Textiles are increasingly present within the many diverse areas of inquiry that characterize CHI research. We see textile techniques like felting, knitting, embroidery, spinning, weaving, sewing, and pleating/folding leveraged to create new forms of soft 3D objects; we see electronics integrated into textile structures enabling new forms of sensing, biofeedback and haptics; we see the specific modes of engagement with textiles and fickle yarns provoking border reflection on norms in design research; and cloth being used as a means to communicate data and engagement through visceral modalities; to name only a few. As CHI tends to organize around shared application themes like “wearables” or “healthcare”, these diverse textile communities are often working in parallel silos both within and beyond CHI. This is further exacerbated by the vastness of resources, histories, and practices for each textile tradition. Such knowledge is located not just in text, but in bodies and communities and may only be accessible or legible through conversation and engagement with collaborators who have cultivated these skills and knowledge. Put another way, you cannot learn all you need from books, YouTube tutorials, or prior publications. We need on-the-ground and in-the-hand knowledge and relationships in order to collectively learn, share, and grow new traditions and techniques.
Participants at this workshop will be engaged in a series of hands-on activities and conversations. The pacing will be calm and oriented towards sharing first-hand experience through samples, demos, and focused engagements with the specific materials, techniques, and textile equipment of Japan. Our workshop room will feature equipment sourced from local collaborators and as well as specific tools, objects, samples, and patterns provided by all participants. Throughout the day, we will engage these objects, share skills, and craft and annotate material speculations in small groups. The outcomes of the day will be documented alongside participant submissions on the workshop website.
We aim for this workshop to establish a new workshop format that can be replicated at future conferences, creating a recurring set of activities and events that can meet those engaging textiles where they are at, and build more robust networks of practitioners. The nature of a recurring workshop has been explored previously, most notably by the Research through Design community at DIS and CHI.
The format will be designed to be open for anyone with an interest from novices to experts. Furthermore, we hope to over time leverage the geographic diversity of CHI conferences to learn and engage in techniques and histories that originate from the region outside the conference center. . To that end, this workshop aims to found a sustainable community through a longitudinal series of activities for this emergent material focus. We will do this by pairing the workshop with a Discord channel that can continue to support participation by groups that either cannot attend CHI and may be interested in hosting their own local instances, within or beyond the realm of ACM.
Our goal with this workshop is to build community, to share skills, and to speculate on future research directions and challenges in textiles @ CHI. We will approach textiles as, not just as functional objects, but as interactive, personal and cultural material. In doing so, our workshop will open up spaces to:
- discuss blending the tactile nature of making textiles while also engaging with digital technologies
- collectively imagine future tools for textile creation.
- consider textiles as carriers of technological thinking and everyday examples of complexity.
- make and speculate about how samples and tools help us discern the digital pattern body their creation?
- fabulate on textile machines that don’t yet exist
Additionally, our goal for this workshop is to consider the conference location, Japan, and how the specific practices and histories of textiles in Japan make visible the euro-centrist engagement of textiles in CHI to date. The organizers will work with local colleagues to gather materials, samples, and compile resources prior to the workshop to be shared and made available during the workshop.
Plans to Publish Workshop Submissions
Our plans for workshop submission and attendance differ slightly from the norm in that we look to provide two pathways for participation: one option is to join an online discussion group and the other to join the workshop in person at CHI 2025.
As a result we are able to encourage anyone engaging in textiles in CHI to submit, whether or not they are able to attend CHI in person. We will share all submissions on the workshop website and invite all submitters to join a Discord group devoted to interaction and textiles. This will provide a chance for participants to learn about each other prior to the workshop and create a publicly accessible resource of techniques and tools. We will create a citable reference for each submission to support the career development of each participant. This will allow us to connect and honor the creative work of a broader network of researchers while acknowledging the practical limitations the CHI workshop format presents. Additionally, this will help us identify interested parties within and beyond the current CHI community.
Participants will apply by submitting a short statement of interest detailing their particular stance on textiles as research material. The submission will also ask the particulate to include photos and descriptions of a tool, material and/or object that they plan to bring to the workshop for exploration. We will review submissions and notify participants of their acceptance in a timely manner. We aim for 16-20 participants to join in person, a number that allows us to showcase a range of practices while also supporting small group activities. This group will be joined by a similar group of participants online.
