A mix of design, innovation, a shaky global economy, and an abiding love for hand-stitched, buttery leather

“Craft Punk,” was a collaboration between Design Miami and Fendi, the LVMH-owned luxury goods brand known for its enduring baguettes and keen eye for talent (they signed up Karl Lagerfeld to design furs in 1965 and have held on to him since). In response to new currents in design practice and the present state of the world, Craft Punk is a celebration of tenacious creative expression, unruly experimentation, and brilliantly low-tech design processes.
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Just came across this upcoming exhibition on a couple of lists:

Open Source Embroidery is a project initiated by curator and researcher, Ele Carpenter of the University of Umea, Sweden. The project explores the links between open source software coding and the creative processes and social interactions involved in embroidery However, the project has grown to support and facilitate a range of artists practice investigating the relationship between programming for embroidery and computing.

From Ele’s project website:

Embroidery is constructed (mostly by women) in hundreds of tiny stitches which are visible on the front of the fabric. The system of the stitches is revealed on the back of the material. Some embrioderers seal the back of the fabric, preventing others from seeing the underlying structure of the pattern. Others leave the back open for those who want to take a peek. A few integrate the backend process into the front of the fabric. The patterns are shared amongst friends in knitting and embroidery ‘circles’.

Software is constructed (mostly by men) in hundreds of tiny pieces of code, which form the hidden structure of the programme or interface. Open Source software allows you to look at the back of the fabric, and understand the structure of your software, modify it and distribute it. The code is shared amongst friends through online networks. However the stitches or code only make sense to those who are familiar with the language or patterns.

One  interesting piece involves contributions from 216 embroiderers, each creating one patch of a giant hexadecimal patchwork colour chart, entitled HTML patchwork:

HTML Patchwork from the Open Source Embroidery Project

The Open Source Embroidery exhibition will be at BildMuseet, Umeå from 6 June - 6 September 2009 and at the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco: 1 October 2009 - 24 January 2010.

Its interesting to see how open source thinking and the idea of coding applies so easily to various craft forms - as Ele says, it really comes down to knowledge of different languages, or requiring machine languages, the use of which forms a standard vocabularly for sharing designs within.

I shall leave you with another intriguing  insight from Ele:

Open Source Embroidery pays homage to Ada Lovelace (1816-52) who helped to develop the Analytical Engine, the first idea for a universal computer, with Charles Babbage. Lovelace wrote “we may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jaquard Loom weaves flowers and leaves.” (Gere, 2002, p24). The Jaquard Loom (1810) was the first machine to use punched-card programming.

via OpenMaterials blog and the Electron Club list

And while we’re on the subject, embroidered MRI scan slices anyone? via ladyada

Want to show your creativity at your favorite event/s?

Whether it’s a local fair or an international gig, we’ll help you get there with FREE making, materials and/or shipping!

In return you’ll display some Ponoko cards, take some photos and write a story telling us all about it.

Just let us about your plans - about you, your product and the event:

About you
What’s up? 

Your product
What do you have in mind? And what are the normal costs to make it with us (making + materials + shipping)? 

The event
What, where, when, how many people?

Just email this info to us here: grants-at-ponoko.com … and we’ll get right back to you with details of your grant.

Happy days.

Or inhaling carcinogens for your craft

In previous post we have shown you How-To do all manner of things from form acrylic in a domestic oven to how to get a rusty metallic effect on plastic parts. The basic fundamentals of Ponoko alchemy.
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The Smart Materials Kit is a sample collection of various powders, wires, and plastics with “smart” qualities. The kit comes with the book Fashioning Technology: A DIY Intro to Smart Crafting by Syuzi Pakhchyan and published by CRAFT.

Material samples include:

• ¼ oz phosphorescent powder (make glow-in-the-dark ink for printing!)
• 10g of blue photochromatic powder (color-changing in different light)
• 10g of yellow photochromatic powder (color-changing in different light)
• 10g of thermochromatic powder (color-changing with temperature)
• 2 feet of shape memory wire; 5 crimp beads to control the wire
• 2 ounces of polymorph plastic (heat and mold as many times as you want)

We’ve mentioned a few designers on the blog that are using these kinds of materials.

