INCREDIBLE PROJECT! Steampunk Professor Xavier Wheelchair Project – powered with an Adafruit Waveshield!
SMEEON writes…
Finally got around to adding together some video clips I took. I had a lot of people asking about what it does and how, so here is a little walk through.
I am big Mark Jenkins fan. I often look at the photos on his website and wonder what it might be like to be made of quality 3M product. For my Off The Roll submission I wanted to create a sculpture which explores everyday life…. when you’re made of tape.
The Fairytale Fashion Collection uses technology to create magical clothing in real life. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are used to create clothing with blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes. Research and development for the Fairytale Fashion collection are shared online at FairytaleFashion.org as an educational tool that teaches about science, math, and technology through fashion. Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center nonprofit. Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by mechanical engineering. She is a designer from Bravo’s Emmy nominated TV show, Project Runway season 2 and author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Diana is cofounder of NYC Resistor hacker group. Diana is currently a resident artist at Eyebeam.
Great show, nice to see everyone from the maker scene in NYC at the show too!
The Arecibo Message, one of the most famous messages transmitted as part of SETI, loosely translated, says: “Hi! We’re intelligent! We’re made of meat! Here’s where we live!”
Binary designs like the Arecibo message are popular with knitters and cross-stitchers since they can be pixelated easily. We found a pair of fingerless gloves, based on a muffler pattern. We think this type of binary pattern would be good for the message as well. It has also been made into a cross-stitched bookmark. We implemented the embroidered pixels as columns of satin stitching in a single color. The original binary message didn’t have any of the color coding that people have added to help explain it, and it seems more elegant to keep it this way. We machine embroidered the pattern on both ends of a piece of linen about 14″ x 76″. The linen is then sewn together on the back and at the ends, and turned right side out. The edges are stitched down to help it lie flat.
Most of us can’t tell our secant from our cotangent. But the forms are everywhere, and Nikki Graziano wants to help us see them. Graziano, a math and photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology, overlays graphs and their corresponding equations onto her carefully composed photos. “I wanted to create something that could communicate how awesome math is, to everyone,” she says. Graziano doesn’t go out looking for a specific function but lets one find her instead. Once she’s got an image she likes, Graziano whips up the numbers and tweaks the function until the graph it describes aligns perfectly with the photograph. See more of her Found Functions series at Nikkigraziano.com.
When graphed, this trigonometry function produces an ever-repeating wave of peaks and valleys that mirror the natural curves Graziano sees in plants. (October 2008.)
The ITP winter show 2009 (a two day exhibition of interactive projects, sound and physical computing at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program Tisch School of the Arts) is always a joy to visit (see MAKE’s coverage from earlier in the week). Each year we visit the show and try to pick out a few favorites, it’s always a challenge since there are usually quite a bit. That said, here are five interesting projects from this year’s show. The video above will give you a quick taste of what the show is all about too! And here are a bunch of photos. This post will also appear on MAKE later today…
fridgebuzzz MK1 – Guitar inspired MIDI controller consisting of 32 LED pushbuttons and 6 touch plate switches. The MK1 prototype is a user programmable MIDI controller featuring 32 LED pushbutton switches and 6 touch sensitive copper plate switches. An example user mapping would have the top row of twelve buttons be designated as major chords arranged in the cirle of fifths. The row below has minor chords arranged as the relative minor to the major chords. The touch sensitive switches, arranged as if they were strings on a guitar, trigger notes based on which chord button is pressed. The eight buttons located higher on the neck play a major or minor scale in the key of the last chord button that was pressed. The headstock contains six LEDs that flash when the corresponding touch plate is activated. Paul Rothman.
The Bed.A physical visualization of conflicts. The machine reads daily data from news organizations, and detects conflicts using semantics. The location of the news is then translated from Latitude Longitude to xy, and the plotters head drips paint on the translated location. Igal Nassima.
Dynamic Ground. Step on the platform and see how the units below your feet magically come to life… The Dynamic Ground is a responsive, kinetic floor constructed from deployable units. When passersby step on the platform, the tiles shift between a contracted state to an expanded state. Each unit is constructed from 7 interconnected hexagons that move in a continues circular movement, driven by one central servo motor, which is activated by a light sensor. Adam Lassy, Adi Marom.
Historical Radio. A radio which moves the listener through time and space. The historical radio uses a familiar interface to navigate through historical radio broadcasts from multiple genres of music and news. The tracks are curated to provide an educational experience, highlighting events across time (move through time) or across the world and genres at the same time (move through space). This device would fit in at a history museum, and is designed to be understandable and usable by anone who has ever used a radio: turn the tuning knob to move through time, turn the band selector switch to move through space. By selecting an automatic mode, the curation will take the listener along a path across time or space. David MIller, Jason Aston, Lucas Werthein.
Super Duper Cubes. A tangible interface to control music and video through midi, using a set of illuminated cubes. Super Duber Cubes are a tangible interface built to control music, games or visualizations. Each cube has a 3-axis gyroscope, a 3-axis accelerometer, plus wireless communication and built-in battery. This allows the user to turn and rotate the cubes without any wires attached. In one setup the user can change musical instruments by turning the left cube. By turning the right cube, the user can select between several parameters in the selected instrument. By rotating the left cube, the user can manipulate these parameters, e.g. turning down the volume, applying distortion or adding delay to the instrument. Nikolas Psaroudakis, Rune Madsen.
Launching tomorrow: Something like Play-Doh for industrial designers, Sugru is a modeling-clay-like silicone that can be used for everything from molding ergonomic grips to repairing leaky sneakers. Once removed from its packaging, it can be molded for a 30-minute period, and it then cures at room temperature in about 24 hours. Self-adhesive, waterproof, and dishwasher-safe.
