Wind-Powered Knitting Machine

Being an avid knitter i find the subject of this post to be very interesting. Young Dutch designer Merel Karhof of the Royal College of Arts in the UK developed the machine in order to find a way to harness wind energy and put it to use. She created the Wind Knitting Factory which makes scarves by the use of wind energy. "With the power of wind, a knitting machine knits from the outside towards the inside of a building. The knitted material is harvested from time to time and rounded-off in individually packaged scarves. Each scarf has its own label which tells you in how much time it has been knitted and on which date." From the looks of the video it seems like it can knit a pretty long scarf in under 20 minutes.

(See core77 post here.)

See Better to Learn Better Program

Designer Yves Behar of FuseProject has teamed up with the Mexican government to make a new program for the schoolchildren of Mexico called "See Better to Learn Better". The program gives free glasses to students who need them in order to learn in school. These children's bad vision is a very big problem in the Mexican school system. "11% of kids in Mexico don't learn because they can't see, and the problem is compounded by the stigma of glasses as a handicap." Each child can pick out which design combination they want to customize their pair of glasses. There are 5 different frame shapes and 7 different colors to choose from. The frames are a two-part design which makes it easy for the lenses to be put into place. They are made form a special kind of plastic called Grilamid which is virtually unbreakable so the glasses are very durable. The program plans to give out about 300,000 glasses each year.

(See original core77 post here.)

Nike Music Shoe

Sound artist Daito Manabe has turned Nike's Free Run+ running shoes into musical instruments. How, you may ask? Manabe, with the help form technical programmer Tomoaki Yanagisawa, outfitted the shoes with flex sensors and accelerometers. Then "processed the control signal and converted it to sound using the modular visual programming environment Max/MSP and Ableton's Max for Live". Each shoe actually gets plugged in and switched on and when bent and twisted each shoe creates a different digital noise. When watching the video it almost looks fake but each shoe is actually controlling live digital sound. The project is pretty cool but pales in comparison to some of Manabe's other amazing projects. Be sure to check them out here.

(See original article here. See Core77 post here.)

Fox & Freeze ff1 Chair

Belgium design duo James Van Vossel and Tom De Vrieze aka Fox & Freeze just released their first project. Its called the ff1 and it a lounge chair made out of a single sheet of synthetic felt. The design utilizes the whole piece of felt without any scrap pieces, except for the drilled out wholes for the flax ropes. The structure is self supporting and the rope keeps the chair together rather strongly, as illustrated in their video. The duo writes, "Starting from a square surface, the felt sheet is twisted and twisted again, jut like a scarf, ending in a symmetric and but also an asymmetric object, this is literally forms follows function." The felt is twisted in a very interesting way that is defiantly aesthetically pleasing from all angles. The chair is available for sale online for 275 euros.

Designing a Better Boarding Pass

Fed up with the horrible layout and design of his Delta boarding pas and with a whole flight time to spare, Squarespace's creative director Tyler Thompson found himself sketching a new design for his boarding pass. The main reason for his impulse to redesign was the bad organization of information on the ticket. The layout made it hard for him and other passengers to find their gate number and other important information. On his blog he writes from the perspective of Delta saying, "You're confused, lost, and just want to get on your flight, it's cool, we don't really care, and we sure as hell don't want to make this process easy and enjoyable for you. Instead we hired a small, blind, parakeet to layout your boarding pass, you know, just to keep you guessing." He created his layout in a logistical manner: flight number first, then gate number (because they tend to change often), then seat number, and then boarding zone number, all in a large easy-to-read font. For the flight times he integrated a simple color-coding system: white text in a black box for P.M. flights and black text in a white box for A.M. flights. Tyler's post sparked a lot of interest in others to come up with their own designs. Check out Tyler's original post and other's designs here.

(See original core77 post here.)

B-Cycle

The great idea of an urban bike sharing system is now in the works for the US. Similar systems have successfully been put into place around Europe, Velib in France and the Dublin Bicycle Program in Ireland (which i wrote about in an earlier post). This new program called B-Cycle has been created by an odd collaboration between the healthcare company Humana, bike manufacture Trek, and advertisement agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. This Plan B (hence the name B-Cycle) to automobiles is the beginning to a "new American philosophy of going". The plan is very simple: B-Stations which offer B-Cycles available for anyone to use, at a small fee, are set up around a city. The user can take their B-Cycles wherever they want: to work, to the store, to the park, and then they can return their bike to any B-Station. The first program is in the works around the city of Denver, Colorado. The B-Cycle website offers a program that they call the B-Effect, which shows how the B-Cycle system can effect your community. Their website is also hosting a sort of contest where you can vote for your town or city to have a B-Cycle system set up there. The following video explains the plan and the easy to use system.

