Excitable Sites: outfitting the dynamic environment

Joanna Berzowska: Assistant Professor, Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University
Barbara Layne: Associate Professor, Fibers, Concordia University
Chris Salter: Assistant Professor, Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University
Sha Xin Wei: Professor, Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University, Canada Research Chair


Excitable Sites is a collaborative research project to develop interactive textiles that enable and augment dynamic performance environments: textiles that occupy and inhabit a space (or form it) rather than just decorate it. We will produce four textile-based artifacts for interactive performance, which explore the body as a mobile entity in constant communicative interaction with its environment. The prototypes will explore the following categories: (a) architectural textiles for sensing (woven fiber substrates that allow simple gesture recognition), (b) body-worn textiles for gestural input (sensor-enabled wearable artifacts), (c) architectural textiles for data visualization, and (d) body-worn display textiles. These four pieces will be developed through a series of workshops involving an iterative and collaborative design process.