Smart and Intelligent Textiles

Intelligent textiles represent the next generation of fibres, fabrics and articles produced from them. They can be describes as textile materials that think for themselves, for example through the incorporation of electronic devices or smart materials. Many intelligent textiles already feature in advanced types of clothing, principally for protection and safety and for added fashion or convenience. Intelligent textiles provide evidence of the potential still to be realised not onlyin the textiles industry but all within cosmetic application to the face. moreover it is anticipated that many of the future developments will be the result of the active collaboration between people from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines: engineering, science, design, process development, and business and marketing.

Definition and Classification of Smart Textiles
Smart textiles are defined as textiles that can sense an react to environmental conditions or stimuli from mechanical, thermal, electric or magnetic sources. According to functional activity smart textiles can be classified in three categories:

Passive Smart Textiles: the first generations of smart textiles which can only sense environmental conditions or stimulus are called Passive Smart Textiles
Active Smart Textiles: The second generation has both actuators and sensors. The actuators act upon the detected signal either directly or from a central control unit. Active smart textiles are shape memory, chameleonic, water resistant, and vapor permeable (hydrophilic / non porous), heat storage, thermo regulated, vapour absorbing, heat evolving fabric and electrically heated suits.

Ultra Smart Textiles: Very smart textiles are the third generation of smart textiles which can sense, react and adopt themselves to environmental conditions or stimuli. A very smart or intelligent textile essentially consists of a unit, which works like the brain, with cognition, reasoning and activating capacities.

New/ Smart materials and fibres used in textiles

Shape Memory Materials
There are two types of Shape Memory Materials. The first classes materials stable at two or more temperature states. In these different temperature states, they have the potential to assume different shapes, when their transformation temperatures have been reached. For clothing applications, the desirable temperatures for the shape memory effect to be triggered will be near body temperature. This technology has been pioneered by the UK Defence Clothing and Textiles Agency. The other types of shape memory materials are electroactive polymers, which change shape in response to electrical stimuli.

Chromic Materials
Other types of intelligent textiles are those which change their colour reversibly according to external environmental conditions, for this reason they are called chameleon fibres. Chromic materials are the general term referring to materials which radiate the colour, erase the colour, or just change it because its induction caused by external stimulus, as 'Chromix' is a suffix that means colour. Therefore we can classify chromic materials depending on the stimulus affecting them (in bold are indicated those used in textiles):

Photochromic: external stimulus is light
Thermochromic: external stimulus is heat
Electrochromic: external stimulus is electricity
Piezochromic: external stimulus is pressure
Solvatechromic: external stimulus is liquid or gas

Probes; SKIN dresses

Philips Design has developed a series of dynamic garments as part of the ongoing SKIN exploration research into the area known as 'emotional sensing'. The garments, which are intended for demonstration purposes only, demonstrate how electronics can be incorporated into fabrics and garments in order to express the emotions and personality of the wearer.

The marvelously intricate wearable prototypes include 'Bubelle', a dress surrounded by a delicate 'bubble' illuminated by patterns that changed dependent on skin contact- and 'Frison', a body suit that reacts to being blown on by igniting a private constellation of tiny LEDs


The Magic of LucyandBart

New visions of applications to the face and body

It is very apparent (to me at least) that innovation to the face and body should partly come through the same process of engagement through visual enquiry that is used within textile innovation. My previous explorations through paper application on the face does just that, and it does not disregard other possibilities, materials or vehicles as part of the urge to seek new roads of investigation.

The video below is an example of a textiles study using Shape Memory Alloys by Lynda Fletcher, currently a student at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. The project was inspired by the Arctic fox and its ability to adapt to temperature changes by increasing the thickness of its coat during the cooler seasons. The textile study was an examination of how a change in temperature can affect the textiles ability to control it's "thickness" and weight.

Lasercut, modular pieces of dense fabric are "snapped" together like a construction set to create fashions that suit the body as much as the interior walls that house it. Eunsuk Hur, a textile designer and a recent graduate from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, created Nomadic Wonderland "to push the boundaries of fashion and interior design by exploring different materials and approaches leading to new textile futures."

