�鶹ӰԺ

ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design Lab, directed by Laura Devendorf, will host its third experimental weaving residency this spring to develop techniques and open-source resources that support collaboration and innovation across the fiber arts and engineering communities. New this year, the lab will actively work to grow community at the intersection of craft and technology through inviting interested parties to attend a series of experimental weaving talks.

Researchers from ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design, THING, Living Matter and Superhuman Computing labs presented four papers, including three that received “Honorable Mention” awards, at the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22).

Exploring biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction, authored by Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf  introduced the DIS audience to biofoam, a water soluble and biodegradable material that can be made conductive.

“An Introduction to Weave Structure for HCI: A How-to and Reflection on Modes of Exchange,” authored by Assistant Professor Laura Devendorf, director of the Unstable Design Lab, Sasha De Koninck, an ATLAS-affiliated PhD candidate, and Etta Sandry, weaver-in-residence, received a “Best Pictorial Honorable Mention” award at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22).

“Knitting Access: Exploring Stateful Textiles with People with Disabilities,” authored by Annika Muehlbradt (PhD Comp. Sci’22) and researchers Shaun Kane, director of the Superhuman Computing Lab, Laura Devendorf director of the Unstable Design Lab, and Gregory Whiting, associate professor of mechanical engineering, won a DIS’22 Honorable Mention award.

ATLAS PhD Candidate Shanel Wu (they/them) recently was awarded a $50,000 Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) Traiblazer Fellowship. Wu, a member of Assistant Professor Laura Devendorf's Unstable Design Lab, will use the fellowship to support their dissertation project, making open hardware interfaces for the loom and using that as a case study to explore issues of doing open hardware in academia.

ATLAS researchers will present six published works and two workshops at the 2022 ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), the world’s preeminent forum for the field of human-computer interaction. The conference, commonly referred to as “CHI,” will be held hybrid-onsite April 30-May 6, 2022 in New Orleans.

ATLAS PhD student Shanel Wu is tackling how to reduce the waste from the rapidly expanding e-textile industry by investigating design practices that make it easier to recycle or reuse electronics and the textiles in which they are embedded.

Unstable Design Lab researchers Jordan Wirfs-Brock, a PhD candidate, and Mikhaila Friske, a PhD student, both in information science, will present their interactive, hands-on, textile-based experience, Murmuring Yarnscapes, in the ATLAS Black Box, beginning Dec. 2.

Sasha de Koninck, a member of ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design Lab, presented her future heirloom project, The Research Lab of Ambiguous Futurology, at the "Making and Doing" exhibition at the 4S hybrid conference, held Oct. 6-9, both in Toronto and virtually.