How smart are your clothes?

Concordia researcher designs interactive electronic fabrics

2013-04-17

(Press-News.org) This press release is available in French.

Montreal, April 16, 2013 – From corsets to caftans, we have seen dramatic changes in popular style over the past 100 years. New research from Concordia University now brings the future of fashion into focus by taking a closer look at the next quantum leap in textile design: computerized fabrics that change their colour and their shape in response to movement.

Joanna Berzowska, professor and chair of the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia, has developed interactive electronic fabrics that harness power directly from the human body, store that energy, and then use it to change the garments' visual properties.

"Our goal is to create garments that can transform in complex and surprising ways — far beyond reversible jackets, or shirts that change colour in response to heat. That's why the project is called Karma Chameleon," says Berzowska.

The major innovation of this research project is the ability to embed these electronic or computer functions within the fibre itself: rather than being attached to the textile, the electronic components are woven into these new composite fibres. The fibres consist of multiple layers of polymers, which, when stretched and drawn out to a small diameter, begin to interact with each other. The fabric, produced in collaboration with the École Polytechnique's Maksim Skorobogatiy, represent a significant advance in the development of "smart textiles."

Although it's not yet possible to manufacture clothing with the new composite fibres, Berzowska worked with fashion designers to create conceptual prototypes that can help us visualize how such clothing might look and behave. "We won't see such garments in stores for another 20 or 30 years, but the practical and creative possibilities are exciting," says Berzowska. Imagine a dress that changes shape and colour on its own, or a shirt that can capture the energy from human movement and use it to charge an iPhone.

There would also be a performative aspect to wearing such garments, whose dramatic transformations may or may not be controlled by the wearer. This research raises interesting questions about human behaviour relative to fashion and computers. What would it mean to wear a piece of clothing with "a mind of its own," that cannot be consciously controlled? How much intimate contact with computers do we really want?

Berzowska will explore these questions and present her findings at the Smart Fabrics 2013 conference this week in San Francisco. She has also written an article detailing her research for The Fashion Studies Handbook, forthcoming from Berg Publishers. An exhibit, to be held at the PHI Centre in the next year, will give the public an opportunity to learn about her research, and to enter the imaginative space produced by her futuristic fabrics and clothing.

INFORMATION:

Partners in research:

The Karma Chameleon project was funded by a Research Creation grant from the federal government's Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada/Canada Council for the Arts (NSERC/CCA) New Media Initiative. These programs (which are no longer offered) were intended to support scientific and academic research in artistic disciplines, and only a few grants were awarded each year. The partnership has been a fruitful one: Karma Chameleon's composite fibres are just one of the achievements of their four years of work together.

About the researchers: Joanna Berzowska is the founder and research director of XS Labs, where she and her team develop innovative methods for producing electronic textiles and garments that can interact with and respond to their wearers. She is also a member of the Hexagram-Concordia Centre for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Techologies. Maksim Skorobogatiy is a professor in the Department of Engineering Physics at École Polytechnique de Montréal.

Related links:

Joanna Berzowska on Research @ Concordia http://www.concordia.ca/explore/#!/profile/102/

Concordia University's Department of Design and Computation Arts http://design.concordia.ca/

Hexagram-Concordia Centre for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies http://hexagram.concordia.ca/

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada/Canada Council for the Arts (NSERC/CCA) New Media Initiative http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/RPP-PP/NMI-INM_eng.asp

PHI Centre http://phi-centre.com/en/index.sn

Media contact:

Cléa DesjardinsSenior Advisor, External Communications Concordia University
Tel: 514-848-2424, ext. 5068
Cell: 514-909-2999
e-mail: clea.desjardins@concordia.ca
Web: concordia.ca/media-relations
Twitter: twitter.com/CleaDesjardins

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

This month in ecology: Oysters, big rivers, biofuels

2013-04-17

Ecological dimensions of biofuels: state of the science Are biofuels a renewable, environmentally friendly energy source? The Ecological Society of America reviews bioethanol and biodiesel in conventional production as well as feedstocks still in development. Biofuels in commercial scale production are made from the sugars and oils of food crops, and share the ecological impacts of high intensity agriculture. Corn, the primary biofuel source in the United States, demands a lot of fuel to produce fuel. It needs nitrogen fertilizer, fixed using energy-intensive industrial ...

