Elaine Igoe ("Change Matters" 2018) describes the postdigital as a moment when digital novelty fades, and its value becomes embedded in how we live, feel, and create. In textile and performance design, I believe we are already there.

In my research, I explore how puppetry and textile design share a unique sensitivity to material tension, both physical and symbolic. In puppetry, meaning emerges not just from what the puppet does, but from how its materials push against each other, how joints resist, how shadows fall. In textiles, especially those embedded with sensors or responsive pigments, that same kind of liveliness unfolds. It’s no longer about showcasing technology. It’s about letting materials carry the story.

We are no longer designing with "smart textiles" as a novelty. We are designing with them as partners. Responsive fabrics, shape-shifting fibres, and temperature-sensitive dyes act with their own timings and moods. They provoke dialogue. They resist. They perform.

This is the heart of the postdigital: not gadgets, but gestures. Not control, but conversation. Igoe’s “textasis” offers a powerful frame for thinking about the tension between what the textile is and what it does. It’s where design becomes dramaturgy, where the uncanny becomes expressive, and where materials become characters in their own right.