“metamoCrochet: Augmenting Crocheting with Bi-stable Color Changing Inks” by Okazaki, Nakagaki and Kakehi

  • ©Momoko Okazaki, Ken Nakagaki, and Yasuaki Kakehi

  • ©Momoko Okazaki, Ken Nakagaki, and Yasuaki Kakehi

  • ©Momoko Okazaki, Ken Nakagaki, and Yasuaki Kakehi

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Entry Number: 63

Title:

    metamoCrochet: Augmenting Crocheting with Bi-stable Color Changing Inks

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Abstract:


    Crochet is a handcraft that uses wool and a crochet hook to create cloth or three-dimensional objects, and to this day it has been enjoyed by many people. When changing the color of the wool while crocheting, it is common to integrate an additional color of yarn. However, adding wool every time you switch the color is time-consuming and it may affect the shape of the work itself. Therefore, we propose metamoCrochet which is a method that dynamically changes the color of the wool while knitting. By utilizing thermochromic wool and a crochet hook that generates heat at the tip, users can seamlessly change the color of wool (Fig 1). It will save the user’s trouble of adding wool and enable the user to crochet in his or her intended patterns of colors. Moreover, controlling the wool’s color according to unconscious factors such as emotional or environmental transitions can establish a novel expression that embeds information in crocheted work.
    There has been research, such as ShaderPrinter [Saakes et al. 2012], that utilizes thermochromic ink to change the color or pattern of an object by controlling the applied heat. In contrast, this research utilizes the material of wool to enable interactive fabrication in manual work. Moreover, Spyn [Rosner et al. 2010] is a system that records the manual process of knitting as digital data, such as video or audio, in order to give away knitted work with the data of its manual process. However in our research we propose a system that converts the manual process of crocheting to the wools’ color. Though the shade of color is vaguer than digital data, in this system the information of the manual process is blended into the work, accordingly becoming the design itself.

References:


    1. Saakes, D., Inami, M., Igarashi, T., Koizumi, N., and Raskar, R. 2012. Shader Printer. In SIGGRAPH 2012 Emerging Technologies, ACM.
    2. Rosner, D.-K., and Ryokai, K. 2010. Spyn: Augmenting the Creative and Communicative Potential of Craft. In CHI ’10 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.

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