Archive for the 'Book reviews' Category

Usually we do book reviews but today we are ahead of time and bring a book preview. Reading the description of Sabine Seymour’s upcoming book - ‘Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science and Technology’ I went straight ahead for a pre-order.

Sabine Seymour offers in her book an up-to-date look on the interplay between electronic textiles, technology, fashion, design and science.

This book offers a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in fabrics or articles of clothing.

Practical applications will be explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date.

About the Author
Sabine Seymour received a Master of Social and Economic Sciences from the University of Economics in Vienna and Columbia University MBA program in New York and an MPS in Interactive Telecommunications from NYUS Tisch School of the Arts.

She introduced the course “Fashionable Technology” and is a long standing faculty member at Parsons The New School For Design in New York and joined the University for Art and Industrial Design in Linz.

This book is a must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology like talk2myShirt reader, Scientists, lecturer, students, curators, museums and industry in the field of design, interaction design, fashion, media art and mobile communications.

You can pre-oder ‘Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science and Technology’ and be one of the first to read it when it goes on sale end of May or you wait for our book review here on talk2myShirt.

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Integrating intelligent textiles into clothing is an exciting field as you can see by checking out our blog.

Over the holiday season I had some spare time to read a book titled: ‘Intelligent textiles and clothing’ edited by Dr Heikki Mattila, Professor of Textile and Clothing Technology at Tampere University of Technology, Finland.

This is one of the most comprehensive and voluminous (over 500 pages) work about my preferred topic.

This book is an absolute must read for everyone interested into Smart Textiles. It offers a wide diversity of topics contributed from experts in the fields of electronics, textile, chemistry, physics and design.

The book is organized in four main sections. Section one is dedicated to phase change materials (PCM). The topics are: Introduction to phase change materials, Intelligent textiles with PCMs and the use of phase change materials in outdoor clothing.

A good example of the possibility of PCM in clothing is the SKORPOIN Dress of Di Mainstone.

Section two explores the emerging field of shape memory materials (SMM) in some details with topics like: Introduction to shape memory materials, Development of shape memory alloy fabrics for composite structures, study of shape memory polymer films for breathable textiles and Engineering textile and clothing aesthetics using shape changing materials.

Section three deals with chromic materials (colour change) and conductive material: Introduction to chromic materials, Solar textiles: production and distribution of electricity coming from solar radiation, Introduction to conductive materials, Electric conductivity, Metal conductors, Ionic conductors, Application technologies for conducting fibre materials, Future trends in conductive materials and Multipurpose textile based sensors.

The final part of the book looks at current and potential applications and includes chapters of: WearCare – Usability of intelligent materials in work wear, Intelligent textiles for medical and monitoring applications, context aware textiles for wearable health assistants, Intelligent garments in prehospital emergency care, Intelligent textiles for children, Wearable biofeedback systems and applications for woven electrical fabrics

‘Intelligent textiles and clothing’ draws on knowledge from a number of disciplines, including electronics, textiles, telecommunications, biotechnology and medicine. The chapters represent an outstanding panel of international experts bringing a wealth of information together. This is an essential guide for all electrical, textile and biomedical engineers as well as academics and fashion designers.

This book is highly recommended by talk2myShirt.

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Summer time is a great reading time. Lying on the beach, the pool or siting in the park (always with the Juice Bag next to me) is the best way to relax and reflect.

Although Techno Textiles 2: Revolutionary Fabrics for Fashion and Designis not a new book, I like to re-read it and get inspired by the wealth of information that Sarah E. Braddock Clarke and Marie O’Mahony compiled in this book.

Techno Textiles 2 explores the exciting area of art, design and technology that defines our 21st-century way of life with textiles. We are constantly surrounded from textiles, we are wrapped in them, we sleep on them we walk on them and many (inside) walls are covered and dressed up with textiles. This book introduces new textiles for fabrics that shrink or expand to fit; textiles developed from carbon, steel, glass and ceramics; materials that protect the wearer from every environmental extreme, anywhere on earth or in space.

The book is divided into three sections:
Innovations which explores how the newest textiles are dreamt up and made
Applications – from fashion and design, to architecture and art
Reference which includes a glossary, biographies, directories of addresses and public collections, and an extensive bibliography

Although Wearable Electronic is not the main topic in this book, reading it inspires by showing with many photos the possibilities that can open up in combining cutting edge textile technologies with electronic elements.

I can only recommend reading Techno Textiles 2: Revolutionary Fabrics for Fashion and Designfor both professionals and anyone prepared to be stimulated and informed about the new environment in which we live.

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Building up on our post about the Music Textile and to provide information to trigger discussions in the technical sections of our new Forum, we introduce another jewel of our Wearable Electronic book collection: Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance.

This book has a very exceptional value for us. It goes beyond the ‘conventional’ electronic textiles we usually write about. Extreme Textiles describes textiles that are stronger, faster, lighter, safer, smarter - textiles of tomorrow.

Featuring examples of fully realized products from all classes of technical textiles - architectural, product design, apparel, medicine, transportation, aerospace, industry, and the environment, Extreme Textiles highlights successful collaborations between design, industry, and science.

