Architec Tradure

Category: Uncategorized

  • 11JanThe subtle vibrations

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    Duncan Wilson created Otto with Manolis Kelaidis at the Royal College of Art.

    OTTO (Greek for ‘ear’) is a device that makes hidden sounds audible. This is achieved via a thin polymer piezoelectric contact that senses weak vibrations and plays them as a sound through an integrated speaker. OTTO can be positioned on almost any surface through a combination of suction and magnets. By placing several units on different objects, one can select and create a new sonic experience and a form of ambient music appreciation, thereby utilising our space as a multidirectional audio platform.

    Every object and surface in our environment has a whisper; subtle tremors and vibrations that are usually undetectable to the human ear, produced by the activity and movement of daily life. What if these sounds were audible? How would that change our aural awareness, perception of space and attitude towards objects? Would it be possible to ‘compose’ our own soundtrack using our walls and objects as a new form of instruments? Madsounds is a proposal for a different appreciation of our environment, space and objects by making it possible to identify, combine and manipulate these sounds.

    More projects from the RCA.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure


  • 11JanUpcoming design competitions

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  • Samsonite Baby Travel Design Competition

    Baby-Travel.com invites designers, students & inventors worldwide to design a product relating to the world of traveling with babies, toddlers and their parents. Deadline 31st March 2008.Pdf. with details

  • Workstation Design Competition 2008

    You are invited to investigate the future design of the work environment! Deadline 30th June 2008.

  • Greener Gadgets Design Competition. Designs should seek to minimize the environmental impact of consumer electronic devices at any stage in the product lifecycle. Deadline 27th January 2008.

  • 2008 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). IDEA is the premier international competition celebrating design excellence in products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts. Winning entries receive press coverage in BusinessWeek magazine, businessweek.com and hundreds of other media outlets around the world. Deadline 29th February 2008.

  • The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop. Want to create your own museum exhibit? Want to develop it with other creative thinkers and experts around the world? Want to share your exhibits with visitors in virtual and real galleries? This is the place to design and prototype exhibits online, using the web and Second Life. The best projects will be eligible for prizes and will be co-developed as physical exhibits at The Tech Museum in conjunction with its upcoming Art Film and Music exhibition on technology in art, film, music and dance. Deadline soon!Other design competitions

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure


  • 14JanMediated Social Serendipity: a new SMS system for taking care of your Facebook friends

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    Mediated Social Serendipity is a report describing mobile-phone services and applications that enable users to “stumble into” friends despite being apart physically. It develops in four concept-categories for social serendipitous mobile-phone experiences.

    One of the most astonishing idea presented in the report is “Nudge”, a system that recognizes patterns of everyday life and detects if a user has not send news to a friend for a long time and acts on his/her behalf accordingly. For instance, Asa’s phone registers that she is far away from home. It gathers surrounding information and will generate a text message to a good friend of hers who she has not called in several months.

    The automated message would be:
    Hi! Right now I’m about 3142 kilometers south-west from where you are. Felicia, Per and I are walking along the beach in Tarifa, Spain. It’s 25°C and the sun shines. We hear seagulls and waves breaking. Speak to you soon! /Asa

    As she walks down to the water to dip her toes in the ocean, her phone automatically sends a message to her friend. One can immediately sees the pros and cons of such system, but what strikes me the most is the desire to have an automatic scriptwriter who kind of takes care of forgotten friends. Imagine the friend receiving an automated SMS that is kind of saying:”I am having fun at the beach, I have not contacted you for 5 years, I really don’t have time to send you any news, I don’t even think about you because my phone does the job for me, have fun in your gray Paris!”

    Wouldn’t that be an awesome insulting SMS?! I seriously think this system has to be implemented and connected to Orkut, Facebook, MySpace or any social networks. This could be a new generation of text messaging system who takes care of all your social network pseudo friends. At the end of the day for a lot of people (but not me!) most of these contacts are not really your friends, you are not really honest with them, so you can take care of them in a semi-automated way. You don’t really receive news, they are not really interesting and personal, they are just Spam version 2, the kind of spam you don’t know what to do about. I am not sure what to think about it, but it is a very daring idea! This report was really exciting to read with a lot of funny, clever, and realistic visions on what mobile technology could mean within various social contexts.

    Don’t forget to check another way mobile technology tries the impossible in a funny way!

    More information on the report that also surveys existing systems:
    Formo, J. (2007). Mediated Social Serendipity. Master thesis. The Institute of Industrial Design at Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
    [PDF]

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle
    ♥ Architectradure


  • 14JanStructural innovation

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    Re-designing acoustic musical instrument according to the abilities and characteristics of rapid prototype materials

    After laser printing on bread, one can print instruments! My friend Amit Zoran designed this really neat concept of an acoustic guitar sound box that has been given a unique sound and behavior through a CAD/CAM process. His research goal at the MIT Media Laboratory in the Ambient Intelligence research group, is to find and analyze a space for structural innovation, especially for acoustic instruments.

    His works enables players to customize their own sound by assembling different sound cells, e.g physical parts of the instruments designed in CAD/CAM, instead of considering the instrument as one big sound box. Each string can have its own bridge and each bridge can be linked to different cells. By changing a cell’ size, material or structure, one can create customizable sounds.

