Research Studio: Critical E-Textiles

Fall
3 credits

The Radical E-Threads seminar is a space of reflection and creation around aesthetics and practices that involve technology, culture, and social and communal dynamics. This seminar will explore the intersection of these topics through practical hands-on activities, lectures, and group discussions. Through examining the main ideas of decolonial approaches, students will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges of technology and textile creation and its potential to perpetuate oppression as well as its capacity to serve as a tool for liberation and resistance. By engaging in creative projects, participants will learn to use e-textiles as a medium for de-linking technological practices, while exploring the potential of these tools to create meaningful change.

Senti-pensar (thinking-feeling) as a working methodology will be the key concept to nurture resistant forms of conceiving digital and e-textile projects. The course will culminate in a final project, in which students will apply the skills and knowledge they have gained throughout the course using a variety of materials and technologies to create a socially engaged e-textile project.