Interactive Soft Circuits and eTextiles Workshop with Arduino Lilypad in Berkeley, California

Dates: Saturday June 26 and Sunday June 27, 2010 from 10am to 5pm

Description

In this hands-on weekend workshop we will cut, sew, weave, knit, felt and layer specialized electrotextiles, conductive threads and conventional electronics to create interactive soft circuits for wearables, musical instruments, jewelry and other responsive systems. We will make e-textile pressure, stretch and position sensors [1] connect them to the Lilypad wearable computing platform and use led's and small speakers for output. We will draw inspiration from my large collection of materials, devices [2] and projects [3] reviewing best practices in commercial, academic and DIY eTextile work.

This is a good opportunity to work with hard-to-find experimental materials such as gold plated-fabrics, a new thread spun in Korea for building inductors and radio frequency circuits, and piezoresistive felt and spandex.

We will learn how to use ingenuity in the software and electronics to simplify the textile work and the spectrum between this approach and the other extreme: very simple electronics with complex or ingenious textile design.

Audience

• Crafters and DIYers curious to expand their creative vocabularly
• Artists exploring new possibilities of malleable media in an integrated, hands-on and practical way
• Musicians augmenting traditional instruments with new sensors and actuators
• Teachers adding interaction to fiber arts curriculum

Prerequisites

None. Achievable challenges will be provided for all levels of experience in textile arts, electronics and programming.

Enrolment

Limited to 12

Location

UC Berkeley Faculty Club: Latimer Room

Teacher

Adrian Freed: My teaching is grounded in inclusion, demystification [4], and embracing that teaching is judged by the quality of projects students are inspired to make [5].

Assistants this weekend will include Natalie Freed [6] and Grace Kim [7]