The recent shift to remote meetings and online lectures makes us lack the experience of bodies in our communication. How can we overcome this frustrating experience? Can we think of ways to extend our limited digital tools to promote our bodies as means of communication.
We gave attention to our expressive bodies and their language: What do we communicate with our bodies beyond talking? How do we understand others through their bodies? What does the physicality of the body add to our interactions?
In this project course we explored those questions in a performative context.

The course started with a collaborative 2 weeks Hands-on Workshop with the Spiel und Objekt students from the Ernst Busch Hochschule

Folding is natures most common way of making patterns. It can occur in all matters and materials. A simple fold contains a range of dynamics and depths. They are a direct result of movement which in return means that movement can be detected by monitoring or reading folds.
What if we use this result of movement (folds) as the actual means to explore and express the body and its relationship to the surrounding environment?
What happens if we add an additional element like sound to further intensify the experience?
Similarly to the fold, sound can be used as a sort of auditory visualizer of the moving body. A voice for the body. An embodied voice.
In this project, paper origami techniques are used to pleat fabric to create three-dimensional wearable sculptures that work as sort of extensions of the body. Textile sensors, which respond to movement by reading a change in resistance when opening and closing the folds, are added to trigger selected sounds. This allows the wearer to experience something very familiar - their body - in a new, different way. They become much more conscious of their body, its movements and the space they hold in a room. Usually, when e.g. dancing, the moves are clear reactions to the music. But with the pleated sensor the two seem to merge. Does the wearer control the sound? Or does the sound influence the wearers motions? Is it a combination of both?
The origami pleated sensor - in combination with selected sounds and the bodies movement - creates very individual multi-facetted & multi-sensory explorations of nonverbal, embodied communication.


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The Project „Sweet escape“ started of with the idea of a nostalgia for digital media, seen from my subjective perspective as a digital native.
Born in 1996 digital media has always been a part of my everyday life and in the early 2000s they were introduced to me in a very playful way. Games such as The Sims 2 or Nintendog’s allowed me to create an interactive parallel/second world that felt infinite and privat. I used to play and dream to escape the boring reality of a dentist’s waiting room.
Since the Corona Pandemic I noticed that our society escapes into these alternative world of digital media searching for entertainment and a sense of identity. We distract ourselfs from the unknown future with media of the long gone past. We listen to music from the 80s, we watch Movies from the 60s and we wear Fashion from the 90s. To see this craving for the past in a digitalized present seems paradox. Technology is often seen as something that is driven by futuristic ambition such as letting humans traveling through time and space. But in reality we see that it is used to capture and replicate what has already been there. It is going to be a challenge to agnowledge the interwoveness of our cultural and collective memory of the past into our Future.


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Let´s step on this map , carefully. It is an unknown terrain we must explore. Be a gentle giant, feel the valleys and the mountains, listen to the sounds of a new world. On this planet you can float, but only shortly- earth, water, air and fire are yours to play with. Floating is an intermediate state of in betweenness that cannot last- on earth we are bound by gravity. Losing the ground under your feet, finding balance can be unnerving, scary even but also liberating. We use this ephemeral feeling in a subtle, soft way- recalibrating your senses in a mindful experiment can be seen as a therapeutic tool. Feet are highly sensitive- the skin on our feet contains an extensive network of nerve endings which make them receptive to many different kinds of stimuli such as pressure, temperature, vibrations or pain. The Floating Forest is a functional geomorphological map with varying grounds that enhances both your body awareness and concentration. The hearing and feeling of a landscape, exploring it with tactile meditation acts as a source of stress relief and recreation.

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"Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.  This includes norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time."
- World Health Organization

From the beginning of our existence we are assigned a biological sex: male or female, this is determined by our reproductive/genital organs. From this point there is an almost inevitable secondary step, that is, our biological sex is connected to our "gender". But what is meant by gender? 
This inevitable step, gender, is a social construct and we can encounter it at virtually every stage of our lives in different forms and scenarios, for example, just by having a look at "boy toys" and "girl toys". Little girls, according to the binary gender ideal, love pink, play Barbies, cook, comb their hair and take care of their dolls. According to the same rule but applied to boys, they love to play with cars, with robots, with the muscular and unbeatable Batman figure, with the "little scientist" sets or with water guns. 
"Why are some activities for women and others for men?".  This project was born from my personal need to investigate the question, but I believe still legitimate for many people.
This process (of social construct?), in my point of view, of indoctrination, silently induces us to establish interests in certain things, that is, those to which we are accustomed and for which we have developed talents and passions, but under this mask of "freedom of choice" there is actually a limitation.
Getting used to something creates a false sense of protection and control and often this causes us to not see other possibilities for personal growth.
Another practical example, and one that is closer to my personal experience, involves the textile world. In particular when we focus on techniques such as knitting or crocheting. The collective imagination refers to images of women, usually elderly, knitting while watching television trying to pass their time without getting bored. A rather reductive image that makes people think of these techniques as "old", "for women" or "easy".

However, when a male person shows interest in these techniques and puts them into practice, it often happens that these men are put on a pedestal and receive much more attention and compliments as if, because a man knits then this action gains quality or complexity. The point is that each person, without depending on their gender, should be free to perform actions as their heart desires. Getting rid of the genre is not an easy task, if not a meaningless one.
“as an institution, gender cannot be destroyed but rather adapted. The idea that a person is attempting to “undo” gender is ineffective because that person is still perpetuating gender norms.”
Gender cannot be destroyed but it can be transformed and in order to transform it, I think we need to look and perform our actions from a different perspective than we are used to. In the case of my project, I tried to connect two techniques that are normally characterized by a binary gender stereotype, that is: manual techniques like knitting are for women and technological techniques like building a circuit or programming are for men. But how do we estrange these stereotypes from these two techniques?
My answer is, "Noise!"
Noise is not something you can touch or see, it is not something tangible. Certainly, one can try to describe it through paraesthetics and abstractions but there will never be a "correct answer".
Noise is free, it is nature and consequently human. For this reason, with the help of Arduino, a circuit, PureData patches of synths/MIDI notes musical instruments, and conductive wire I transformed three different textile techniques (knitting needles, knitting board and crochet) into textile instruments/sensors to obtain a concert of noises. This concert of noises, wants to symbolize freedom.
That's why I asked 4 different people to be part of this project: I had them choose the technique, materials and adjust the PureData parameters on their own to obtain the noise that they liked best.
Some of these people have no experience with textile techniques, others study them and others are real masters of the latter, but all of them have experienced a new world, a new way of perceiving their craft and their activities.
Maybe this freedom can help to develop more curiosity towards technology and textiles and consequently transform the perception of society towards a wider and not only binary vision of things.


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This is the story about a group of humans that decided to relocate themselves. But not relocating in the common sense. There is this planet that we were observing for a while now. It is a Rogue planet or you might like to call it a wandering planet. That means they don‘t belong to a star or planetary system. They move freely in the interstellar space. We have the idea that there could be living organisms because we found water there and an atmosphere. But there is one thing dramatically different from the place we call our home. There is no light. Not at all. We have hints that there really could be living creatures on it. We spotted short term changes on the surface of the planet that seem to follow a structure or organisation that we cannot explain other than something created it in its own interest. So there was this brave group of people who wanted to take all the risks and go there. It is really possible that there is air that we can breath. But they are facing one big problem among many others. Because the planet has no star it also has no light. We don‘t really now yet what the main energy source of this planet is or where it’s coming from. But it expresses itself through wind. So we assume that the main sense the potentially living creatures their rely on is a sense for the movement of air or water that tells them how their surrounding looks like. So because humans don‘t have this kind of sense, the mission of this group was to add this kind of sense to the human body.

The following pages are their notes. They started with researching what kind of sensory cells already exist in the biological world to gather inspiration. They had a closer look to the lateral line organ that is found in fishes and the hair follicle cells that are found in human as well. These two have in common that they sense the movement of wind or water through hair that reaches out in to the environment like small antenna. So maybe if they could recreate this antenna in a more sensitive way and place it all over the body of the humans they could create an additional sense. They started experimenting with different shapes and types of sensors until they finally found a scale like shape that was really sensitively responding to wind and water movement. They grew a material with the help of latex that felt pretty much like the skin of vertebrates and could be worn as a layer for extra protection. Then they created a kind of exoskeleton with all the sensor scales on top. The pictures show their process and the first prototype. The sensors are all part of an electric circuit and are connected to a PC that processes the gathered information and translates them into sound that the wearer can hear.

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My mother was an opera singer and often took me to shows and concerts. As a child, I experienced a more traditional way of presenting singing and acting on stage. The audience was directly confronted with the sound and voice of the singer. In recent decades, new forms of performance continue to enter our lives. Not only do we go to the theatre or the opera, but we stream from home, listen on the go or interact with artists in hybrid formats, like a concert of virtual avatars for a real audience. We can pause a video at any time and turn music on and off without missing anything. My work 'singing switches' deals with controlling vocals and voice by turning switches on and off. The audio is being controlled by the hinges of the exoskeleton, which in turn triggers switches. The exosceleton is made of 3D-printed modules. Adding textile to the module create hinges under tension. Different coloured PLA layers and organic shapes transform the technical appealing tensile hinges into a vibrant and natural aesthetic that adaptively shapes the body. With the help of conductive PLA, the hinges become switches. To get switches on both sides, the modules are glued back to back and form a system with a self-designed connector. The system includes seven switches, which independently activate sections of a recording from “O mio babbino caro” out of the opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini, sung by Katrin Dönitz. Activating the audio becomes related to a necessary interaction and is thus also linked to a visual realisation. The interactive construction performatively breaks down the recording into smaller parts, reassembles them or superimposes them. The recording of a single voice multiplies and becomes a set of voices. The physical installation, which sounds like a broken loop, becomes an endless piece of music made of destructive harmony.

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How can an integration of technology into fashion appear less technical and more lyrical? "Cosmic horror" is a subgenre of weird and horror fiction that emphasizes the dread experieced through the unknowable and incomprehensible. It accentuates the consequences of scientific progress and superstition, posthumanism and the exploration of the cosmos (not universal). The project creates textures and garments in a collection that seem unfathomable, that move strangely, that seem to work like a maschine or be alive; trying to display an example of how the fields of art and technology can be combined and serve as an communication within the piece as well as to the wearer and observer on a ineffable level. Finding a middleground of being human and a process of alienation, on one hand visible to the human eye, such as aforementioned movements and the invisible, as the measurements for creating this movement are being sensed from movement from the forehead. It is suggested that the person wearing it is controlling it but also not stated clearly - tying into the matter regarding the questioned fragility of anthropocentrism. The measured "brain waves" then also get converted via a PureData sythesizer to create an athmospheric sound piece using samples like cosmic sound recornigs or recreations of "great ones", which are multidimensional beings on the lovecraftian earth. This singsong of a transcendental or cosmic life gets fed into a fractal program, which inturn creates another visual impression, being projected onto the garment, ceating the illusion of an additional movement. Everything together trying to recreate the sensory overwhelment caused by cosmic horror - an aesthetic but also technical impression.

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We live in a constant exchange of information. This exchange takes place not only via technical aids, books or news services, but already begins with the communication with each other. You could say that human communication is basically nothing more than the exchange of information between individuals. This exchange takes place on both the verbal and non- verbal level and helps us to communicate with each other. But not only language plays an important role. Much more decisive is our body language, any movements with our body, which take up the largest part of our communication. Body signals and conscious or unconscious behavior can help a person to interpret and understand the other person, even without words.
Not insignificant in this consideration is our clothing. It is the interface between the body and the space and lays itself protectively like a second skin around our body. Thus, it is able to cover our movements and restrict us, as well as to strengthen and emphasize them. Therefore it is an important tool in the communication between people and its effectiveness should not be underestimated.
But for example what would happen, if our second skin took on a different, unfamiliar form and imposed a certain way of moving with new characteristics? How would we move if we were embedded in stiff, unyielding material or in soft down that lightly surrounds us?
The project is about the idea of shaping the second skin of the human being into a soft, voluminous shell and investigating possible ways of movement in the space and interactions between people. How can movements take place when one is isolated and shielded from the outside world on the one hand and can generate protection from the new surface on the other? How does one behave when one's clothing becomes a soft place of retreat that can offer one tranquility, but at the same time form a tight cocoon around one?
A garment is developed to investigate this question in detail by allowing the wearer to experience and perceive the space and their own body differently through movements in the second skin. By omitting the sleeves, one can no longer rely on support of the hands, but must find one's own balance and stability. In this way, movements in the room take place in a more uncontrollable and exploratory way and the wearer embarks on a journey of discovery. In addition, by integrating textile sensors (which can respond to pressure), a synthetic sound is created that allows the person to communicate in a new, digital way. The experienced feeling of security, but also confinement, is thus acoustically underlined and arouses curiosity to try out other movements.