Again, my own interest is seeking to enquire whether this approach can be linked to cosmetic application


Heat Sensitive Fabric (Thermochromic cloth)

Memory Rich Garments
This experiment in memory rich garments consists of dresses that explore touch, embodied intimacy, and the technical implementation and construction of visually reactive substrates for manipulating use data on a textile. The conceptual framework consists of the gathering and displaying of intimate touch events but also explores social choreographies that emerge when bodies actively inhabit identical reactive costumes.


Wearable artifacts, by virtue of the fact that they are worn on the body, are a very intimate technology. Social and cultural changes are implicit in any new technology. These dresses explore the idea of wearable technologies that encourage physical touch and contribute to create embodied as opposed to virtual proximity between people.

Below are examples of the integrated shape memory alloy Nitinol in felted textile substrates to create animated structures that move or change shape over time, using resistive heating and control electronics.

SolentStylist Research Collective

Solent stylist Research Collective - exploring the construction of image in the academic and creative domain.




Sharon Lloyd - Academic/Designer

Jennifer Anyan - Academic/Stylist/Artist


Philip Clarke - Academic/Designer/Stylist

Andrew Markham - Academic/Artist

Jennifer Dayton - Make up Artist

Tyen

Tyen, the single-named art director of Dior Cosmétiques. Vietnamese-born, the maquillage master arrived in Paris in 1970, working with the biggest photographers of the day, from Guy Bourdin to Cecil Beaton, before heading to the maison and starting a parallel career as a photographer.

Sounds exciting - but for make up?

Jonathan Saunders, Spring 2009

Silk Jersey Dress by Ali Ro ~ Zig Zag Tank by Monrow

Sound Wave Graph Chair by Matthew Plummer Fernandez

Sound Wave Bracelet by Sakurako Shimizu

Reyes, Spring 2009

James Coviello, Spring 2009

Sound Wave Cufflinks by Danielle Crampsi

Angel Sanchez, Spring 2009

Embroidered Sound Wave Art Exhibit

Sound (a compression waveform created by the vibration of an object) is commonly associated with air, but can also travel through materials -- including fabric -- when properly harnessed. In 2007, students at Cornell University were asked to "sew" body bags into couture garments using sound waves in process called ultrasonic bonding (which requires no stitching, thread, or glue).

"In the process [of ultrasonic bonding], high-frequency sound waves are converted into mechanical vibrations that are channeled through a component called a "horn," creating a rapid buildup of heat. Fabrics used must be at least 60 percent synthetic so seams can be fused together." - Science Daily

The results were so impressive that several of the student creations were chosen for the runway at the annual International Textile and Apparel Association meeting in Los Angeles. (A huge thumbs up in terms of reducing waste, but a huge thumbs down considering that fabric must be at least 60% synthetic for this process to work. *sigh*) Fast forward to the present, and sound waves are once again making their presence known. But instead of remaining an invisible force behind the scenes, actual sound wave patterns appear to be the inspiration for many designers.

More Alex Box

I am beginning to question why it is that fashion stylists, make up artists, artists and designers are focusing so much on new ways of addressing the body through cosmetic application. Perhaps it is that the only way to interrogate and subvert the stereotyping of accepted norms of beauty is to deconstruct it from within, that is, by adopting several visual fashion politics of representation. This has resulted in multiple representation of the cosmetic body: re-mapping and re-inventing it in new ways. More often than not, this re-mapping has taken the form of a narrative told explicitly within the domain of the body as a site of pleasure and sensuality while avoiding gender distinctions.

The body - the most visible and real site of identity - is naturally the single unifying thread for all the artists and designers I have acknowledged so far within my blog. Cosmetics, fashion and clothing are a second source of identity formation ( as well as identity erasure). I think what I am arguing for is a new understanding of cosmetics, one that is not rooted in fashion.

Above all, these make up artists, artists and designers are challenging the stereotypical and normalising images of women in the media, and the unnattainable, narrow and male-defined standards of beauty by creating new beauty ideals.