    His innovative take mainly consists of printing, using a 3D printer, cells drawn into a vectorial software. These cells, made of 30cm radius, have a variety of materials strong enough to carry the pressure of the strings and handle resonance.

    People can download recommended sound cells from the internet in order to change or manipulate their guitar sounds.

    In the near future, Amit is planning on testing the physical behavior of different combinations and to find optimal structures.

    Don’t forget to check the video!

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    Architectradure


  • 14JanStructural innovation

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!





    Re-designing acoustic musical instrument according to the abilities and characteristics of rapid prototype materials

    After laser printing on bread, one can print instruments! My friend Amit Zoran designed this really neat concept of an acoustic guitar sound box that has been given a unique sound and behavior through a CAD/CAM process. His research goal at the MIT Media Laboratory in the Ambient Intelligence research group, is to find and analyze a space for structural innovation, especially for acoustic instruments.

    His works enables players to customize their own sound by assembling different sound cells, e.g physical parts of the instruments designed in CAD/CAM, instead of considering the instrument as one big sound box. Each string can have its own bridge and each bridge can be linked to different cells. By changing a cell’ size, material or structure, one can create customizable sounds.

    His innovative take mainly consists of printing, using a 3D printer, cells drawn into a vectorial software. These cells, made of 30cm radius, have a variety of materials strong enough to carry the pressure of the strings and handle resonance.

    People can download recommended sound cells from the internet in order to change or manipulate their guitar sounds.

    In the near future, Amit is planning on testing the physical behavior of different combinations and to find optimal structures.

    Don’t forget to check the video!

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    Architectradure


  • 15JanRapid manufactured textiles

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!



    Macedonia Tray design by Janne Kyttanen, 2007.

    Following up on this thread about rapid prototyping and mass customized objects, Jiri Evenhuis came up with the concept of Rapid Manufactured textiles in 1999 opening new frontier of possibilities for the production of textiles in the future. The first commercial products were launched by FOC in 2005.



    City Hall, Amsterdam. Ramon Albers. 3D computer graphics enable designers and architects to envision very complex creations at … the miniature scale

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 16JanKnitting RSS feed data

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    Created by Ebru Kurbak and Mahir M. Yavuz, News Knitter is a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data.

    News Knitter converts information gathered from the daily political news into clothing. Live news feed from the Internet that is broadcasted within 24 hours or a particular period is analyzed, filtered and converted into a unique visual pattern for a knitted sweater. The system consists of two different types of software: whereas one receives the content from live feeds the other converts it into visual patterns, and a fully computerized flat knitting machine produces the final output. Each product, sweater of News Knitter is an evidence/result of a specific day or period.

    New Knitter will be presented at the Seamless fashion show in Boston at this end of the month! In 2006, my team and I had presented at the Seamless fashion show, Taptap , the affectionate scarf!

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 16JanPlaystation human sculptures

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    Sculpture in perforated steel with sections upholstered in felt

    Designers came up with a landscape of concept furniture derived from the statue-like forms of people sitting, standing or leaning against walls engaged in playing the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The result is “sculptural and machine-like”. Each piece contains a PSP unit and users are encouraged to step inside these structures to play, the idea being to create an individual gaming experience while allowing for interaction with other gamers in other pieces using the PSP’s wi-fi capabilities.

    Inspired by gaming, after the Nintendo Wii, the Wii-fit is coming. Also check the new hypnotic video-ad for playstation!



    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 16JanPlaystation human sculptures

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!



    Sculpture in perforated steel with sections upholstered in felt

    Designers came up with a landscape of concept furniture derived from the statue-like forms of people sitting, standing or leaning against walls engaged in playing the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The result is “sculptural and machine-like”. Each piece contains a PSP unit and users are encouraged to step inside these structures to play, the idea being to create an individual gaming experience while allowing for interaction with other gamers in other pieces using the PSP’s wi-fi capabilities.

    Inspired by gaming, after the Nintendo Wii, the Wii-fit is coming. Also check the new hypnotic video-ad for playstation!



    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 19JanPhysical visualization

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    Mount Fear Statistics for Crimes with Offensive Weapon South London 2001-2002 (2002) corrugated cardboard 2.3m x 1.85m x height 1.85m

    After tactile videos or high touch visual, data visualization becomes sculpted and physical. Artist Abigail Reynolds works with materials to bring fugitive knowledge and connections into the immediacy of physical experience.



    130 layers of 10mm polystyrene with sprayed finish

    In this work, she generates data sets relating to the frequency and position of urban crimes. Each individual incident adds to the height of the model, forming a mountainous terrain.



    MOUNT FEAR Statistics for Violent offences 2001-02 Central Manchester (2003) Scale: 1:22,000 (1cm:22m) Relief: 1:24 (1 layer represents 24 offences per km2) Fits a 4×8ft x 70cm plinth. Height 203cm (including plinth)

    The imaginative fantasy space seemingly proposed by the sculpture is subverted by the hard facts and logic of the criteria that shape it. The object does not describe an ideal other-worldly space separated from lived reality, but conversely describes in relentless detail the actuality of life on the city streets.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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