Large, full-color illustrations and essays by some of today’s most influential designers and scientists trace the extraordinary developments made in textiles over the last twenty years and suggest what is to come.

Extreme Textiles has been published in 2005 and was accompanied by an exhibition of the same name at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

For us, the most interesting chapter of this book is: ‘Smarter, Textiles from Novel Means of Innovation‘ written by Patricia Wilson.

Patricia founded her own company, Fabricworks to offer her experience and expertise to companies interested into the further development of Wearable Electronic products.

Her chapter is 30 pages fully packet with the most comprehensive overview of Wearable Electronic information from the early days of New Nomads going on to works of IF, Infineon - now changed to Interactive-Wear, Softswitch - now transformed to Fibretronic , the first Burton Jacket and Nike ACG Commvest.

A tremendous wealth of information that would be too much to squeeze here in our blog. Our advice: run out (just click on the link) and buy Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, it’s an extreme interesting book for everyone even remotely interested into Textiles and a must for the serious Wearable Electronic enthusiast.

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If ‘The New Nomads‘ was our first book review and our first book in our Wearable Electronic books library that has cult status, ‘Fashioning the Future - Tomorrows Wardrobe‘ is the latest and most comprehensive ‘up-to-date’ book about Wearable Electronic and Textile technology innovation.

The author of ‘Fashioning The Future’, Suzanne Lee, is a Senior Research Fellow in Fashion at Central Saint Martins. The book was published by Thames & Hudson in 2005.

Fashioning the Future gives an excellent overview of the state of the art in fashion and textile innovation. Works from the big names of today’s fashion avant-garde such as Walter Van Beirendonck, Hussein Chalayan (his recent work has been covered in our Blog), and a peek into the research labs around the world.

The book is very well designed in a high glossy, black page layout and the different chapters that cover the many aspects of the Wearable Electronic and Fashion world are very well organized. This makes browsing forth and back easy like on Websites.

One of the statements from Suzanne Lee as an example of the ’spirit’ and content for this book:

‘Fashion needs to adapt and evolve, and the technological work is going on in research laboratories. The integration of electronics into cloth for example, promises eveningwear that changes colour based on mood, dresses that subtly change shape, and coats that display downloadable designs. Until now, electric fashion existed only in science fiction, but fiction is becoming fact. Far from the runway, researchers at the intersection of materials science, electrical engineering, chemistry and biotechnology are designing the foundations for the haute-tech couture of tomorrow.’

What makes this books stand out from the other books written about the same subject are stories and information on Wearable Electronic that go back to the very early times of Wearable Electronics, describes the different stages Wearable Electronic went through and rounds up with the latest developments up to and including early 2005.

The glossary of the book contains a huge list of resources and links to many, if not all, relevant institutions, companies and individuals in the Wearable Electronic world.

All this together makes if a definite Must Read book for every Wearable Electronic and Fashion enthusiast.

Fashioning the Future is available for example on the UK Amazon online store (unfortunately not on Amazon US) or in many other online and offline book stores.

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We start today another new section in talk2myShirt, a category for book reviews on the topic of Wearable Electronics, our favorite topic.

Our small team ‘discovered’ that over the last 4+ years we have spend on searching, researching and working on Wearable Electronics, we have together collected a small but very interesting library on Wearable Electronics, Techno Textiles, Performance Textiles, and some more.

The begin of our review makes one of our ‘oldest’ books about Wearable Electronics:

New Nomads is one, if not THE, first book ever published about Wearable Electronics.
This book was launched in 2001 by Philips Design and the ideas presented where something that seemed far off into the future. It is also a eye opener, clothing is not seen as something to keep protected but also to add functionality of ‘none typical’ nature for textiles - Electronics. How revolutionary!

The author Stefano Marzano and his team in Philips Design worked out a concept of adding to an ‘everyday’ item like clothing new functionality based on the emerging miniaturization of portable electronic products like audio player, mobile phones and many more.

What makes this endeavor so outstanding is that never before has someone started to adapt a very, very personal item like our clothing to the latest digital lifestyle trends - the shrinking of electronic products.

But there are limits to miniaturization. It can help make products smaller and easier to use, but the ultimate dream is not to have easier tools: it is not to have to bother with tools at all!

The step forward then is the integration of functions into objects that we do not feel clutter us, that are part of our life. The idea of integrating technology into clothing is therefore a logical step.

I have read New Nomads at the begin of 2002. It was my first contact point to Wearable Electronics. New Nomads changed the way I see the future of clothing, the complete and full integration of ‘everyday’ functions in an ‘everyday’ object, being my clothes, bags, shoes - just in everything I will (most certainly) not leave without my house.

As I mentioned above, my first impression of the ideas in this book sounded like very ‘far off into the future’ and after six years, spending a lot of time on Wearable Electronics, I must admit that we are still quite behind the ideas and concepts Philips Design has worked out and presented in this groundbreaking book six years ago.

My verdict: a classic in the Wearable Electronic book section and a must read to get elevated and fully tuned into Wearable Electronics.

You can order New Nomads by Amazon.com

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