Arpilleras Parlantes: Designing Educational Material for the Creation of Interactive Textile Art Based on a Traditional Chilean Craft.

Abstract

Electronic Textiles (eTextiles) and open source material has been entangled with "DIY" movements and hands on work to create new interactive interfaces. Studies have shown the potential these have to bring computational knowledge closer to new audiences. We address how eTextiles can approach a traditional textile art, specifically "Arpilleras" from Chile, to understand how each field contributes from a symbolic, material and technical perspective. Following participatory approach methods and STEAM guidelines to create an educational program, we observed how eTextiles can influence the creation of soft interactive interfaces that enhance the communicative character and cultural heritage of a craft, and the potential of their use in a pedagogical context by using a specially designed kit. Our study suggests that connecting technology with strong cultural identity craft, can help to reach new audiences, revitalize the traditional technique, and create new tools for expression and creativity.

Aproximaciones hacia una práctica sensible al género mediante tecnologías makers en la educación escolar chilena

“…Un ejemplo destacado es el trabajo sobre e-textiles, donde los estudiantes pueden adoptar un enfoque crítico al reflexionar sobre las decisiones de diseño tecnológico, su interacción con elecciones personales y suposiciones culturales, y la explícita consideración de los sesgos de género en las prácticas tecnológicas (Kafai y Burke, 2014). Además, en un contexto educativo chileno, se ha demostrado que el Aprendizaje Crítico de la Fabricación puede generar diálogos intergeneracionales y fusionar el patrimonio cultural con las nuevas tecnologías a través de la creación colaborativa (Guridi et al, 2021).…”

“…Por lo tanto, el diseño de aprendizaje tecnológico que ofrezca a los estudiantes enfoques iniciales para el conocimiento partiendo de materiales y acciones familiares podría considerarse un requisito técnico bajo, que, como demostró Beckwith et al (2006), podría aumentar la experimentación y la agencia femenina. Por ejemplo, Guridi et al (2021) argumentan que, en Chile, tras la provisión de material de exploración textil y elementos electrónicos, fue posible comunicar a los estudiantes que no había una diferencia significativa entre el conocimiento derivado de ambas interfaces.…”

Workshops in TEI: Development, Evaluation, Exploration, and Implementation

“…Workshops provide a venue to design on and with the body [68], as well as for learning about the bodily experience [14,35], with bodystorming being a common activity in design workshops [45,50,77]. Practical workshops form an important part of participatory design approaches e.g., co-design and co-creation [39,74,85]. In these approaches, end users and stakeholders are codesigners and actively take part in the design development.…”

“…There is a noticeable uptick in design development workshops reported within TEI conference papers in the last five years. It is possible to see an increasing number of research projects at TEI that use co-design or co-creation methods [38,39,50,62,65,67,74,79,85,[90][91][92][93][94], which may be the reason for the increasing presence of workshops over the years. The increase is minor for evaluation workshops, though it appears that workshops have been consistently used for evaluation over the last 15 years.…”