TEX(alive): A TOOLKIT TO EXPLORE TEMPORAL EXPRESSIONS IN SHAPE-CHANGING TEXTILE INTERFACES

Abstract

Shape-changing textile interfaces have the potential to create unique functions, expressions, and interactions in everyday artifacts. However, the technical expertise required to fabricate and interact with these interfaces limits designers from rapidly iterating through diverse textile expressions. This pictorial presents TEX(alive), a low-cost and open-source physical-digital toolkit to facilitate the creation of temporal expressions in textile interfaces. TEX(alive) comprises pneumatic actuators that can be interactively configured across a 3d printed grid structure on the textile. Creative sessions with seven designers show that TEX(alive) supports the exploration of temporality in textile interfaces, opening up a design space for unforeseen future application scenarios and alive-like expressions in material-driven design. Finally, we suggest coupling TEX(alive) with a computational simulation tool to allow designers to predict spatial shape change when the textile interface increases in size or complexity.