way to look at the integration of computation in our everyday lives and at present appears at odds to the harder edged product-led commercial growth and buzz around wearable technology. The paper will explore these opensource models for sharing knowledge for learning in smart textiles.

References:
[1] Hertenberger, A. et al. (2014, September). 2013 e-textile swatchbook exchange: the importance of sharing physical work. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers: Adjunct Program (pp. 77-81). ACM.

Keywords:

Textiles, smart, e-textiles, opensource, learning.