(See original core77 post here)

Winscape

This crazy concoction of electronics called Winscape,is used to create virtual views that look like live scenes with video and sound. The complex set-up consists of a combination of two 46-in Panasonic TC-P4610 plasma screens, a Macbook, a Wii remote, a custom-built IR-emitting necklace, and an iPhone app. The setup tracks the movement of the necklace, worn by the viewer, to completely remake the exact seen from your point of view. With all the pieces it is about a $3000 project in total. Instructions on how to create your own setup are available on Winscape's RationalCraft webpage. Its pretty fascinating and I could definitely see it being utilized in the future if it were to be developed further into a neatly packaged product available for a more cost efficient price.

Here is a similar project using the same "head tracking" technology.

(See original core77 post here.)

Class Notes: Evan Roth

Evan Roth: Bad Ass Mother Fucker

- design, art, street art, popular culture

- background in architecture

"bored at work network": browse online and waste time- good audience

- appeal to curator and friends/people bored at work

- activism

- The Pirate Bay: use popular culture to spread information/internet/free culture

- open source and free culture- 5th element of hip-hop

Parsons (grad school): information visualization

- interest in curse words

- Straight Out of Compton: edit of only curse words (reduction, not remix)

- interested in creating a discussion about copyrighting, censorship, ect.

Graffiti and Technology
- free (as in free beer)

- free (as in free speech)

- peer systems in which individual players alter large and established systems.
- property: physical v.s. intellectual

project: editing postage labels

- quick weekend project

- hacking: small interventions that alter large systems

"Lazy like a fox"- how little work you can do to communicate your idea

Graffiti Taxonomy

- Tufti- eye is drawn to small differences

- lower east side- photos of tags- isolate characters in photoshop

- study on motion- computer application

- projections- reinserting motion into city

Eyebeam- technology non-profit

- award fellowships to do research, have to release work in open source.

- teamed up with James Powderly- LED throwies (rare-earth magnets)

- graffiti embedded with technology

How To Guide: Contagious Media + Source Code = Win!

Graffiti Research Lab- design tolls for graffiti artists and activists and make graffiti open source

- L.A.S.E.R. Tag- motion tracking

Eyewriter- for people with paralysis- eye motions create art

- Tempt- A.L.S. patient

Graffiti Analysis 2.0

- in 3-d space (z-axis is time)

- can download software and source code- open database

- 3-d modeling system- leads to 3-d printing

Jay-Z: Brooklyn We Go Hard

- released source code

Google Car (Fuck Google)- free art and technology organization (F.A.T.)

- Berlin, transmediale

- fuck google- 20 projects published on blog

- google street view- duplicated google car

- made it seem real with 1 tweet and webpage with map. then it was released after that it was a hoax.

- Turn the power structure inside out.

- learned flash in spare time while working in architecture- Joshua Davie

- meme- web media news

- advertising= lies, all about authenticity

- instructables. com

Viral Media For Artists: 11 Rules For Getting Famous on the Internet

-woostercollective

-boingboing- suggest a link

Class Guest Presentation: Evan Roth

Last Thursday afternoon me and my classmates were graced by the presence of Google's #1 Bad Ass Mother Fucker, Evan Roth. Although Evan calls himself an artist he is the exact opposite of what we think to be a traditional artist. He uses street art and popular culture to create his "weekend projects" such as his DIY project: USA/USB, and his more in-depth projects: Graffiti Analysis. Beyond the comical tones of his work is a more serious goal, to create and teach about open source media, activism, and free culture. Evan seemed to be a very down-to-earth, somewhat nerdy guy with a good sense of humor who is passionate about his work. I throughly enjoyed his talk and seeing his work with him explaining it right in front of us. I could go on for pages about everything that he talked about and showed us but my favorite project was probably L.A.S.E.R. Tag. Not only did he and his team at Eyebeam create and use this technology and show it to others but people around the world are using his instructions to create their own laser tags. I find it so fascinating that he can effect that many people with a simple form of creative technology.

2010 Dieline Awards

The world's number 1 package design website: The Dieline, has just announced the winners of the Dieline Awards, a worldwide design competition recognizing the world's best package design. The competition is broken up into a series of categories: 1) Food A 2) Food B 3) Food C 4) Non-Alcoholic Beverage 5) Wine, Beer, Malt Beverages, and Tobacco 6) Bath, Beauty, Health, Personal 7) Home Care, Garden and Pets 8) Book, Office and Art Supplies, Toys, Clothes/Accessories 9) Electronics, Technology, Movies, CDs 10) Spirits. For each category there is a first, second, and third place prize and there is an overall best of show winner. This year best of show went to Help Remedies by ChappsMalina. The design looks at over-the-counter drugs in a new, very approachable way. Little color-coated packages saying "help. I have a headache" and "help. I can't sleep" contain the correct dosage of an over-the-counter drug to help you with your health problem. It is definitely a award worthy design with its beautiful and clean packaging and approachable simplicity. ChappsMalina's approach "to communicate content trough the soft topography of the packaging material, that is reminiscent of a soft white pillow" is very successful. Some of my other favorite winners: Kleenex Perfect Slice of Summer, Coca-Cola Summer Identity, Waitrose High Fruit Jams, Mr Singhs Bangras, Organic Pet Superfood, and JAQK Cellars.