Trainer
Nadya Peek is a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge. There she explores body extensions and identity through hardware, as well as low-power low-cost mobile technology.
Touching
What can we do when someone touches us or we touch them? And also, how do we use touchscreen mobile phones with gloves in the winter?
In the touch workshop we explored capacitive sensing, vibration motors, heating elements and IR distance sensing.
Participants brought a garment of their own choice (dress, coat, pants, underwear etc). In the electronics kit included in the price of the workshop were the sensors, the actuators, a preprogrammed AVR chip to control the input and the output and laser-cut conductive fabric traces you could iron on to any clothing you care to bring. To make better connections you could also sew with conductive thread and add metallic snaps and buttons. By the end of the workshop everyone had constructed their own electro-clothing.