✽✽ IMPORTANT ✽✽ 
The lecture at 14:30-15:30 in Auditorium 4 is open to all. To participate in the workshop (from 15:30-17:30 at 4A56), you need to reserve a ticket.

14:30 - 15:30 (CET) Open Guest Lecture with Sofía Guridi - Soft Interfaces: Crafting Biomaterials for Careful Textile-based Interactions [Room: AUD 4]
This presentation explores the use of biomaterials in creating electronic textiles for tangible interaction. These material combinations show great potential for developing biodegradable, soft interfaces made from renewable sources, while offering a rich array of sensory qualities that engage the human body.

I will begin by introducing electronic textiles and their relevance within HCI, addressing their associated sustainability challenges. Next, I will present what biomaterials are, along with current examples of how they can be used to craft flexible sustainable electronic components. Finally, I will focus on the specific properties and aesthetics emerging at the intersection of biomaterials, textiles, and electronics, and how these can enable interactive technologies that embrace fragility, transformation, care, and multisensorial engagement.

Through this practice-based approach, I will propose an imaginative path toward more sustainable and meaningful artefacts for our everyday digital encounters.

15:30 - 17:30 (CET) Workshop with Sofía Guridi [Room: 4A56]
In this hands-on workshop, participants will envision new technology futures through fabulating on bio-based eTextile interactions, focusing on fragility as a guiding principle. Our current interactive interfaces are often rigid, homogenous, and mass-produced, often made from toxic or scarce long-lasting materials and designed to become obsolete. Could we imagine alternatives that are safe, flexible, soft, and temporary? And could their inherent fragility be considered as a strength for sustainable interaction possibilities?

The workshop will begin with a short writing activity, where participants will reflect on the idea of fragility. They will then interact with bio-based eTextile prototypes, noting their physical and interactional impressions. Returning to the theme of fragility, participants will map their daily interactions with digital devices such as phones or smartwatches, to identify qualities of fragility embedded in them. Next, each participant will choose one interaction with an artefact, and creatively use fabulation approaches to reimagine it as a fragile, bio-based eTextile interface, using physical materials. The developed fabulation narratives will also be enriched with text, textures, and bodily sensations.

About Feminist Technoscience in Practice
ETHOS Lab invites interested students, researchers, and practitioners to take part in a series of events titled ‘Feminist Technoscience in Practice’. The events focus on the practical application of digital and critical feminist methods.

The events are rooted in technical practices but are tailored to accommodate any level of technical experience. Participation is open and free for anyone interested, but registration is required.

About the guest lecturer:
Sofía Guridi is a designer pursuing a PhD in Sustainable Computational Fabrics at Aalto University, as part of the Fashion/Textiles Futures research group and the Bioinnovation Center. She conducts interdisciplinary work at the intersection of textiles, electronics, and biomaterials to create interactive textiles. Combining traditional textile knowledge with material experimentation, her experience spans from applied research to artistic installations. You can find her work at https://sofiaguridi.xyz/start