A number of eTextile and wearable technology events coming up, events that you don’t want to miss.

Already tomorrow Thursday March 10th, Lynne Bruning is giving a lecturer titled ‘Introduction to eTextiles‘ at the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts, located at the Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

Crossing the Atlantic, Riccardo Marchesi from Plug-and-Wear is running a 3 day on Wearable Technology Workshop from April 7-9 in Florence, Italy.

Both events are leaded by experts in the wearable technology field which ensures that participants get the greets and latest infos, tip and trick on eTextiles and wearable technology.

Click on the event links above for more details and registration.

I am still in a catch-up mode with my blogging but whenever you organize events around eTextiles and wearable technology or whenever you hear about such event – please drop me a note via the contact form or in the comments or tweet me (hit the Twitter link on the right side).

Sarah and Lara Grant, a sisterly team with interests in physical computing, electronic textiles, controller design and signal processing, both students at NYU ITP, inviting to join their ‘Textiles and Electronics Workshop‘ this Friday Sept 17th at The Tank, 354 W 45th St, New York, NY 10036.

The workshop will start with a demonstration how to create textile sensors and how to integrate these sensors with simple signal processing circuits for controlling sound output.

Workshop participants will then have the opportunity to get their hands on the handmade conductive felt, crocheted stretch sensors, conductive batting and machine-sewn resistors made by Sarah and Lara.

After the inspirational introduction, the workshop will walk participants through building a simple sound producing circuit and how to connect it to a soft sensor.

Participants are encouraged to bring in their own simple circuits in lieu of constructing one with the group.

The workshop fee is $25.- which includes materials in order to build a VCO circuit and a soft variable resistor. You can pay the fee at the door or register online following this link.

Update: this link brings you directly to the ticket reservation page for this Workshop – have fun and please don’t forget to send us some photos from this event.

Adrian Freed, Research Director at CNMAT (Center for New Music and Audio Technology) gave us a hint about open places for the second Interactive e-textile Workshop with Arduino Lilypad which has been added due to the huge demand the first workshop starting on July 25 generated and has been ‘sold out’ within short time.

The second Interactive e-textile Workshop with Arduino Lilypad starting on Aug. 15 has still some places available but if you are interested to join you better hurry up and reserve your seat.

CNMAT promotes, produces and presents the creative interaction between music and technology. A satellite of the UC Berkeley Department of Music, CNMAT is an interdisciplinary research center, drawing participants from many university departments including physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, psychology, computer science, cognitive science and music.

During the workshop participants will learn how to connect fabric pressure, stretch, bend, and displacement sensors to the LilyPad e-sewing computing platform and sew connections to arrays of leds and sound makers.

No sewing or programming experience is required to join this workshop which takes place at CNMAT, 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA from August 15-16, 10 AM-5 PM

The workshop fee is $300.- which includes materials fee with LilyPad system you can keep after the class.

For more information and to sign up please follow this link.

To promote the early involvement of students into the multifunctional field of wearable electronic the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of Computing is hosting this summer an intelligent clothing workshop for children with an emphasis on assistive wearable technology.

Last year, the summer camp workshop focused on the sports theme to create ‘intelligent sportswear’ of their choice. Students used the Lilypad, the Teeboard and a graphical programming interface called BrickLayer, a text-enhanced graphical programming environment designed by Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Department of Computing for junior high students with no programming experience.

The theme of this year’s workshop: ‘how can clothes help people in special needs‘. Students will learn how to design and construct their own intelligent garments to cater for the special needs for disabled peoples.

Workshop participants will use a microcontroller developed specifically for wearable computing by Hong Kong PolyU. It is based on the Arduino platform but with some modifications optimized for the needs for this workshop.

Improved versions of the TeeBoard and the innovative Bricklayer programming platform will be at the disposal of the students as well during the 5 days the workshop will last.

Available at three different time frames between July 20 and August 10. Course language is Cantonese and the application deadline is June 19. For more details visit the project site.

Nadya Peek, creator of the Caché dress and researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge is heading a series of workshops about wearable technology at Mediamatic.

Participants will be working on their own garments, to make it beep when you talk, or light up when somebody touches you.

Over four days workshop participants will be able to explore different areas around interactive clothing: ‘Sound Clothing’, Light and Sight Clothing’ and ‘Touch Sensitive Clothing’.

Overview of the different workshops:

Sound Clothing – ‘Make your shirt beep when people touch you, or yell back at you when you scream!’ on June 13 and June 15

Light and Sight Clothing – ‘Make your pants light up in the dark or your sleeves blink when you wave your arms.’ on June 16

Touch Sensitive Clothing – ‘Make self heating touchscreen-friendly gloves or a hat that vibrates when someone is coming up behind you.’ on June 17

Unfortunately I haven’t been aware of this workshops earlier which are fully booked now, but Nadya is giving a lecture on June 17 at 8:00pm where she will share information on wearables as well as her thoughts on how this technology might develop in the future.

Self proclaimed ‘Fashion Nerd’ Diana Eng will bring a bit of her Project Runway experience to NYC Resistor on May 10th which is hosting the workshop ‘Fashion Hacking‘.

