When building blocks meet craft ...

Looking for baby clothing at Muji Japan as suggested by Kimiko, I came accross this o! surprising Lego & Muji love affair. I don't understand Japanese so I did not make lots of sense with the text, but it seems pretty neat:




You combine Lego bricks to craft materials to fluidly assemble creatures, people, or even Christmas cards. A great way to expand the way kids work with traditional Lego blocks, integrating unlimited paper craft creations, meaning unlimited imagination.



As soon as this becomes available here, I'll get myself a kit!!

Physical display with deformable skin

Another neat technique in the vein of SnOil, a physical display Based on ferrofluid that reacts to magnetism. Shade Pixel is a type of physical display that uses deformable skin to represent information.

It is very pretty, the dots on the white looks like steps in the snow. Notice how the sound from the solenoid works really well with the "clock" idea! A nice trick to deal with noisy technology. You can see a video about Shade Pixel here:




Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Crayons en chocolat / Chocolate pencils

Following up on the work of Oki Sato (at Nendo), I found these chocolate pencils in his earliest work (2007). Nendo collaborated with patissier Tsujiguchi Hironobu, the mastermind behind popular dessert shops like Mont St. Claire and Le Chocolat de H. So these pencils must be delicious indeed!!!

The process: Tsujiguchi created a new dessert based on his impression of Nendo after their conversations, and the designers proposed new tableware for them, including plates presenting the the beauty of meals and desserts like a painting on a canvas, thus the creation of the chocolate pencils.

Interaction: The "chocolate pencils" come in a number of cocoa blends that vary in intensity, and chocophiles can use the special "pencil sharpener" that comes with the designed plate to grate chocolate onto their dessert. Pencil filings are usually the unwanted remains of sharpening a pencil, but in this case, they're the star!

Check also the chocolate keyboard!



Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

DIY videos by young artists

New Urban Arts is a nationally recognized interdisciplinary arts studio for high school students and emerging artists that promotes youth voice, collaboration, and self-directed learning toward a lifelong creative practice. It provides studio, exhibition space, and mentoring for young artists who explore the visual, performing, and literary arts through yearlong free out-of-school programs. Founded in 1997, New Urban Arts serves 125 high school students in the Providence Public High Schools and 15 artists each year. They have been named one of fifty premiere arts and youth development programs in the country for four consecutive years.

Discovered on Zones of Emergency, New Urban Arts offers online videos for DIY explorations. For instance How to Screenprint? How To Sew A Ruffle? or How to make a silicone Mold (below):





Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Mini tech in fashion

The Masai dress!

Discovered via Stumbleupon, Studio 5050 makes really cool products: from a dress that generates musical patterns as the wearer moves, to the moi "a light to wear, a light to share!



Inspired by Masai wedding collars, this dress salutes both our global provenance and our desire to create our own soundtrack as we move in mysterious ways. With every step, strings of hand-formed silver beads that hung from the collar brush against conductive threads sewn into the dress, generating a series of sounds. A leisurely walk or a night at a cocktail party turns into an improvisational performance.



A long asymmetrical swoop in the back of the dress recalls Balenciaga’s famed wedding dress – an homage to a maestro that visually and aurally blends cultures, traditions and emotions. The dress comes in a luscious deep-sky blue silk jersey and white nourishing Sea-Tiva (75% cotton, 25% algae).

The company also design modules, a series of electronic building blocks for creating systems that sense and respond. The modules were originally created to help them rapidly develop new wearable applications but they now are available to the public to create any interaction design project!



Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Design a multi touch pad in 15 min

I love this type of video tutorial. Here is a tutorial on how to make your own multi touch pad in 15 minutes using a web cam, cardboard box, a piece of glass and software. I think some regular ambient light is needed! Also the next step, not the least difficult, is to have the software running. The idea is when you place you fingers on the surface, you create shadows with your fingers. The webcam detects these shadows, sends the image to the tracking software to track the shadows as they move around.

Below are some basic info to start:

Materials

* Cardboard Box
* Piece of Clear Flat Sturdy Material (ie. Glass, acrylic, plexiglas)
* Paper (ie. printer paper, tracing paper, almost any paper)
* Webcam or Video Camera
* Computer
* Optional Picture Frame

Finger Tracking Software

* Touchlib Beta v2: - Written by David Wallen
* Download, unzip and copy the config.xml into your touchlib directory

More by AudioTouch - Via.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Flat or wrapped machines

All the parts of this sewing have been polished and nickel-plated. Every reference to hand making has been avoided, although this is the most labour-intensive work Marloes Ten Bhomer said she has ever made. The piece deals with the trust humans have in machines.



