water map

By leo | Published: June 3, 2009

citizenwater

This week Scot Frank showed me his pre-alpha of Citizen Water, a cohesive effort to monitor water quality around the world in order to empower community advocacy and direct development efforts. The effort is two-pronged: Scot’s team has been on the ground in numerous locations to help locals test their own water quality using low-cost kits specially developed to work without training or electricity (below). An online database stores the water quality information on a map, so that governments and aid agencies can identify which areas need assistance (above). The combination of grassroots workshops with a global digital presence approach is becoming a hallmark of civic media projects, ensuring that no matter how widespread the adoption, there is an effort to represent and educate those without a voice.

citizenwater2

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magnetic chips

By leo | Published: May 28, 2009

littlebits

Ayah Bdeir launched ‘Little Bits‘ last week at Eyebeam: a kit of magnet-studded circuit components that naturally snap together with the right polarity. The idea is to make prototyping of simple interaction possible for those outside the electrical engineering profession – such as this example of a product designer experimenting with lights on a mock-up of a coffee machine (below). The little components are very sturdy, like tiny building blocks, transforming the traditionally ornate and delicate circuit components into a material in themselves. These electronic tectonics are inspiring not only for rapid prototyping, but also as a way to visualize the function and re-purposing of consumer products of all kinds.

littleBits coffeemaker from ayah bdeir on Vimeo.

Posted in customization, fabrication, lighting, materials, product design, tangible | Comments closed

steampunk servo

By leo | Published: May 26, 2009

plywoodservo

Fabricator extraordinaire Peter Schmitt designed this plywood servo from laser-cut plywood. The elaborate mechanism includes the circuitry to drive a motor to precise angles so it does double-duty as an object that teaches about physical fabrication and electronics. Instructions for the plywood servo can be found at the website of the Medialab class ‘Techniques for Design and Fabrication,’ and a paper describes the new field of hybrid physical-digital hacking or ‘Plywood Punk’.

plywoodservo2

Posted in 2d, 3d, fabrication, open objects | Comments closed

animal alphabet

By leo | Published: May 22, 2009

ashikawa-cover

ishikawa-gorilla

Last time I visited Japan I came upon a fascinating book by Shiho Ishikawa called Alphapet – an alphabet made of animals that you cut and fold from the pages of the book. The richly illustrated pages are scored to provide for elaborate folds. The web site is rich with videos and instructions for folding; unfortunately it only appears to be for sale in japan.

alphapet

Posted in 2d, 3d, children, fabrication | Comments closed

rate my landman

By leo | Published: May 21, 2009

landmanreportcard

The Extract project is an internet-based advocacy effort for land-owners being targeted by the oil and gas industries. Unaware of their rights, their land’s value or the health risks of drilling near residential areas, many residents of mineral-rich states unwittingly sacrifice the mineral rights to their property resulting in the propagation of thousands of wells on private land. The project is sponsored by MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, and is the brain child of Sara Wylie and Chris Csikszentmihalyi. The site hosts a suite of tools, including a ‘Landman Report Card (above)’ which works as a Ratemycop for the sometimes duplicitous representatives of the extractive industries. It also serves as an aggregator of information and resources, such as assistance filling out formal complaints. Internet advocacy holds considerable promise for its ability to bring together disparate communities spread across the country. On the other hand, internet access and literacy can keep many of the most vulnerable ignorant of their rights. This is why, together with the virtual portal, the Extract team has been traveling to affected areas in Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado to workshop the project:

Posted in blogogracy, environment, traceability | Comments closed

paper 2.0

By leo | Published: April 17, 2009

Humble paper – cheap, flexible, renewable – is becoming a medium of choice for ubiquitous computing through the popularization of augmented reality tags that can be read by cell phone and computer cameras everywhere. Above is a very elaborate simulation software running on a tangible interface – all controlled by printed paper. The videos shows a stock room in miniature, on top of which is projected data reflecting the capacity for storage and the speed of loading and unloading the shelves. The high-resolution projector makes it possible to project dynamic content onto pieces of paper even as these are rotated, blurring the line between the ink and the pixels. This was a project called TinkerSheets presented at TEI’09 by
Guillaume Zufferey, Patrick Jermann, Aurélien Lucchi, and Pierre Dillenbourg – the paper is here.

The system works because each piece of paper has a printed tag recognizable to the computer – these are the weird postage stamp-sized grids of black and white pixels everywhere. Of course, the tags themselves can be pretty ugly to us humans – that’s why popular optical tags made for the reacTIVision system were designed to appeal through anthropomorphic, cellular designs. Below is a screengrab from a popular ‘fiducial marker’ (optical tag) generator called fid.gen:

But these pixels still don’t mean anything to us – that’s why Enrico Costanza and Jeffrey Huang created Designable Visual Markers, where computers are trained to recognize any image – even these hand-drawn cartoons:

designablemarkers

Maybe one day people will use drawings to help think, invent and present ideas.

Posted in animation, augmented reality, interaction, materials, visualization | Comments closed

Machine Shoe

By leo | Published: March 19, 2009

Rotational Moulded Shoe by Ten Bhomer

Ten Bhomer‘s ‘Rotational Moulded Shoe’ is an anti-craft exploration that seeks to replace the manual process of shoe-making with a machine. A plastic shank is placed inside a mold with rubber resin, and as the mold is continuously rotated the rubber hardens into a shell akin to the way rubber duckies are made. While seemingly no different from the Puma Injex, these shoes are formally unique and unrelated to traditional paradigms. Perhaps a more worthwhile exploration will be to discover ways to expand traditional craft while producing attractive and cutting-edge designs that are as desirable as these futuristic heels but vastly more sustainable.

From the exhibit placard at the London Design Museum:

Trained as a product designer, Ten Bhomer uses her skills to explore and create footwear in an industrial production process as opposed to the traditions of a cobbler. The provesses are informed by both material and applications and resulting in shoes that no longer live within preconceived ideas of what shoes ought to look and feel like. Rotational Moulded Shoe uses rotational moudling as a footwear production process and has been developed for the installation ‘After Hours’ at the Krannert Art mUseum in the US. Rotational moudling is a process in which a negative mould is filled with a small amount of liquid and as the mould starts to rotate, this material solidifies against the inner walls of the mould, forming a shell, a hollow form. As this technique has never been attempted for shoe making in the past, a special rotation moulding machine has also been designed and made to achieve the desired effect.

Posted in fabrication, fashion, materials, product design, soft/glowing | Comments closed

one painting show

By leo | Published: March 17, 2009

I visited the Louvre DNP Museum Lab again this year to see their interactive installations developed around ‘The Slippers’ by the 17th Century Dutch painter Samuel van Hoogstraten. As in past exhibits, the show – which takes roughly one hour to see – focuses entirely on one piece of art on loan from the Louvre. Instead of spending the hour rushing through packed galleries, visitors to the Museum Lab have the luxury of concentrating on only one painting. The experience is far more memorable. In the sloppy video I montaged above, you can see several of the interactive installations that they have developed to reveal the rich symbology of the image. Touch screen interfaces are used to demonstrate the perspective of the interior scene and to call up the significance behind particular objects in the scene. Augmented reality tags on exhibit placards pull up an animated curator on the ubiquitous portable museum guide. Simple touch interfaces serve to research related texts and images. The Museum Lab makes a convincing argument for a new type of exhibition where more space is devoted to the study of artwork than to the art itself.

Posted in art, augmented reality, exhibit design, interaction, visualization | Tagged | Comments closed