Weaving Textiles that Think: electronic textiles and biometric garments

We’re thrilled to welcome innovator  Joanna Berzowska  as our Keynote speaker on Friday night.

She is Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University and a member of the Hexagram Research Institute in Montreal. She is the founder and research director of XS Labs, where her team develops innovative methods and applications in electronic textiles and responsive garments.  She lectures internationally about the field of electronic textiles and related social, cultural, aesthetic, and political issues.

“XS Labs is a design research studio with a focus on innovation in the fields of electronic textiles and reactive garments: “second skins” that can enable computationally-mediated interactions with the environment and the individual. We are equally inspired by the technical and cultural history of how textiles have been made for generations (weaving, stitching, embroidery, knitting, beading, quilting) and by new and emerging materials with different electro-mechanical properties. This enables us to construct complex textile-based surfaces, substrates, and structures with “transitive” properties.”