Playing around with some ideas for the general look and feel of the gluco-pets (varying from somewhat detailed to very simple). These are super vague style experimentations, so the pets might not (and probably will not) look like any of these…
Went to the awesome Materials Symposium. I went because I have an interest in new, smart materials as well as sustainable materials.
There were three great speakers (and one who really should hang out with Clive Dilnot; they could make painfully text-heavy slides together).
The talk given by the Bare Conductive was really cool, especially since the guy spoke to their methods of rethinking materials and innovating by asking others to play with their stuff.
Elisabeth de Senneville showed a great deal of her works using a wide range of materials she’s innovating. I was especially interested in her Electronic Ink bracelets (which uses a technology I wish to play with) and her fiber-optic weaves.
I was also interested in the stuff Alice Chun talked about, especially her examples of work other people are doing in order to assure sustainability. For example, I didn’t know that bamboo could grow a 24 inches over night and also repel bed bugs, or that people have made wool from milk.
Finally, I am not really into scent tech; especially after the heavy smell of flowers gave my already-bogged-down-with-pollen brain a headache.
Just wanted to provide a brief summary of the Materials Workshop and Symposium that a few of us got a chance to take part in this week. The daytime workshop was lead by Elisabeth de Senneville and her grad students Cristobal and Martin. It was great to get to meet them, particular Martin as he is working on designing an instrument of his own, the Flampour, which though it doesn’t use MIDI or sound (it plays only in light) is analogous to my own work so it is great to know I have someone from a very different background that I can bounce ideas off of.
Elisabeth runs the textile innovation lab at EnSAD, where she has been inventing and designing for almost thirty years. She brought five fabrics, four of them her own invention, with her to the workshop – bioluminescent felt, resistant cotton fabric, liquid crystical polyester (that changes color from navy to bright blue when stretched) and woven fiber optics from her lab, and then volcanically coated biomagnetic fabric made at a lab in portugal.
For the workshop, we were given partners (I ended up with Chanthi, a third year undergrad Fashion Student) and were asked to draw four cards from provided decks to gain inspiration.
We immediately began to ideate around creating a line of activewear using the LC fabric, as it would both play to the materials strengths (stretchiness, motion related changes). You can see our process and final results here
That evenings symposium consisted of Elisabeth explaining her process and also included a scentmaker and another Parsons professor, this one from the architecture school.
But the most interesting part of the night was Matt Johnson and his incredible conductive ink, Bare Conductive
This stuff is truly amazing. They had demos set up that used this simple ink as wiring, as a flex sensor, and amazingly as a very accurate rangefinder! The possibilities of this technology are so massive, and its connection to my own work so strong, that I was incredibly excited to get a chance to play with it and can’t wait till we get some of our own (about six months out) to play with!
Here is a prototype triangle for my Ghost Music Prototypes to date. As you can no doubt see, my prototypes to date have fallen very strongly in the implementation quadrant, and I am definitely planning on spending the next few rounds of iteration focusing more extensively on the look and feel of the project. Early user feedback has confirmed the need to work on this area of development, as to a person everyone who has played the glove has claimed that it works very well, but it is neither as cool nor as silly as they thought the experience would be when I first explained it to them.
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Great suggestions all!
So to recap – Chris suggested actually using the trumpet mechanics to make this work, by putting the sensor at the end of the process and actually changing the over all pressure using the buttons as valves. I think this is a very interesting suggestion and one I hadn’t thought about yet. I think in the end this isn’t the direction I want to go, as the overall feedback has been MORE pantomime not less, but great avenue of thinking.
Lief suggested two things – one, going back to flex sensors, this time using an enclosure; two, using a guitar string being stretched on the back of the hand as the flex sensor. Both things I’ll explore.
Hilal – as you mentioned i should definitely get in touch with cecilia again to discuss!
Finally, great suggestion on the tilt sensor Yuri! I will be getting my hands on all of these asap so that I will hopefully have version 2 ready to go next monday!
This short video from Noam Toran is brilliant. These objects would not be the same if they were just shown as an exhibit display.
more videos from Toran in his vimeo account
And his website that contains many screenshots of his videos that are not published on vimeo
Thanks for posting this (on both blogs!). Makes me wonder what medium our mini-thesis for “computation” can really be.
you thought about that already… just make it real “flush” it out. The good part is that in a video you can fake anything!!! 🙂
Everyone in a one block radius just heard me explode in a laugh.
You guys are the coolest. Among the funniest things ever created on the Internet.
Brilliant 🙂
Evander Batson
xinhe feng
FluffyLeecy
frankiezek
gaboratparsons
giang063
gracegotlost
lauriewaxman
Siwen Li
Xiaofeng Lin
Yury Gitman
mar28th
Max(TONG WEN)
Soohyun
sabotai
Susan Lin
scottpeterman, and 
hilalkoyuncu are discussing. 
Making Toys 
hilalkoyuncu 5:35 am on April 3, 2011 Permalink |
Bree these look beautiful, very expressive!
scottpeterman 12:28 am on April 4, 2011 Permalink |
Love the sad dragon!