“Captain Electric and Battery Boy” is the code name for a collection of garments developed at XS Labs in Montreal that directly address issues of power consumption and sustainability by creating body-worn, textile-based “living organisms”. We are creating dynamic electronic garments that harness power from the body and use that energy to transform themselves in response to various internal and external stimuli.

XS Labs is a design research studio based in Montreal, where we develop electronic textiles, wearable computing, and reactive garments. We are concerned with the exploration of simple interactions that emphasize expressive qualities of electronic circuits and of the body. Of particular interest to XS Labs are the many relationships between our bodies and the architectural spaces that they inhabit. Our clothing is one of the first such structures, often talked about as a "second skin", which enables an important level of interface between the human flesh and the outside world, physically and metaphorically. This is why we are concerned with active materials that can be easily integrated into textile substrates and that can be controlled through soft electronics.

An important research direction at XS Labs attempts to solve technical problems and look at new construction methods for the development of textile substrates that function as soft electronic circuit boards. We construct simple electronic components with techniques such as weaving, sewing, embroidering, and tying knots. Soft electronics are important, since wearable technologies are intrinsically close to the body and need to be comfortable and even pleasurable to wear.

 

 

 

 

Website designed by Joanna Berzowska and Miliana Sesartic