In his paper “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science,” Andy Clark seminally proposed that the brain's job is to predict whatever information is coming “next” on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents, such as humans. Survival however crucially depends on rapid and accurate information processing of what is happening in the here and now. Hence, the term “next” in Clark's seminal formulation must include not only the temporal dimension (i.e., what is perceived now) but also the spatial dimension (i.e., what is perceived here or next-to-my-body). In this paper, we propose to focus on perceptual experiences that happen “next,” i.e., close-to-my-body. This is because perceptual processing of proximal sensory inputs has a key impact on the organism's survival. Specifically, we focus on tactile experiences mediated by the skin and what we will call the “extended skin” or “second skin,” that is, immediate objects/materials that envelop closely to our skin, namely, clothes. We propose that the skin and tactile experiences are not a mere border separating the self and world. Rather, they simultaneously and inherently distinguish and connect the bodily self to its environment. Hence, these proximal and pervasive tactile experiences can be viewed as a “transparent bridge” intrinsically relating and facilitating exchanges between the self and the physical and social world. We conclude with potential implications of this observation for the case of Depersonalization Disorder, a condition that makes people feel estranged and detached from their self, body, and the world.

Handling textiles is not only a semantic experience, but also an emotional one. Whilst handling a textile is crucial for its appreciation and understanding, this channel is still little explored in the digital realm, where focus has been given to the haptic feedback aspect of handling. In this paper, we discuss the importance of touch behaviour in interactive digital handling to allow people to explore, emotionally engage with and understand textile properties. We build on our findings from previous studies, where we investigated how people handle fabrics in real-life situations and more generally how their touch behaviour may affect the experience, relating it to literature from textile, HCI, embodied cognition and embodied affect to discuss how current technology should develop to provide a more realistic touch experience. Additionally, we consider how crowd sourcing of the textile experience could be extended by taking into account non-verbal expressions of textile-handling experience. We show that further knowledge is needed to design interactive technology that supports active and unconstrained touch, as well as the affective aspects of experience

Current interactive media presentations of textiles provide an impoverished communication of their 'textile hand', that is their weight, drape, how they feel to touch. These are complex properties experienced through the visual, tactile, auditory and proprioceptive senses and are currently lost when textile materials are presented in interactive video. This paper offers a new perspective from which the production of multi-touch interactive video representations of the tactile qualities of materials is considered. Through an understanding of hand properties of textiles and how people inherently touch and handle them, we are able to develop methods to animate and bring these properties alive using design methods. Observational studies were conducted, noting gestures consumers used to evaluate textile hand. Replicating the appropriate textile deformations for these gestures in interactive video was explored as a design problem. The resulting digital textile swatches and their interactive behavior were then evaluated for their ability to communicate tactile qualities similar to those of the real textiles.

Studying tactile experience is important and timely, considering how this channel is being harnessed both in terms of human interaction and for technological developments that rely on it to enhance experience of products and services. Research into tactile experience to date is present mostly within the social context, but there are not many studies of the understanding of tactile experience in interaction with objects. In this paper, we use textiles as a case study to investigate how we can get people to talk about this experience, and to understand what may be important to consider when designing technology to support it. We present a qualitative exploratory study using the "Elicitation Interview" method to obtain a first-person verbal description of experiential processes. We conducted an initial study with 6 experienced professionals from the fashion and textiles area. The analysis revealed that there are two types of touch behaviour in experiencing textiles, active and passive, which happen through 'Active hand', 'Passive body' and 'Active tool-hand'. They can occur in any order, and with different degrees of importance and frequency in the 3 tactile-based phases of the textile selection process-Situating, Simulating and Stimulating-and the interaction has different modes in each. We discuss these emerging themes in the textile touch process, to inform the design of technology to support it, and to take the textile touching experience to further understand aspects of affective touch beyond social touch.

Tactile experiences of textile materials are difficult to communicate and elicit. To interrogate this space we propose the tactile triangle, a framework to facilitate systematic analysis and comparison of tactile experiences. The three levels reflect different aspects of tactile experience and possible methods to capture them: physical properties, in which human senses or objective testing measure fabric properties; the perceptual space level in which triadic comparisons reveal combinations of various dimensions which capture and describe tactile experiences; and finally the communication level, in which design games elicit languages communicating tactile perceptions. A case study illustrates the framework's use to compare the tactile experiences of textiles in experts and consumers. The results show expert and consumer perceptions overlapped and correlated well to objective measures except in the perception of temperature. We conclude by discussing the framework's effectiveness, the contribution of individual methods, and its potential as a communication tool for designers.Keywords: textile; fabric; sensory; touch; perception; aesthetics. Biographical notes: Douglas Atkinson is a Research Fellow at The Digital Anthropology Lab, London College of Fashion. His work explores how the digital can be used to infer and represent sensory and emotional aspects of human experience, which are crucial to our identities, relationships to fashion items and the experience of fashion makers. In parallel, he investigates the changes in contemporary design practice due to increasing detachment from material experience. He has previously conducted RCUK, ESRC and EPSRC

No abstract

Super technology is going to ask for super tactility' (Lidewii Edelkoort). Exploring this statement, this chapter reflects on the disconnection between digital fashion tools that lack sensory feedback and the critical role of designers' embodied experience for their practice. In order to support this discussion, additional literature is brought in, which shows that in dance bodily engagement is crucial for supporting and enhancing the creative process. This is done to explore aspects of mediation and embodiment further, and to propose a research agenda for the investigation of textile experience.

The enzymes have been gaining more importance in different fields, among the most important the pharmaceutical field. However, due to the protein nature of the enzymes, a significant part of them presents high instability under certain conditions of use. A great way to stabilize them is to use immobilization techniques. Bromelain from pineapple has shown potential to be used in the treatment of burn-like skin injuries and superficial injuries. Biocatalytic textile fibers from cellulose of sugarcane bagasse were prepared using surface functionalization with epichlorohydrin (4% v/v) and glutaraldehyde (0.5% v/v), and 1-ethyl-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide and bromelain immobilization by covalent bonding in the fibers. The best immobilization results for the bromelain enzyme immobilization were using the aminopropyltriethoxysilane and glutaraldehyde activating agent at pH 7 to values of 68.97% and 88.14% for total protein content and enzyme activity, respectively. Considering the approach described in this paper, others advanced materials from pulp fibers and bioprocesses might be developed using bromelain and other enzymes for the target applications.