ALICE BUSO
Ph.D. Candidate – Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
SUPERVISORS
Prof. dr. Elvin Karana
Prof. dr. ir. Kaspar Jansen
Dr. Holly McQuillan
Alice Buso is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, researching Animated Textiles. Her PhD aims to unveil the potential of Animated Textiles for novel experiential and performative possibilities through the lenses of Materials Experience. Alice is originally from Italy, where she obtained a BSc in Product Design from Politecnico di Torino. In 2017 she moved to the Netherlands to pursue the MSc in Integrated Product Design at TU Delft. After graduation, she started to work at the same university as a researcher, extending her master’s final project on soft robotics for comfort applications. During this period, she developed an interest in understanding how emerging technologies and materials can be merged with design.
CURRENT PROJECT
DESIGNING ACTIVE EXPERIENCE PATTERNS WITH ANIMATED TEXTILES: AN EXPLORATION OF PERFORMATIVITY
This PhD research introduces Animated Textiles as an overarching term for textiles that are active, adaptive and autonomous not only through computational elements (e.g., sensors and actuators) but also through their inherent chemical, structural, or biological qualities. Thus, Animated Textiles expands the current definition of Smart Textiles, considering both the smartness of digital or physical components and the intrinsic mechanical qualities of textiles as equally significant in their final expression and function.
This PhD aims to investigate the experiential potential of Animated Textiles, with a focus on their performativity, i.e., actions and performances a textile material elicits from people. Seamless connections between the material qualities and performativity, referred to as active experience patterns in materials experience (Giaccardi and Karana, 2015), can help Animated Textiles to be more easily assimilated in our everyday lives, as part of our daily practices, and keep them remain relevant for a longer time. Accordingly, Alice poses the questions: How do we design for certain actions in Animated Textiles? What role do textile qualities, both digital and physical, play in the interaction with Animated Textiles?
Publications
Buso, A., McQuillan, H., Jansen, K., Karana, E. (2022, June). The Unfolding of Textileness in Animated Textiles: An Exploration of Woven Textile-Forms. In DRS International Conference 2022, 25 June-3 July, Bilbao, Spain. [accepted]
Buso, A., Scharff, R. B. N., Doubrovski, E. L., Wu, J., Wang, C. C. L., & Vink, P. (2020, May). Soft Robotic Module for Sensing and Controlling Contact Force. In 2020 3rd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) (pp. 70-75). IEEE.
Buso, A., & Shitoot, N. (2019). Sensitivity of the foot in the flat and toe-off positions. Applied Ergonomics, 76, 57-63.