• Josien Pieters uses thermochromatic inks in his dynamic wallpapers.
• Marie Ilse Bourlanges visually captures the movement of the body in her experimental fashion.
• Kathy Schicker uses photochromatic and phosphorescent techniques in transformative textiles.
• Nendo designed a “blooming” lamp with a shape-memory alloy.

The Smart Materials Kit is available with Fashioning Technology for $65 at the Maker Shed.

via Fashioning Tech

Or How To Steampunk

Those of you who read the previous post on the Ponoko Blog that showcased Cerrious Design’s rusty Steampunk USB drive may be curious as to how he achieved the effect. Dylan of Cerrious Design has been generous enough to share his technique.
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Attention readers/makers in the Midwest of the US: Chicago’s Do Division Street Fest is coming up in two weeks, and a local boutique is looking for jewelry and accesssory designers who would like to sell their designs at the boutique for the weekend of May 30th. Do Division Street Fest is their “most profitable weekend of the year”. They’ll sell your stuff for you and split the profits. And if they really love it, there’s potential for your line being carried in the store. All of the details and contact information are in this Craigslist posting.

Thousands of people are expected to attend this $5 donation weekend of local retail, great food, and sounds from Flosstradamus, Menomena, the Handsome Furs, White Rabbit, Viva Voce and more. There’s also a DJ’d dance party at the car wash.

Currents in ConversationIsabelle Risner of the Autonomatic research team will be presenting a paper at a half day seminar at the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham on Friday 12th June. ‘Digital Technologies and Contemporary Craft practice: Currents in Conversation’. A debate will look at the impact of digital technologies on craft practice and will be chaired by Colin Webster of UCA Farnham and Professor Simon Ollding of the Crafts Study Centre.

Isabelle’s research looks at how advanced digital technologies such as CAD drawing, and digitally driven manufacturing including CNC milling, rapid prototyping and laser cutting, are changing the way that small scale craft and design businesses work.

Artist and New Zealand native Dylan Graham is part of the recent resurgence of hand-cut paper in the art world. His highly detailed renderings reject technological execution in favor of manual production. While this could be a backlash to the rise and spread of laser-cutting capabilities, the work’s very aesthetic becomes part of the trend.

Process will always be an important part of art and design, but does it matter if something is done by hand if it looks only slightly different from what it would have if produced by a machine? Does similar art created by a machine have less value, either artistically or monetarily?

Regardless of technique, Graham is a talented artist. His Kingdom was on display at the Face of Lace exhibition in Bruges which featured works by Marcel Wanders, Tord Boontje, Louise Campbell, Cal Lane, Kiki van Eijk, and other prominent artists and designers exploring the trend of lace in product design. He has also exhibited in New York and most recently Seoul.

For more wonderful works in paper, take a look at my posts on Katerina Lanfranco, Bovey Lee/Helen Friel/Elsa Mora, Jen Stark, Wycinaki, and Heather McGill.

American Federal Furniture meets Multi Axis CNC

Paul Loebach’s Vase Space is utilizes CNC technology to merge vase and table just as he merges art and design. Realizing the links between his German craftsman heritage and emerging design practice.

Recent works by Paul Loebach also include an experiment in wood construction and CNC machining. Blocks of solid maple are milled in two separate halves and joined together with an accentuated ‘parting line’, articulating the profile of the polymorphic shapes.

Paul Loebach was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio amid the industrial landscape of the Midwestern US, where he left to graduate from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. Descended from a long line of German woodworkers, his father is a manufacturing engineer who developed new plastic forming technologies for Union Carbide in the 1970’s. Paul sees his projects as an idealistic fusion of his family’s distant and more recent histories.

Via Design Spotter and Free Form Fab..