Birce Ozkan is a designer, lecturer, and technologist working on the intersection of interaction design, biomimetics, fashion design and wearable technologies. She obtained her MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons School of Design in New York where she currently teaches Interactive Garments course, soon after her undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and International Relations at the Koc University in Istanbul.
Her work mainly focuses on creating body-centric interfaces and experiences that can augment the interactions humans have with themselves and their surroundings combining design, technology, science, and nature. She is interested in exploring a variety of different application areas to enhance human nature through embedded computing systems and developing futuristic technologies that can adapt their behavior in response to environmental factors derived from natural systems. Her craftsmanship with emerging technologies surpasses the boundaries of design and technology not only to serve a functional purpose but also to raise awareness through interactive, expressive and responsive interfaces and experiences for a better future. She also specializes in physical computing, programming, sensor technologies, e-textile, material explorations and digital fabrication technologies.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at SXSW, la Gaîté Lyrique Paris, ISWC Japan, Digi.logue Istanbul, Interlaced London, NYC Media Lab, Unilever Digital Innovation Lab, the HFI Institute, Engadget Expand and New York Fashion Week and has been published internationally in many prestigious publications including VICE, Observer, Fast Company, Dezeen, Designboom, PSFK, Voici, Huffington Post and Discovery Channel. She has won several awards including ISWC Japan Jury Award and recipient of Unilever New York Fellowship. She recently contributed and curated Wearable Technology and Functional Garments Exhibition at SXSW Interactive Austin, TX.
Fall: Interactive garment that mimics nature’s responsive systems through hidden electronic mechanism.
Fall is an interactive garment and that mimics nature’s responsive systems through a hidden electronic mechanism. The behavior of the garment is inspired by nature’s seasonal behavior of defoliation, the process through which trees naturally lose their leaves. The piece reacts to the simulated effects of surrounding environmental factors. The objective is not only to augment a garment’s functionality but also to use its qualified technology as an instrument to create an expressive and informative interactive piece. “My project was evolved around the questions What if when the temperature got hot suddenly, our clothes would start to break apart in response? What if they had the skill to behave depending on the surrounding conditions? What if garments had the ability to sense the environment just like living organisms?”