Already, record players are interactive devices – when the sound comes out, you shake your booty in whatever manner is socially appropriate at that point in time.
The installation Chasing Cormorants by panGenerator requires a different kind of physical engagement.
How does it work?
The innards of an antique gramophone have been replaced by an Arduino board. An overhead webcam sends a live feed to a concealed laptop, where a tracking application written in openframeworks then transposes the movements of people nearby to determine the speed and direction of the vinyl record.
The result is that an old Polish classic comes to life.
On-the-fly remixes emerge simply by people running around and around. Click through to see it in action…
“Straight to you from when moustaches were aplenty, your wine glass was always full, dress jackets were worn for more than just fancy dress and a cheeky cigarette wasn’t the end of the world.”
And while such a description may conjure late forties era dinner parties, it’s with futuristic rapid manufacturing that Glomus Inc. is recreating their retro dream.
These ten industrial design students from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand formed Glomus in order to explore the product making potential of the MakerBot. Embracing the natural texture of the rough, layered plastic and the MakerBot’s ability to give new life to broken objects, the team developed over 15 designs that are simultaneously crude yet refined.
Take a look through the Glomus catalog, “printed directly from the minds of the people that drempt them…”
Everything a dashing gent, or ladyman, needs for the social season: a collection of clip-on moustaches & 3D printed buttons.
Some of us already know how to do this; building models using 3d software and then bringing them to life thanks to the latest digital manufacturing technologies.
But what about those who are yet to experience this leap from mind into matter?
Here is your chance to help others have fun making the world a more interesting place to be.
From now until December 17th, Google SketchUp and Ponoko are teaming up to give away $3,776 in fantastic prizes.
Your task is to create an easy-to-follow guide titled: “How to use Google SketchUp for Ponoko 3D printing”
Entries close at 5pm US Pacific time on December 17.
All the info you need before getting started – including competition rules and just what’s inside those coveted prize packs – can be found on the official competition announcement page.
Don’t be shy to use the comments form below if you have any further questions…
Designer Makoto Orisaki has developed the or-ita, a special rotary blade to perforate cardboard and other, similar materials. It works with any standard rotary cutter handle, and it’s designed to help you quickly prepare cardboard for folding for prototypes or anything else. It’s such a wonderfully simple, effective idea I’m surprised it did not exist before.
Unfortunately, it is still just a prototype since Orisaki is currently raising money for manufacture, but I don’t think it would be too difficult to make one yourself from a regular rotary blade.
Check out our previous coverage of a cardboard iPhone document scanner, a cardboard machine, and a cardboard hotel; and click past the jump for pictures of the perforating blade in action.
Thanks to Edgar’s comments on the recently posted 3d printed water pump, we can also enjoy this magnificent musical device.
The Cybraphon is hobbled together out of antique instruments, machinery and knicknacks that may be familiar from your local junk shop.
In a true example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts; the Cybraphon is actually an interactive performance robot. Deep inside there is a computer running custom code that monitors the web, updating Cybraphon’s “emotions” according to how its popularity is changing over time. Tracking Google and all the usual social networking sites, each mention has an influence on the music that it plays.
A review in a local newspaper, for example, will almost certainly radically change the mood of the installation – and hence the music it plays – soon after it appears. However, Cybraphon is an insecure, egotistical band. A good review will cheer it up in the short term, but once the initial excitement dies down it will soon become disillusioned if its fame does not continue to increase…
Where is the Cybraphon now? Hopefully it is still churning out the tunes.
If interactive performance robots are a bit out of your depth, you can always build your own one man band with Ponoko’s 2d and 3d digital manufacturing technologies.
Painting in engraved detail gives your design an additional unique factor and makes less likely to scream “I’m laser cut!” In the old days of hand cutting materials, you would have to sit there for hours, carefully applying masking tape of fluid in strategic areas to ensure a crisp paint edge. Like trying to paint straight stripes on a wall, only on much smaller scale.
Fortunately, should you choose to try paint filling your laser cut engraving, your can mask required areas with laser cut precision. The acrylics are cut with protective paper on, and all engraved areas are ready to be painted. Other materials can have transfer tape applied to top surface on request. The exceptions to this are leather and felt because transfer tape does not stick well to those. Some woods can present the same problem also, so experimentation is always advised. Protective paper and transfer tape are not the same thing. Protective paper is the brown film on both sides of acrylic sheets and is applied at point of manufacture, which means that, by default, all our stocked acrylic has protective paper on both sides. Transfer tape is the light-coloured adhesive sheet that is stuck on to keep all the parts in place when the cut design is removed from the lasercutter.
Winter is almost here, at least if you’re in the Northern hemisphere, so it’s time to wrap up warmly. If you find all that layering a little depressing, Nathan Pryor’s HaHaBird neckwarmers will surely put a grin on your face. Even if you can grow a trendy mo of your own, you may want prefer a slightly lower level of commitment and opt for a comical growth of leather or felt.
How did you come across Ponoko? I came across Ponoko in Wired magazine a year or two ago. My first thought was “that’s really cool,” but I didn’t have any projects in mind. When I eventually realized a use for it, I had the hardest time tracking down what I’d seen and spent hours searching for Nokoko, Konopo, Poko, and every other variation of the name I could think of.
How did you used to make products before Ponoko? In the case of the mustaches,
Every year Santa’s elves slave away making millions and millions of the latest toys on everyone’s list. (Santa is in charge of quality control and delivery.) But with at-home 3D fabrication, we are entering a post-elfin age.
You can now 3D scan an object with a form you love, customize the design in a 3D software, print it out on a 3D printer, and then decorate the surface with an EggBot.
3D fabrication gives people the power to make their own stuff within the time constraints of the modern day. And when this becomes mainstream, Santa and his elves can finally take that North Pole pension and move to Costa Rica.
It’s long overdue; the video below documents just how old they were in 1936.
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