I started this week by giving a lecture at my old school ‘Lunds Konst/Designskola’ in Lund, where I did my foundation course in Art and Design. It was great fun to come back and meet all the students studying there now and see how the school has developed since I was a student there.

I gave a lecture about Smart Textiles and my journey from Lunds Konst/Designskola, where I graduated in 2002, to my current research in Smart Textiles and dynamic textile expressions. Back then I was being set on becoming a product and furniture designer, but life had a slightly different plan. When I was preparing the presentation I realized that it had been a long time since I has reflected on what I had done during these years. It was great fun to go through all the old projects and to see how different opportunities had presented themselves along the way. For example how my Smart Textile interest was born during one single lecture on ‘Innovative Textiles’ at Trent University in England in 2004, when Smart Textiles were just starting to become a concept in research. When I came back to Sweden from my semester at Trent I didn’t know that this was to become such a long-term commitment, but my gut feeling told me this was really interesting and I knew I wanted to work with Smart Textiles in my final Bachelor-project. One thing lead to another and years later I am still equally passionate and interested in the subject of add-value textiless, changeability and dynamic expressions. The thread of life really is amazing, isn’t it?

And how about you? Has something small resulted in life-long passions?

And thanks to Cecila at Lunds Konst/Designskola for having me back for a day.

/Marie

Picture: Photochromic threads (UV-sensitive) that I extruded at Heriot-Watt University in collaboration with Dr. Ibrahim. Photo by Imaginara.