Abstract

The recent increase in consumption of digital devices has attracted attention to the functions and uses of e-textiles as a marketable product. This article investigates the role of e-textiles within the broader framework of the digitization of everyday life. In general, I focus on the crucial role that textiles can play in our daily surrounding, and, more specifically, I elaborate on the relationship between textiles and digital devices. Drawing heavily on Foucault’s notion of modern society as a panopticon and Deleuze’s “postscript on societies of control,” I scrutinize the impact of the digital age on the construction of social relations and how this process influences human behavior. The outcome is questioning the hegemony of instrumental rationality, a discourse that tends to constrain human life by modeling it in a controlled and efficient way, and leaves no option for escape. By creating interactive, textile jewelry, inspired by the shape of insects, I try to spark a debate on surveillance systems in the economic sphere of social life. The textile sensors monitor the employee's movements and transfer this information to a system that allows the employer to monitor the employee's behavior en mood. Technically, the research focuses on textile sensors. Different materials were developed by functional tests and user observations. For the theoretical background, contemporary projects of the field of e-textiles and tangible user interfaces are analyzed and discussed.