Handbook

Smart Textiles introduces a range of new technologies and processes developed by industry specialists, including artists and designers, combining emerging science and materials with traditional techniques for applications in the worlds of fashion, architecture, medical, engineering, science, and wearables.

The course covers recent developments in textile fabrics, materials, structures, manufacture, technologies and processes, and acknowledges the textile traditions that these developments reference. Areas examined will include bio-fabrication, e-textiles, adaptive, soft-robotics, pneumatic, molecular/nano technology, and other emerging systems.

The course encourages experimentation and hybrid approaches at the intersection of biological, digital, mechanical and analogue systems to design smart textiles that consider design futures of material scarcity and ethical responsibility. With the emergence of bio/fab/maker labs, new modes of production are emerging that challenge and provide alternatives to current unsustainable mainstream global textiles production. This course is based on an ‘open-source’, ‘maker’ mentality, leveraging the Art and Design Making Centre facilities to develop hybrid approaches utilising textile technologies such as knitting machines, digital embroidery, weaving looms, felting machines, 3D print, laser cutting and etching, digital print etc.

The course enables you to investigate innovative textile concepts that explore the integration of the handmade with these emerging, new and smart technologies. Projects will involve research into new technologies and development of a self-directed project that aligns with individual interests to design a collection of your own unique smart textile samples. In this course, risk taking, exploration, critical speculation, and failures are celebrated along the pathway to discovery.