Crafting Stories

Crafting Stories investigates the possibilities and potentials of eTextile crafts in the context of storytelling and interactive books: What qualities can new technological developments bring to this form of storytelling? What forms of interactions and engagement can evolve, or are prevented? What insights to the weaving of technology into our everyday lives result from the making end using of resulting artefacts? The project comprises practical and theoretical inquiries into textile crafts, computational technology and storytelling; interdisciplinary workshops with craftsperson, illustrators, artists, and researchers; as well as the creation of artefacts as interactive objects and tangible experience of the research results for a wider audience.

The Book my Grandmother Might Have Made

The first artefact within this ongoing research is dedicated to re-imagine and re-make an interactive children book incorporating new technologies. An existing handmade textile book from the 1980ies serves as inspiration for interaction scenarios to be augmented with electronic textile techniques.

The original textile book was made by my grandmother when I was a small kid. She used her skills as a seamstress and craftsperson to fabricate an interactive book. The embedding of snaps, buttons, zips, and various other textile accessories allows for attaching, opening, moving, rearranging of the textile artefacts, making individual stories come to life. Decades later, I revisit this book, investigating the possibilities and potentials of electronic and computational augmentation for interactive storytelling in the context of children books. Textile interactions she proposed are expanded by sound, visual effects and movements, reacting to user actions as well as on the surrounding environment.

Images above: Interactive Textile Book, Anna Posch, 1984 (top)
Interactive eTextile Book, Irene Posch, 2019 (bottom, Photo by Katja Goljat)

Makin-Of: Mapping pages, stories and interaction scenarios.

Pages of the eTextile book, detailing some of the possible interactions.
Video by Matic Zavodnik.

Lightening candles in placing them on the tree and putting the golden star on top. (Photo by Katja Goljat)

Blossoming flowers changing colour depending on how open they are. (Photo by Katja Goljat)

Flowers will turn pink in the sunlight. When opening the door, you will be greeted. (Photo by Katja Goljat)

The parrot will repeat what you say. The cat purrs when caressed. (Photo by Katja Goljat)

The back of the book connecting the electronics. (Photos by Katja Goljat)

Pages “Winter” and “Summer”. (Photos by Katja Goljat)

Making Of

Preparing materials, crafting eTextile and connecting pages. (Photos by Katja Goljat)

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Idrija lace: Irma Vončina
Silkscreen printing: Tjaša Pirate Piška
Crafting assistance: Judith Raupp
Photo documentation: Katja Goljat
Video documentation: Matic Zavodnik

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Crafting Stories – Interactive eTextile Book was developed during a residency at Ljudmila, Ljubljana. The residency was supported by the Slovene Ministry of Culture (in the co-production with Zavod Projekt Atol), MOL – Department for Culture, Austrian Cultural Forum and JSKD.
The residency was part of EASTN-DC Network, which is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

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Irene Posch. 2021. Crafting Stories: Smart and Electronic Textile Craftsmanship for Interactive Books. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 100, 1–12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3446076

Crafting Stories. March 28 – 29 2019. Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, Ljubljana, SI

Crafting Stories – Workshop. September 11 – 12 2018. osmo/za, Ljubljana, SI