Cell-permeable peptide shows promise for controlling cardiovascular disease

2013-04-17

Philadelphia, PA, April 16, 2013 – Atherosclerosis – sometimes called "hardening of the arteries" – is a leading cause of death and morbidity in Western countries. A cell-permeable peptide containing the NF-ĸB nuclear localization sequence (NLS) shows promise as a potential agent in controlling the development of atherosclerotic disease. This study is published in the May 2013 issue of The American Journal of Pathology. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the arterial and vascular wall. The objective of many therapeutic compounds is to modulate atherogenesis ...

Osteoporosis costs EU countries €37 billion every year

2013-04-17

A new report prepared in collaboration with the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations, is the first to describe in detail the epidemiology, burden, and treatment of osteoporosis in all 27 member states of the European Union (EU27). Published today in Rome in conjunction with the opening of Europe's largest osteoporosis congress, the report 'Osteoporosis in the European Union: Medical Management, Epidemiology and Economic Burden' shows that as Europe's population ages, fractures due to osteoporosis ...

New scorecard shows inequalities in osteoporosis care in the Europe Union

2013-04-17

Today a panel of international experts working in cooperation with the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) have published SCOPE – or Scorecard for Osteoporosis in Europe. Focusing on key aspects of service provision and uptake, the Scorecard compares how the 27 different countries within the European Union (EU) care for people with osteoporosis to reduce their risk of bone fractures. Fractures, which mostly affect older adults, can result in pain, long-term disability and even premature death. The Scorecard presents, measures and compares data in a way that ...

ALMA pinpoints early galaxies at record speed

2013-04-17

The most fertile bursts of star birth in the early Universe took place in distant galaxies containing lots of cosmic dust. These galaxies are of key importance to our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution over the history of the Universe, but the dust obscures them and makes them difficult to identify with visible-light telescopes. To pick them out, astronomers must use telescopes that observe light at longer wavelengths, around one millimetre, such as ALMA. "Astronomers have waited for data like this for over a decade. ALMA is so powerful that it has revolutionised ...

Recipe for large numbers of stem cells requires only one ingredient, says NIH/Pitt team

2013-04-17

Stem cells and tissue-specific cells can be grown in abundance from mature mammalian cells simply by blocking a certain membrane protein, according to scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their experiments, reported today in Scientific Reports, also show that the process doesn't require other kinds of cells or agents to artificially support cell growth and doesn't activate cancer genes. Scientists hope that lab-grown stem cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which have the ability to produce ...

University of Southern California scientists reveal natural process that blocks viruses

2013-04-17

The human body has the ability to ward off viruses by activating a naturally occurring protein at the cellular level, setting off a chain reaction that disrupts the levels of cholesterol required in cell membranes to enable viruses to enter cells. The findings, discovered by researchers in molecular microbiology and immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, hold promise for the development of therapies to fight a variety of viral infections. "Previous studies have shown that our bodies are already equipped to block viruses such as Ebola, influenza, West Nile, ...

CU-Boulder study looks at microbial differences between parents, kids and dogs

2013-04-17

As much as dog owners love their children, they tend to share more of themselves, at least in terms of bacteria, with their canine cohorts rather than their kids. That is just one finding of a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder that looked at the types and transfer modes of microbes from the guts, tongues, foreheads and palms (or paws) of members of 60 American families, including canines. Identifying how such bacterial communities can be affected by environmental exposure may help scientists better understand how they can be manipulated to prevent or ...

Virus-like particles provide vital clues about brain tumors

2013-04-17

"Current wisdom says that cells are closed entities that communicate through the secretion of soluble signalling molecules. Recent findings indicate that cells can exchange more complex information – whole packages of genetic material and signalling proteins. This is an entirely new conception of how cells communicate", says Dr Mattias Belting, Professor of Oncology at Lund University and senior consultant in oncology at Skåne University Hospital, Lund, Sweden. Exosomes are small vesicles of only 30 nm. They are produced inside cells and act as "transport vehicles" of ...

New keyboard for touchscreens

2013-04-17

Typing on today's mobile phones and tablets is needlessly slow. One limitation is that the QWERTY layout is ill-suited for tablets and other touch-screen devices when typing with the thumbs. Two-thumb typing is ergonomically very different from typing on a physical keyboard. It has been established that normal users using a QWERTY on a touch-screen device are limited to typing at a rate of around 20 words per minute, which is slow compared to the rates achieved on physical keyboards. The researchers set out to create an alternative to QWERTY that offers substantial performance ...

How smart are your clothes?

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: