Bridging the gap between low - and high-tech

Leah Buechley of MIT, modelling a bracelet and top with embedded electronics. Photo / Supplied

The MIT Media Lab, hotbed of leading-edge information technology development, has a new mission - bringing quilting into the 21st century.

For the Boston-based facility that came up with the world-changing One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation, high-tech quilting and its ilk represent a shift of emphasis.

It's what Leah Buechley, an electronic textiles expert who has been conducting workshops in Auckland, sees as a process of democratisation - getting technology out of the lab and into the working spaces of hobbyists and craftspeople.

"I believe the democratisation that we've seen in the software universe that enables people to become journalists and photographers is coming into the physical world," says Buechley, who joined the Media Lab in January after first studying physics, then doing a PhD in computer science.

"A lot of physical manufacturing and design and distribution is going to become democratised in a similar way."

In her area of specialisation, she encourages the trend by introducing electronics to people who are more used to working with textiles. She has developed a kit, consisting of a microcontroller board and various switches, LEDs and sensors - including light sensors and accelerometers - that can be stitched to fabric using conductive thread.

Called the LilyPad Arduino, it is about 50mm in diameter and 3mm at its thickest, is programmable and washable (drip-dry) and powered by up to a 5.5-volt DC supply.

Arts and crafts and electronics might be thought of as strange bedfellows. Buechley says she does, indeed, occasionally encounter people from each camp who are hostile to the other. But mostly she finds a ready appetite for bringing the low- and high-tech together.

When she gave a recent talk at the New England Quilt Museum to a group of women who were mostly over 40 with no history of involvement with technology, she got an enthusiastic response.

"They were excited about all the possibilities that these materials give them for expanding the aesthetic potential for quilting - quilts that change colour, that interact with people, that have embedded lights in them. They could see the design potential."

I believe the democratisation that we've seen in the software universe ... is coming into the physical world.Leah Buechley, MIT Media LabThere are various techniques for making fabrics conductive. Ordinary yarn can be coated in a metal, such as silver, although conductivity can be lost as the silver tarnishes, or oxidises.

Fabrics can be electroplated with copper, silver, or tin, the metal Buechley favours, although oxidation is again a problem. Perhaps the most durable method is to use finely spun stainless steel in yarn.

The applications of electronic textiles are by no means just decorative. Uses in healthcare, for example, interest Frank Moss, who took over as director of the Media Lab from OLPC project leader Nicholas Negroponte. "Healthcare is one of the new directions the lab is headed in," Buechley says.

A light, unobtrusive garment with sensors that can monitor the wearer's heart and breath rate and blood pressure over a prolonged time will provide "rich information about a person's physiological state".

One of the participants in her Auckland workshops, run in conjunction with AUT University's CoLab, was developing a cycling jacket with built-in indicator lights.

Buechley was complimentary about two New Zealand efforts in the manufacturing "democratisation" field. One is Ponoko, a venture started in Wellington that allows craftspeople to upload a design via the internet which Ponoko then manufactures and ships to them.

Another is the RepRap project, in which Aucklander Vik Olliver and international collaborators are building a "3D printer" that can make the components from which other RepRaps - and, eventually, anything else you care to think of - can be assembled.

Buechley's own background isn't purely in the sciences. Before switching to physics she studied dance.

"I've always been interested in math and science and engineering, on the one hand, and arts and design on the other. For a long time I went back and forth between those two passions."

In bringing the two together as director of the Media Lab's "high-low tech" research group, she has uncovered fertile ground. "A big part of my research goal, and the tools I'm developing, explicitly bring those two worlds together."

There tends to be an assumption that the two are separate. But Buechley, who begins teaching a "design for empowerment" class in September, says her work shows they can be combined and that there are "rich design and engineering possibilities" from doing so.

The lab, where she rubs shoulders with musicians, robotics experts and specialists in the social aspects of information technology, is an exciting environment.

"It's fantastic. The colleagues I have are mind-blowing - both the calibre of the people there and the diversity is unparalleled. No other institution has that quality and diversity."

And she likes the direction Moss is taking the lab in. "He really cares about the social impact of technology."Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist.