Innovations in digital fabrication technologies are increasingly enabling artists and designers to create data physicalizations in real time. In this paper, we discuss how we adapted a circular knitting machine to physicalize visitors at a local art gallery during the pandemic recovery year. To evaluate this year-long installation, we conducted design critiques with 15 individuals including those who worked in the building and lived alongside it for a year, as well as subject matter experts. We then iteratively worked with 11 of those individuals to gain insights for re-deploying the visualization for interpretation. Overall, this paper contributes long-term reflections and recommendations for using digital fabrication for real-time data physicalizations.

Lure of Slowness, hydrological Rhythms is an interactive, audiovisual augmented reality installation and multi-channel sound piece co-imagining watery interspecies relationships through the gelatinous lens of a snail. The Virtual installation is housed in the application Lure of Slowness available for download on Apple and Android store.

During the pandemic many individuals turned to handcrafts such as knitting to cope with the uncertainty and anxiety we were collectively feeling. In this artwork we wanted to bring knitting out of isolation and to use it as a method of community participation to document the “recovery” year at a local art gallery. In July 2021 we launched The Life of a Building at the Ottawa Art Gallery in Ottawa, Canada, which knits visitor data at the physical gallery as well as online interactions on the gallery website. Each month the colour of the yarn changes, creating a tangible, soft record of this unpredictable year. During TEI, the audience will be able to visit the gallery website, click a button to create their own row of stitches on the machine, and watch the knitting machine knit them into the installation through the livestream.

Monarch is a wearable electronics prototype that enables the wearer to amplify or extend body language through the use of a muscle-activated kinetic textile for the purpose of augmented social interaction. This pictorial details the second prototype stage with a focus on addressing the wearability [5,14], technical, and production challenges resulting from the first prototype [7]. The purpose of these improvements is to enable a small batch production of the prototype for further testing in daily life. Design decisions are brought to the foreground for observation and reflection, including those surrounding material choices and production methods. The result is a detailed visual account of the generative and evaluative discoveries [12] as well as a contribution of several recommendations that can be applied to small batch production of wearable electronic prototypes in a research lab context.

This studio invites participants to explore ways of extending physical expressivity through a combined use of wearable electronics and structural textile design. Participants are introduced to an electronics and material prototyping method developed by Social Body Lab for constructing kinetic textile body extensions intended for use in social interactions.

Monarch is a wearable and muscle-activated kinetic textile. It consists of textile forms attached to the shoulders that expand and contract in response to the movement of the wearer's muscles. By physically extending natural body language, Monarch explores how wearable technologies can be used as a form of personal expression, as well as how and when they can begin to feel like a visceral extension of self.