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Where naturally and daily does textile touch our body, our weight?
The answer: carpet, rug. An everyday object, which meets our body Every time we step on it.
A rug, an object with a lot of cultural baggage, a textile creation that involves a combination of handiwork with infinite precision. An Impressive piece of textile. masterpiece! "When you said “rug" Your saying "space" “home” “place”. “rug is a complex cultural object than just a decorative object.” Related also to territorial space, physical place marking".
The project subject is about identity, an abstract theme, whose visual appearance is unclear and subjective to the creator. I used an existing ornamental rug, which is generic and characterizes many rugs.
while using this rug with the context that its brought up, I ask a question about my identity, as a young artist who examines the textiles around her and the cultural contexts from which she comes.
Designer position aspect: The way I see my job as a designer nowadays is;
Reorganization of the existing.
Is there a need for new textile designs in the world? For a new pattern?
For me the story embedded in the existing material is also the story of the project. A textile piece containing within it past and future, mixed and unstructured identity. The sound at work refers to the abstract and the unconscious, the sounds you will hear are recordings of the sounds of the carpet that I recorded while working with the carpet. Working with the rug was not easy, complex and challenging, it was difficult to understand how to work with the material, and what the boundaries are in working with it. I decided to use color as a new way of dismantling the existing one, color disassembly. I painted with acrylic, printed, and re-embroidered the pieces on their opposite side. The work on the project was fascinating, interesting and exciting.


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If sounds could be shaped, what would they look like?
“Sculpting Sound” is a textile interface project focused on the interaction between shapes, sounds, and movements. Using fabric as a medium, the project explores the possibilities of sculpting sounds through the creation of a mouldable surface that can be shaped, reshaped, and stay in shape.
Inspired by various experiments with conductive materials and the construction of pressure sensors, the project aims to create a structure that not only generates sounds through the changing of shapes, but also has the ability to retain the sounds shaped by the textile landscape.
The basic structure of the interface is formed by a piece of fabric overlaid with two layers of prints. The bottom layer is a geometrical pattern—made out of small right triangles—that strengthens the fabric and allows it to form three-dimensional shapes. The top layer is a graphite coating that, through its conductive nature, functions as a pressure sensor. When being crumpled up, the fabric will transform into a myriad of shapes while simultaneously producing a wide range of sounds.
Through the interplay between opposites—rigid and flexible, soft and hard, silent and audible, material and immaterial—the project facilitates an open and exploratory interaction between shapes and sounds using visible and invisible waves.


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The project soft motion focuses on the intimate relationship between body, movement and material. The materialization of transmit motion on haptic, auditory and visual level is experimentally investigated. Soft sensors in the garments and a sound response to movement allow a very sensual interaction of the body with the material. On the one hand it enables a different and new individual body experience. On the other hand these bodies combined lead to a new dimension of shared experience and interaction. This performative and experimental approach questions the common use of hybrid interfaces and bodily communication by constructing and playing with textile interfaces. Will there be a different body language and what kind of interaction can evolve?
Soft sensors are integrated in the garments by using conductive yarn in a knitted surface and conductive wool as stuffing for the tubes. The stuffing is a mix of wool and chopped yarn waste from the knit process. This is seen as an approach for reworking on yarn waste and trying to integrate it as a design element by working with transparent parts where the stuffing is visible.
The sensors are reacting to a push or pull movement and are wirelessly connected to a sound response. Throughout the whole form finding process a lot of draping and moving in the toiles led to final two looks - a ping-pong between finding a visual aesthetic language and potential functional spots for the sensors. Each look contains five sensors in the upper body which are wirelessly connected to generate a wider range of motion.


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