“Digit” is a live performance by Julien Maire, but it is also conceived to be presented as a piece of living art. You can see Julien sitting at a table writing text. He doesn’t use a pen, typewriter or a computer, he just slides with his fingers over a blank piece of paper and the printed text appears below them. When you have the chance to see this performance then you may have a close look at it, Julien will remain absorbed in his task.
It’s an amazing effect: there is no visible hardware, no computer, no display, no noise, no projection. It should stay a secret!
Growth Modeling Device is a kinetic installation by David Bowen. The machine uses lasers to scan a plant, in this case an onion, from 3 different angles. That data is then used in real-time by a fuse deposition modeler, to create a plastic model of the current state of the plant. This process takes place every 24 hours, but each time the plant is scanned from a different angle. In the end you have several models illustrating the growth of the plant. You can see a video of this installation here.
This is actually a little similar to an older project of David: Growth Rendering Device.
Almost a month ago I posted Pa++ern, a project by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi. I basically allows you to twitter a t-shirt design to an embroidery machine. The design has to be coded in a specific language which you try out here. I guess this little documentary by Matron shows you what’s it all about.
This is my shot at it: (<^<^<^<^<^<^<^)(i),.((+>> >+v > ^^^^),,…(<<<<<),,<<(v),vv),…
So this would be the first official today and tomorrow t-shirt, I hope I can buy one soon.
Here are a few more examples of finished t-shirts.
The problem with most touchscreens is that you don’t get any tactile feedback. Touch the Invisibles, a project by nosigner, Hiroyuki Ando, Junji Watanabe and Eisuke Kusachi, let you feel what’s happening on the screen. They placed a small vibrator on the fingernail and by tracking the position of the finger with the touch screen, the user can get some tactile feedback. It’s probably not the most elegant solution to this problem, but I would like to try it out anyway.
Touch the Invisibles will be on display at siggraph 09.
Sticky Light is a project by Alvaro Cassinelli, Kuribara Yusaku and Stephane Perrin of the Department of Information Physics and Computing at the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory of the university of Tokyo. Indeed, this should already spark you interest.
Sticky Light is a 3d tracking technology using a laser diode (low power), a pair of steering mirrors and a single non-imaging photodetector. The big difference to other tracking technologies is the fact that the Sticky Light doesn’t use a camera or projector. So what could you do with? It can track the contour of objects and even augment real-time drawings. Or you could build games like air hockey or a pinball game. Or … just watch this video, after 2 minutes they show you the games demo.
Daito Manabe visited the lab recently and added some functionality to the system: sound. soundLight can now generate sounds based on the movement of the laser.
I assume that you all know about TED by now and that we all want to go there … Golan Levin, half artist half engineer, was one of the speakers at TED last February. He has done the most amazing projects like Messa di Voce or Double-Taker. Yes, I’m a fan. So I can recommend you to watch his presentation.
“Funktionide – New Promises” is the title of the bachelor thesis of Stefan Ulrich. He researched how new materials and technologies will change the way we will design and interact with products. He believes that product will become alive and will have some sort of own behavior.
This first video shows you his test setup with several, different electroactive polymers. He used an arduino board to control the several experiments. You should really watch it, I guess you don’t see electroactive polymers on a daily basis. By the way the video is very well edited.
The second video is a concept visualisation of such a possible future product.
Pa++ern is a new project by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi. They basically hooked up an embroidery machine with Twitter. A special language was developed to encode designs in the 140 character limit of Twitter. I guess the images below show you how it works.
You can go and see it from this Saturday on at the Beams Gallery in Tokyo.
On the left you can see the tweet: [ <<<^],+[vv],[^],+[>],[v], >>+n[^],[>],vvv[<],vvv+[n>], >>+[^],, >>+[v],, [>^<]>,>n+[>],[v],[<n],[^].
And on the right the graphical translation.
Of course, some more complex designs are possible too.
Hiroo Iwata developed these Robot Tiles. You have to imagine them as movable floor tiles which arrange them automatically in front of you as you walk. They’re covered with KURALON® EC, a textile made of conductive fibers. So when you step on it, it can detect in with direction you’re heading. It was part of the Tokyo Fiber ‘09 Senseware exhibition during the Milan furniture fair.
As always, a video will make it clear to you.
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