Workshop Format
While we will invite all successful applicants to join our Discord group, the practical CHI 2025 workshop activities are offered in-person only. We make this choice based on the embodied and hands-on modes of learning that the workshop relies upon. We hope to complement the in person activities with engagements from the online Discord group. To do this, we will coordinate virtual meetups before, during and/or after the workshop to create points of connection and sharing between a broader group of textile practitioners.
Accessibility
We commit to delivering a fully accessible and equitable experience for all participants. To do so, we will engage directly with our participants before and during the workshop to make sure that all needs are addressed and accommodated. The workshop proposal is based on strong commitments to equity and openness and we are dedicated to hosting a safe environment that is hospitable and comfortable to all participants. As a part of this, we will actively work towards creating a space with distributed power and free of sex, gender, race and class discrimination.
One immediate need we anticipate is that of support for translation to English to and from Japanese. This will help any local participants engage more fully with the content and broader the range of local participants we can support. We will investigate the use of translation apps and we hope to engage bilingual practitioners and student assistants.
Asynchronous Materials
As stated in “Plans to Publish Workshop Submissions", we will publish submissions on the workshop website prior to the workshop taking place. We will actively work to develop hands-on activities that are accessible to our participants and will publish specific workshop activity plans prior to the workshop for feedback and/or suggestions for accommodation.
All online events will be coordinated with input from the community of participants. We acknowledge that we will not find a timezone that will work for all, and will invite some participants to submit a video introduction and invite others in our community to independently schedule additional meetups and platforms for communication and connection.
Post-workshop, we will archive and catalog the outcomes of our speculations in the form of a summary post to the workshop website supported by photos of the event itself. We will investigate opportunities to make this material the beginning of a long term online repository for this area of interest.
Workshop Activities
This workshop looks to form a generative and welcoming space for researchers who are engaging (or are interested in engaging) textile production tools, techniques, and traditions in their research. Our plan takes inspiration from previous “hands-on” workshops that the organizers have led at venues like CHI and DIS.
Participants are asked to submit a proposal of an outcome, pattern, or tool that shapes their practice and to bring an object, tool (of portable size), and/or material to the workshop. We will work with local colleagues to coordinate the availability of larger or travel-prohibited materials (like weaving looms and scissors).
The organization of the workshop will include opportunities for participants to connect in both formal and informal capacities and will include time for side by side making and skill-shares, where one participant or organizer will lead a group of others in learning a new skill or practice. We will send a call for people willing to lead skill shares prior to the workshop and curate a selection that offers options for multiple types of practices (e.g. knitting/weaving/embroidery, etc). We will run 2-3 skills shares concurrently in the sessions. Our attention to supporting side-by-side making and skill sharing (as opposed to purely talking about practice) is to acknowledge how a successful integration of textiles requires subtle alternations of the body that are best observed and communicated in person, side-by-side. Co-organizer Kaori Ueda has has experience in organizing workshops that invite people who work with artisanal techniques (stencil dyeing, gold leaf, weaving), materials (high-twist yarn, cut gold leaf, other materials). She will bring this expertise to the skill-share section of the workshop and is willing to pre-prepare materials so that participants can take some home with them for deeper exploration.
At the end of our workshop, we will engage in a round of speculation with our tools and materials. Groups of participants will craft speculations using materials and sketches and will document these speculations using a digital scanner and digital annotations. These artifacts will live alongside submissions on the workshop website.
Post-Workshop Plans
We look to the workshop to convene textile practitioner in a format that will be generative for new collaboration and production of collective resources. For example, the workshop Discord channel will allow conversations to persist beyond the workshop and for new opportunities for collaboration and publishing to be shared. We will take specific inspiration for previous traditions of swatch exchanges in the design and dissemination of our workshop activities, designing the online archive of submissions and outcomes to be explored as a “library” of techniques and ideas. We will also continue to look for venues, such as a ToCHI special issue, to gather and share the findings of the Textiles community within CHI.
Expected size of attendance
We look for our workshop to support up to 20 participants. We aim for this number to create a balance between the range of techniques we can share and the feasibility of sourcing materials for hands-on activities.