Diana recently launched her book  Fashion Geek which is full of fashion hacking tips and instructions. I guess some of the books’ material will be used by her during this workshop.

Or maybe you could make the ‘Heartbeat Hoodie‘, my personal favorite from Diana’s portfolio, a hoodie that takes photos depending on the wearers heart beat – fabulous concept.

All e-textile materials and tools will be available to get workshop participants started in no time, transforming their clothing into Haute Tech items. To guaranty cool looking success, fashion designers as well as hardware hackers will be there to give a helping hand.

The workshop consists of two parts starting at 1 pm and ends at 5 pm. Fee for each sessions $20.- and you can visit either of them or (better) both to have enough time for a serious hack of your fashion.

Twitter friend Lynne Bruning send out a tweet pointing to an opportunity for e-textiles artists, designer, enthusiasts to showcase their creations on the ‘Smart Textiles Salon‘ which takes place on Sept. 25, 2009 in Ghent, Belgium.

The ‘Smart Textiles Salon’ is running in parallel to the ‘80th Anniversary of the Department of Textiles at Ghent University‘ (www.textileconferences.be) and the ‘6th International Conference on Textile and Polymer Biotechnology‘ (www.intb.org) held between Sept. 23 and Sept. 25 in Ghent as well.

The ‘Smart Textiles Salon’ will showcase the latest demonstrator and prototype developments in the field of smart textiles and intelligent wearable systems. The designer and developer of the models will explained and demonstrate their creations.

There will be a ‘Tool Time’ which gives the opportunity for visitors to create their own smart textile in two workshops: ‘Elucidating textiles’ (elucidating=making clear, clarifying) and ‘Temperature changing textiles’.

The call for demonstrators and prototypes for the ‘Smart Textiles Salon’ is open until May 15. If you have a great design on hand, take this opportunity and show your work to a wide audience.

Most e-Textile projects as well as commercially available wearable electronic products use sewing as method to add electronic functions into fabrics.

Lynne Bruning, a pioneer in ‘electronic weaving’ shows another option how to electrify our future clothing by using weaving technologies to integrate (vs adding) electrically conductive infrastructure and electrical components during textile fabrication.

Weaving with electronic components opens exiting possibilities as weaving is a technology for large and at the end cost effective production.

Lynne is running ‘Weaving Conductive Cloth‘ on May 15th, a 2-hour workshop at Shuttles Spindles and Skeins in Boulder, CO, to show how the clasped weft technique can be used to embed technology into fabrics.

Workshop examples will utilize stainless steel thread, wire, LEDs, batteries, LilyPads and other electrical components on the store’s loom.

For more details on this workshop click over to Lynne’s blog.

Rotterdam based V2_ ‘Institute for the Unstable Media’, will host coming May highly interesting events around Wearable Electronic.

On May 16-17 Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson (aka KOBAKANT) will give a two-day workshop on DIY wearable technology.  The workshop will put the emphasis on DIY techniques and performing arts and is aiming to provide participants with hands-on experience on DIY wearable technologies.

Participation fee for the workshop is €50,- and the application deadline is May 3.

The outcome of the workshop will be presented during the Test_Lab: Fashionable Technology event which will be held on May 20 in Rotterdam as well.

Wearable technology experts Sabine Seymour (Fashionable Technology), Mark Coeckelbergh, Aram Bartholl, Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz (CuteCircuit), Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson (KOBAKANT) will discuss during the ‘Test_Lab: Fashionable Technology’ event the sociological aspects and impacts wearable technologies will have. The event program specifically mentions a highly interesting question: ‘what happens when these garments fall prey to fashion hackers?!‘

Maybe we need a firewall and virus scanner to protect our shirts and bags in future?

The admission is free and the discussion starts at 8pm (CET) on May 20th. If you can not make it personally to Rotterdam there is the option of following this discussion live at http://live.v2.nl

More details about these two events at http://www.v2.nl

The event ‘diy* —  Art and Technology Festival‘ read: ‘do it together, the culture of collaborative art-making’ will host a workshop on Electronic Textiles to develop wearable musical interfaces.

Hannah Perner­ Wilson and Mika Satomi will introduce workshop participants into the magic of e-textiles and the DIY concept of wearable technology.

Starting point for the workshop is to take apart cheap electronic musical toys and transform them with the help of e-textile technologies into soft, wearable objects.

To kick-start the creativity of workshop participants, easy to follow circuit patterns will be provided with an introduction on how to transfer those e-textile circuits onto T-Shirts or any other clothing the participants bring with them.

Having Hannah Perner ­Wilson and Mika Satomi as instructors and facilitators on board to guide the workshop participants through the journey of e-textile creations is almost a guaranty the workshop will sparkle with creativity and productivity.

The ‘Sew your own wearable musical interface’ workshop is part of the diy* festival organized by the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society which takes place between Dec 5-7, 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland.

The Electronic Textile workshop will be held on Dec 6th so if you live in our around Zurich or you can manage to go there on Dec. 6 you will be in for an interesting afternoon exploring e-textiles in the context of making wearable musical interfaces.

We invite workshop participants to show their creation on our blog. Just drop me a line under ‘eric at talk2myshirt dot com’ and we will contact you.

[via: Media Arts Eduction]