Metabolic Network sensory CDRN workshop

This Canadian Design Research Network workshop will be held at the the School of Architecture, Dalhousie University from October 1-2, 2007. The cost of the workshop is $60.00 or $20.00 for students. Cost includes a workshop lunch and refreshments. To participate contact Jordan Winters at:

Metabolism, in living systems, has two aspects: anabolism (which means building up), and catabolism (or breaking down). These processes, part of all living systems, carry a particular resonance with respect to present-day concerns about sustainable environments.

This two-day workshop, on the theme of “Metabolic Network”, brings together five researchers working in the area of electronic sensing in art and design, with a special focus on textiles and architectural-scale applications. The network will be a large installation made from a field of suspended fibers that have different properties: such as elasticity, conductivity, dissolvability, or luminosity. By joining the fibers together, a field of possibilities open up and patterns within the field emerge. The use of sensors and actuators, both electronic and mechanical, will provide dynamic and responsive features in the network. The result will be a metabolic network that emerges, acts and self-destructs over the course of the two-day period.

The metabolic network will serve as a playground to explore the potentials of sensors and actuators hooked up to a responsive architecture. It will serve as the common medium for the work of the five invited researchers, each expert in some aspect of electronic sensing, textile design or architectural form-making.

Workshop leaders are:

• Philip Beesley (architect and artist, associate professor and co-director, Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing, University of Waterloo)
  • http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com
• Carole Collet (course director MA Textile Futures, Central Saint Martins College of Art, London)
  • http://carolecollet.com
  • http://www.arts-of-fashion.org/af%202005/bio%20Carole.htm
• Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (architect and researcher, head of Centre for Interactive Technologies and Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen)
  • http://cita.karch.dk/citapeople_mrt.html
• Rachel Wingfield and Mathias Gmachl (Wingfield is an electronic textile designer and lecturer at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, London; Gmachl is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. Together, they form the design research studio Loop.ph, based in London)
  • http://www.loop.ph

To participate:

The workshop will accommodate up to 25 participants who are interested in some of the following areas: concept of interactivity, modeling of dynamic systems, software craft, sensors and actuators, fabrication and textile arts. We are inviting interested persons to indicate their reasons for participating in the workshop and their area of particular interest.