Talk by Dr. Irmandy Wicaksono
Title: Textile Macroelectronics: Architecting Sensate and Computational Fabrics Across Scales
Time and Location:
Monday, December 9th, 2024, 5:00pm – 6:00pm
University of Tokyo, Hongo Campus, Eng. Bldg. 2, 11F, Room 112C1, Kawahara Lab
Abstract:
Textiles are omnipresent and some of the oldest forms of arts and culture in human civilization. They are our protective skin, the interface between our body and the environment, and artistic media for self-expression. As electronics become more soft, compliant, miniaturized, and low-cost, textiles provide an ideal technology integration substrate to further drive the ubiquitous computing and personalized telemedicine era. My research combines recent advances in functional materials, microelectronics, hardware systems, digital fabrication, and immersive technologies to develop sensate and computational fabrics across scales.
In this talk, I will present several methods, artifacts, and implementations of sensate textiles leveraging functional fibers and digital machine knitting. By controlling yarn inputs and textile patterns, I can design textiles forms and aesthetics while also tuning their electrical and mechanical properties. With this approach, I have developed custom proxemic and tactile textile interfaces based on capacitive and piezoresistive sensing for musical expression, human-computer interaction, activity recognition, and multi-sensory experience in various forms such as cloth, footwear, mats, carpets, and large-scale architectural facade. I will also present my efforts in exploring flexible-stretchable and soft printed circuit technologies and incorporating multi-modal sensing with distributed computation to address scalability issues inherent in large and dense sensate textiles. These efforts have led to novel power, interconnection, and networking paradigms that allow us to transition from application-specific sensate textiles to generic computational fabrics that can be tailored and programmed for various applications. Finally, I hope to show an ecosystem of Soft Technologies that will lead us toward Electronic Textile Gaia, a vision where intelligence is seamlessly interconnected and integrated into the fabric of everyday life, from in-body and on-body to room-scale and architectural textiles, and for applications ranging from physiological and physical activity sensing to interactive media and built environments.
Presenter Bio:
Irmandy Wicaksono is a hybrid electrical-textile engineer and designer, currently a Researcher at the MIT Media Lab and an incoming Assistant Professor (PYP) in the Division of Industrial Design, National University of Singapore. He earned his B.Eng. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Southampton, M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zurich, and S.M. and Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. He weaves electronic devices into soft materials and the fabric of everyday life for various applications, including biomedical sensing, human-computer interaction, and interactive arts. He has worked with several companies and institutions, such as Studio XO for Haus of Gaga, Accenture Labs, Atmel, and KAUST, in fashion/wearable technology and consumer electronics.
His projects range from designing mechatronic dresses, biomedical suits, and spacesuits to developing stretchable electronic patches and knitted architectural fabrics. His work and installations have been published in various journals, conferences, and media, including ACM, IEEE, Nature, Popular Science, and Domus Magazine, and exhibited at Burning Man, the MIT Museum, KSU Textile Museum, Cambridge Science Festival, Boston Fashion Week, Lexus Intersect Tokyo, and the World Economic Forum. He has also received numerous accolades, including the SXSW and MIDI Innovation Awards, Fast Company Innovation by Design Award, Lexus Design Award, Dezeen Award, Architizer A+ Award, and the Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts. As a creative technologist and interdisciplinary researcher, he is passionate about exploring the synergy and interplay between art, science, design, and engineering, as well as the intersection between research and manufacturing.