‘e-Static Shadows‘ is a research project by designer Dr. Zane Berzina and architect Jackson Tan which creatively explores the speculative and poetic potential of static electricity found in our everyday environments, surrounding our everyday interactions.

The aim of the project is to investigate how electrostatic energy could either be effectively utilized or play a part in the development of active, responsive and interactive textile systems which would be capable of detecting, translating and displaying this energy into dynamic audio-visual patterns.

Most noticeable for us e-textile enthusiasts is the making of this beautifully aesthetically swaying curtain made of a woven e-textile matrix with incorporated woven sensors for static detection and LEDs which light up or dim down based on the electro static field around the curtains sections.

A excellent source of inspiration and knowledge sharing about e-textile weaving, the challenges, the possibilities, the e_Static Shadows Process page has an impressive ‘the making off’, split in 3 sections, with tons of photos documenting how the team around these two e-textile wizards in cooperation with TITV Greiz, The Institute for Special textiles and Flexible Materials, made this extraordinary e-textile structure possible.

This beautiful installation was exhibited at the Dana Centre, Science Museum London at the begin of March 2009.

All photos in this article are taken from the e_Static Shadows project site.

Another highly interesting company I have visited during the TechTextile is ITL (Intelligent Textiles Limited) a UK based research and development company founded in 2002 specialized in the weaving of complex electrical circuits in conductive fabrics.

Starting in the traditional application areas of consumer apparel (eg. wearable music player and phone controllers), healthcare (eg. biomonitoring) and flexible heating (eg. heated gloves), the company has recently become a specialist in the defence and first-responder arenas with the development of fabric personal-area-networks that reduce the burden of conventional power cables and data connections in digital soldier systems.

ITL has three basic lines of solutions: ‘detect’, a e-textile sensors for input functions like remote controls or keyboards, ‘heat’ to integrate low voltage heating elements into woven fabric and ‘connect’, a damage tolerant, e-textile based connection network between other e-textile components in a wearable electronic system.

ITL’s e-Textile components are made by integrating a grid of electrically conductive yarn during the weaving process, allowing a large scale, cost efficient yet highly durable e-textile fabric production.

The weaving process offers the high potential of lower production costs leading to a potentially lower component cost for e-textile systems.

e-Textile solutions like ITL is offering make life easier for the professionals and will help to pave the way for more durable solutions to become available for the consumer market.

WeaveZine published an highly interesting article about Lynne Bruning‘s e-textile weaving technique.

The article explains the advantage the weaving process provides over sewing with electrically conductive yarn.

A detailed description, illustrated with sketches and many photos, explains the use of the clasped-weft technique, a weaving technique Lynne found out to provide perfect conditions for integrating conductive yarn and other electrical e-textile components during the weaving process.

The result of this unique technique is the complete and seamless integration of electrical components like LEDs, accelerometers, sonar units or LilyPad components into woven cloth.

Every single step is well documented in text and photos which makes it easy to follow step-by-step. An excellent source of inspiration and a highly recommended ‘Must-read’ article at WeaveZine.

I want to close this blog post with a line from Lynne I picked up in her article: ‘If you can dream it, you can find the hardware to build it!‘