Tag Archives: amy pickup

photo credit: Amy Pickup

As South by Southwest (SXSW) is taking over Austin, TX in Dallas the team at KERA was busy working on a story about how high-tech is meeting high-fashion. The Art+Seek article written by Lauren Silverman covers the role of technology and it’s history in fashion starting with MIT’s “wearable computer.”  Silverman spoke with Designer Jennifer Darmour who was at SXSW interactive talk about the movement to blend technology and fashion more seamlessly.

In Silverman’s article she mentions a prototype garment using the LilyPad Arduino which is what Professor Kim Knight uses in her Fashioning Circuits class here on the UTD campus.

“Ping” allows you to send messages to your friends on Facebook with different gestures. Then there’s custom software that translates your gestures into messages. You could then customize the messages, a flip of your hood could send a note you’re leaving home and untying a belt could send a message you’ve finished work or are relaxing.”

Fashioning Circuits course also uses products from SparkFun Electronics and Silverman interviewed Dia Campbell about their wearable technology.

“marrying technology and fashion is empowering.”

Dia Campbell was also part of EMAC graduate student, Amy Pickup’s Fashioning Circuits camp to spark young girls interest in art and technology. Silverman spoke with Amy about her drive to create a summer camp for girls at Oil and Cotton appropriately titled Electronic Fashion Camp. Over three days, girls learned about circuitry, coding, and crafting to create their own LilyPad Arduino project. Amy Pickup continues this project through her website, etiquette creative.

photo credit: Amy Pickup

After taking Dr. Kim Knight’s Fashioning Circuits course, Amy Pickup BS’09, MS’12 knew she wanted to use her knowledge of art and technology to make a positive impact on the world.

Amy Pickup, a graduate of the EMAC program, teaches campers.

At the heart of Pickup’s inspiration was a LilyPad Arduino, a microcontroller board used in class that can create electronic fashion when sewn to fabric using conductive thread. She recognized the LilyPad as more than a means to a fashionable ending. Pickup saw it as a perfect opportunity to get young women interested in programming, coding, circuits and, ultimately, in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers via fashion.

After teaching 20 fourth- and-fifth-grade girls how to use the LilyPad Arduino alongside her Emerging Media and Communications’ colleagues at the Design Your World Conference in Arlington this summer, Pickup was ready to take her passion to the next level. Following the conference, she founded Etiquette Creative, a community of engineers, technologists, artists, and media experts working to “empower girls with the ability to make an informed choice about their future by exposing them to new technologies that interest them.”

Tapping their personal and professional contacts, as well as those from the Design Your World Conference and UT Dallas, the women of Etiquette Creative spent their summer planning a three-day camp that would encourage girls to explore opportunities in both fashion and STEM fields.

Twenty-four girls from the ages of 10 to 14 registered for the camp, half of whom were sponsored through Etiquette Creative’s partnerships with local engineering companies. Hosted at Oil & Cotton, a public art studio in the Bishop Arts district of Dallas, the camp introduced the group to LilyPad Arduino and allowed each girl to create her own electronic fashion project under the careful instruction of arts and technology professionals. The girls also benefitted from the expertise of UT Dallas students like Julie Strickland, a current mechanical engineering graduate student and senior mechanical engineer at Raytheon.

“Through Etiquette Creative, we have established an amazing community of women in technology, media, and fashion,” Pickup said. “I hope to build upon the camp’s curriculum and make it an annual event where young girls can learn to love technology like I do.”