Growing up, Joanna Berzowska was one of those rare people who were gifted in both science and art. On high school aptitude tests she would consistently be encouraged to pursue work as an engineer, or a designer. Now she does both. As professor and chair of Concordia University’s Department of Design and Computation Arts, Joanna Berzowska is working in the areas she began pursuing with a passion through her academic career.
“It started by this realization that old technologies and new technologies can be integrated.”
In the mid-1990’s, while working at MIT’s Media Lab, Joanna said she was first introduced to the notion of putting electronics into textiles. She says she was amazed at the revelation “that you could use both engineering and electronic-type technologies as well as these old technologies like weaving, textile technologies, and put them together to make textiles that are inter-active that can change shape, change colour, or trigger sensors etc.”
Now, in her Karma Chameleon Project, she is working on the integration of the electronic, or computer element, into the textile itself. About eight years ago, Joanna Berzowska says, the question became clear:
“What if the electronic components themselves could be textile?”
Joanna Berzowska began to answer that in partnership with Maksim Skorobogatiy of Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique. His work is in developing new fibres. Together they explored questions Joanna articulated; “what if the resistor could be a fibre, what if the capacitor could a fibre? And they approached the work from the both the scientific and design perspectives. Over the last 5 years they’ve been successful and now, in Joanna’s XS Lab, she is creating garments and exploring what kind of interactions or transformations are possible with this new clothing, this new second-skin?
Joanna Berzowska says the fibres are not yet ready for the market, they are not ready to be mass-produced, but the proto-types suggest some amazing possibilities. Imagine wearing a garment that could vibrate to remind you to take an insulin shot, or simply get up and move away from the computer after a lengthy session of sitting. Applications as varied as light up baby-blankets to soothe and comfort toddlers, to military camouflage, are some practical examples.
Joanna Berzowska is attending the Smart Fabrics 2013 Conference in San Francisco this week. It’s a gathering that brings together artists, academics, and the industry.
Carmel Kilkenny spoke with Joanna Berzowska as she was waiting to board the flight.
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