Music, textile, and record-keeping have a surprisingly close-knit relationship. Songs that modulate the tempo and rhythm of the craft of weaving have been almost synonymous with its practice. For instance, during the World Wars, knitting songs were written to buoy women’s spirits as they knitted clothes. Further, in indigenous cultures such as those in South America, fibres were used as recording-keeping devices (primarily known as quipus). Similarly, women of the Shipibo tribe that lives in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest are known for intricately embroidering textiles, a practice strongly linked to the rituals observed in their culture. These hypnotic patterns, stitched while the women chant icaros (a South American colloquialism for magic song), can be seen as visual records of these incantations. In that vein, what if one could listen to the music embedded visually in the textiles, blurring the lines between haptics and auditory senses? Combining digital jacquard weaving, sound synthesis, fractal geometry and algorithmic thinking, Hungary-based artist duo EJTECH’s Dung Dkar Cloak is an art-led multidisciplinary research project. It presents a combination of the visual with the sonic, creating a multi-sensory experience through the augmented textile technology developed by them.

The fabric was conceptualised as part of the duo’s research at the Material Research Hub within the Innovation Centre of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest and later observed and tested in a live environment through an interactive installation at Sound Scene at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., US. Focused on developing, expanding and exploring soft interfaces in their practice, the multidisciplinary artist duo works extensively with ‘hyperphysical interfaces, programmable matter and augmented textiles’, investigating networks and relationships between subject and object. They explain that the textile design is augmented with silver spun threads that work as the conductive elements in the interface. The embedded traces of these threads are the interactive areas that are sensitive to depth in touch and thus produce sounds. 

Talking about their research and design process for the textile in conversation with STIR, the duo mentioned, "Soft circuitry in itself is a very challenging approach when working with electronics. On the pro side, textiles are flexible and adaptable materials and work as amazing, intuitive interfaces. On the downside, they are prone to short circuits and the soft to hard connections can be very brittle. This is why we have been working very hard on creating the wireless connections between the textile interface and the main computing system.”

Swirling patterns and marbled knits define the fabric, making it look and feel mesmerising in its intricateness. As the artists elaborate, the pattern draws heavily on “fractals and the thought of recursiveness in infinite scale,” in this way explicitly making a connection between maths and textiles. Knitting patterns are mathematical and precisely geometric. Further, as the designers observe, "Textiles [are] the metaphor that strings together the macrocosm and microcosm, the interwoven reflection of interpersonal relationships, the linking of vertices and edges to create a network, our second skin.” Bridging art and technology, the cloak brings this idea to the fore by highlighting the depth and delicateness of touch.

On being asked about the practicality and envisioned future use for the technology, they go on to mention that it has "the potential to uncover a new depth in design and evaluation of future interfaces for human-computer interaction. Dung Dkar Cloak demonstrates possibilities and aesthetics for augmented multi-sensorial textiles as a significant contribution to our understanding and further development of interaction design. It is hoped that it will also expand our approach and future applications on this subject considering the beneficial collaboration between craftsmanship and HCI practitioners.”

Driven by material research, the duo probe the liminal space between human and machine which is often taken for granted in an increasingly technological world. Bringing to fore the unfolding patterns between technology and the human body, the cloak’s design facilitates many unforeseen and perhaps unpredictable uses based on the two versions being developed: one with physical connections inputted into a BELA Board and a second where all interaction is sent wirelessly using OSC into a digital audio workstation. Not only does the cloak bring to the forefront the ways in which technology surrounds us, but the designers also mention that an intended future use for the textile might be in interior design, “as the textile is the fifth key building material, humble in nature and space.” Through the imagination of such an augmented reality, the duo's work asks us to confront the sensory and what that means in the age of technology.