This next piece contrasts well with the polished sewing machine. Would the artist say that it contains references to a labour-intensive wrapping process? The artist motive for making this beer bar came from seeing a documentary on a meat-factory. This factory made one big piece of meat out of little pieces of meat by gluing it together. Afterwards it was being presented as one big rump steak.
"What I find very interesting about this is the way that people deal with information. Something is not what it seems to be - Marloes Ten Bhomer"

This work by artist Marloes Ten Bhomer stands as an example on how social and individual percepts can be taken for granted in everyday design. The artist usually revisits these percepts and sometimes codifies them into material form. Last year I gave a lecture on semiotic principles for practical design that takes in consideration the visual aesthetic production process from the perception, the conception, the inception and the reception of information. I see a lot of table top interfaces in interaction design. Their references should be made clearer. It would strengthen the definition and context of the project and clarify their research goals. I find the analysis of this process very useful to organize how social and individual percepts are codified into material form.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
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Poetic chairs

I stumbled upon Stuhlhockerbank by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz. For a public use of architecture merging chair and stool into seat elements, the life of the sitting place becomes engraved in the artist' sculpture. The chairs are discombobulated.




By Architectradure

Handmade bears

I could not resist! All these bears are handmade by Bearka

More on Theo Jansen

I recently posted on Theo Jansen for his giant kinetic sculptures, always elegant, massive and impressive with their ability to be eco friendly at the same time than resembling apocalyptic robots. Yesterday, Laura Galloway, from the TED conference, offered me to exhibit the 8 min video Theo Jansen's talk at the TED conference. The video is a must see.




Theo Jansen
From TED2007

Talk summary
Dutch artist Theo Jansen demonstrates his amazingly lifelike kinetic sculptures, built from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. His "Strandbeests" (Beach Creatures) are built to move and even survive on their own.

Bio
Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been working for 16 years to create sculptures that move on their own in eerily lifelike ways. Each generation of his "Strandbeests" is subject to the forces of evolution, with successful forms moving forward into new designs. Jansen's vision and long-term commitment to his wooden menagerie is as fascinating to observe as the beasts themselves. His newest creatures walk without assistance on the beaches of Holland, powered by wind, captured by gossamer wings that flap and pump air into old lemonade bottles that in turn power the creatures' many plastic spindly legs. The walking sculptures look alive as they move, each leg articulating in such a way that the body is steady and level. They even incorporate primitive logic gates that are used to reverse the machine's direction if it senses dangerous water or loose sand where it might get stuck.

Laser printing on bread

Might be a little expensive, but would not that be cool to have a giant CNC machine print your most awesome pictures on toast every morning? Found on ComputerWorld.

Blow and light!

Wind to light: when the wind blows, the turbines produce light. Sweet!

Creepcakes by designers!

AIGA 2006 presents creepcakes for Halloween, a use of everyday cupcakes transformed into aliens, monsters, spiders and mummies!
Clever design and great imagination is always extremely inspiring ...

Selling ad space via computer etching

Leah paid for her new MacBook Pro by selling ad space on her laptop to sponsors.

Soon you will receive a parking ticket for leaving your computer too long on a campus table. Soon you will etch ads on your body to have unlimited plastic surgery, soon you will become an ad to survive!

But I wonder, are stickers over yet? Spreading throughout the internet, the hip idea for a few years now is to etch the cover of your laptop.

I saw beautiful work out there, but never dared attacking the cover of my mac book. I prefered not following any trends, and stuck to my stickers! Among all this craft work, I chose this one from 2006 (see picture above) that is particularly interesting by Buzz Andersen.

Eco-friendly robots

Picture of Theo Jansen work found on Myninjaplease.

I am fascinated by the giant kinetic sculptures of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, always elegant, massive and impressive with their ability to be eco friendly at the same time than resembling apocalyptic robots.

Never too pink

Pink Prank Project found on itfashion

Felt rocks

Just because I find them beautiful ... Felt rocks by Molo.

In their raw form, a felt rock is technically a lump of felt formed when small bits of wool fluff gather while making polishing wheels for optical lenses, spun around in a drum with them. With steam and pressure, each stray piece of wool begins to entangle itself with others roughly creating a completely unique rock-like shape without the help of any bonding agents. Each felt rock is then carefully selected by molo and then finished through their own process. Felt rocks are solid all the way through, made out of 100% pure wool felt, and carefully dyed. they come in hand selected sets of 5 ( 2 natural and 3 grey, or 2 moss green and 3 grey ) and are packaged in a natural grey wool felt bag.