French-born and Denmark-based designer Jo-anne Kowalski is knitting design and technology together. She spoke this week at the Open Design Festival, in Cape Town. Explain how you marry coding and knittingI've been experimenting with textiles that can be used to build electronic circuits. For example, knitting a piece of fabric with a conductive yarn and integrating it into a circuit with a micro controller can transform LEDs.Zzippers, or Velcro, into conductors. I have also used electronic components and micro-controller boards (tiny computers) made especially for textiles applications. They are prettier than traditional boards, can be sewn onto fabric, and are sometimes even washable.How did you become interested in linking design and technology?I've always been fascinated by electronics, and by how machines work. At university, I took classes in coding and focused on knitting technology for my master's degree project. A traditional industrial hand-knitting machine gave me ideas about building knitting devices. I later played with an open-source project called OpenKnit by a Spanish artist who was interested in hacking knitting machines. He developed a low-cost machine that could be fabricated by anyone in a Fablab: through 3D printing, laser cutting, Arduino boards, coding and a lot of screws. It allows anybody to knit without knowing anything about knitting.How do the machines create a piece of fabric?You enter measurements and the Arduino code sets itself up to knit the wanted size. Because I assembled my own machine I have my own coding.What kind of materials do you use and how do you build a circuit in clothing?In the last decade textiles have been developed especially for wearable electronic work - both fabric and yarn. Traditional properties of fabric, such as flexibility, fit the electronic environment perfectly. You can, for example, control the intensity of a current by stretching and relaxing a piece of fabric made of conductive thread.Conductive fabric is already on the market and there are very technical looking ones, with good, stable conductive properties, and some that you would not believe are conductive - for example, wool or cotton conductive thread, which are just a mix of natural and conductive fibres.Is the outcome of this new technology wearable?It can be. If I use conductive yarn to make a sweater, I can use it as a huge soft circuit to play with.What are the benefits of the final product?They are symbolic of a way of producing things the integral values of which are not just financial but also educational and interactive. Another thing is the potential this kind of tool has for local production, small series, small-scale production sites or projects. It gives craftsmanship another dimension.Will it be possible some day to mass produce your knitted items?I do once-off because mass production doesn't interest me. I'm researching and experimenting to find new tools and mediums of expression.When it comes to wearable technology, the production is less of an issue than people's receptivity to it. Despite the fact that digital systems surround us more and more, wearables still have a kind of UFO aura that opens perspective in creative fields but is much harder for the public to understand because there is no application yet that makes sense of it.What other uses are there for coded knitting?Another wearable application could be in health. Smart textiles do well for medical purposes, such as physical rehabilitation or re-education. They can support a certain perception of the surroundings, and aid the development of communication, for example with autism...