Art, design and technological developments are mostly based on the human body and the environment. Nevertheless, prototyping processes are mainly oriented for manufacturing with hard materials and are hence not always suitable for unusual and individual applications. The emergent process of soft and smart prototyping has a hands- on approach, exploring the intelligence and beauty of more natural processes applied for different purposes such as lightweight and bio-materials, wearables, and soft robotics. Places like FabLabs, are interfacing the expertise, interdisciplinary, and tools for rethinking new ways of creating products and actuating from the local to the global community.
In the following session, you will find three projects that show the application of the smart and soft prototyping approach. FabMaterials is a material library that engages users of FabLabs in an explorative journey through materials. The second project shows the develop- ment of dynamic assistive orthotics with digital fabrication, named MyOrthotics. Undercoding creates a reflection on the duality of the virtual and real world, bringing together the traditional work of textiles and their material effects and the interaction with digital media content.