Materials

Pauline van Dongen, with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, engineers and scientists, is working on developing wearable solar cells. The project was inspired by the need for continuous connectivity especially in environments such as music festivals where power sources are scarce. In hopes of turning our bodies into energy sources for our mobile devices, their team is exploring the seamless integration of solar panels into garments ideally through the development of a solar textile. 

Dongen’s first exploratory garment design was inspired by the structural layers of both the skin and the solar cells. 

 

Currently they are seeking funding to continue with the development of the wearable solar project. It is significant to note that a fashion designer was employed at the very early stages of the exploration of this research. I’m looking forward to seeing future iterations. 

 

You can follow the development of the project on wearable solar.nl and to learn more about Pauline van Dongen and her work, take a look at this wonderful interview.

 

Documentation images – the making of.

 

Maziar Ghaderi has been featured before with his work on Fashioning Technology with the project One Mile whilst he was a student at OCAD University, Toronto Canada. Ghaderi has a keen interest in performance and translating the action and movement of performing into the digital medium. His tool for doing this is wearable technology. His new project, Dissolving Self, feeds into his current area of studies which explores the space where performance art and emerging tech meet.

 

 

Here is a video of the performance live at HASTAC 2013 (an international conference) at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Dissolving Self employs metaphoric data visualization, motion capture and wearable technology to harness the subtle movements of a contemporary dancer. Much of the inspiration of this piece comes from Rumi’s mystic poetry and the physical meditative ritual of Sufi whirling.

Documentation images – the making of.

 

Technically the piece is comprised of multiple components. A gyroscope and a radio module (Xbee) are worn by the dancer which measure and transmit the speed of rotation of the dancer. A Microsoft Kinect captures lateral movement of the dancer. These two sets of live data are fed into Processing, an open source software, to create a responsive and metaphoric visualization that is projected over the dancer.

 

I asked Ghaderi some specific questions about his new work.

 

You are interested in how this piece explores new media technologies and how they “can be used to augment the experience of watching performative art”, how do you feel this is achieved in your latest work?

The spherical visualization serves as a second performer, where the whirler eventually interacts with directly. With the use of the technology at the small of her back, the visualization is able to responsively react in real-time and thus creating a unified choreography that doesn’t overwhelm the viewer.

 

How did Rumi’s mystic poetry and the physical meditative ritual of Sufi whirling influence the work, was it mostly aesthetically?

Rumi was of course a Sufi poet and much of his teachings deals with paying homage to The Devine which has been portrayed as the cosmos in some scriptures. This and the history of Sufi whirling formed the cosmo-like visualization as well as the narrative of a mortal discovering the heavenly bodies above her, and eventually dissolving into them through meditative prayer.

 

How do you think the data visualisation which occurs from the performance and data affects the viewing of the performance and the performer itself?

By choosing a simple geometric graphical visualization as suppose to video, or a more elaborate animation, the viewer’s eyes are given the space to explore both the trace-like movements of the dancer as well as wonder at the visualization like the way one would gaze at the stars or the moon.

 

The original whirling sphere which Ghaderi uses can be found here.

 

 

international symposium on adaptive architecture
July 8th, 2013 / 9:00 – 18:00

Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design, ETH Zürich-Hönggerberg, HPZ Floor F

Speakers include:
Prof. Ludger Hovestadt (ETH Zürich, CH), Prof. Philip Beesley (University of Waterloo, CA), Prof. Kas Oosterhuis (TU Delft, NL), Martina Decker (DeckerYeadon, US), Claudia Pasquero (ecoLogicStudio, UK), Manuel Kretzer (ETH Zürich, CH), Tomasz Jaskiewicz (TU Delft, NL), Jason Bruges (Jason Bruges Studio, UK), Areti Markopoulou (IAAC, ES), Ruairi Glynn (UCL, UK), Simon Schleicher (Universität Stuttgart, DE), John Sarik (Columbia University, US), Stefan Dulman (Hive Systems, NL)

More info on the speakers, the detailed program, location and registration can be found on the event’s website: alive2013.wordpress.com

The symposium is free of charge however registration until July 3rd, 2013 is obligatory. Seats are limited. alive13.eventbrite.com

The event is organised by Manuel Kretzer and Tomasz Jaskiewicz, hosted by the Chair for CAAD and supported through the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Resinance is part of an ongoing series, exploring the potential use of smart materials in an architectural context. It was realized in March 2013 by the Master of Advanced Studies class at the Chair for CAAD.

 

The design of ‘Resinance’ was strongly influenced by the behavior of simple organic life forms, in particular the formation of cellular colonies. In its assembly it represented an ecology of functional units that could both work autonomously but also in coordination with their neighboring units. It consisted of 40 active elements that were gradually changing their surface color in response to human touch. While this slow transformation as such couldn’t immediately be perceived, each device had a second actuator, providing direct response through shivers and vibrations. Every four elements were connected through a control unit that formally resembled the rest of the objects but without the ability to change color. These units both choreographed the behavior of the particular cluster and transmitted the current state of each element to its neighbors. Therefore the tactile input not only changed the touched element but was transmitted throughout the whole installation in a networked, swarm like behavior.

 

more info: www.materiability.com

Power your electronic devices wherever and whenever you need to

Are you sick of your batteries dying at the very moment you need them to make an urgent call, use a torch to change a blown fuse or find your position on a GPS when you are lost in the outdoors? Let us introduce the Voltmaker, an innovative and fast electricity generator inspired by the ratchet device which is designed to save the day in such situations.

1/At home: fully charge the Voltmaker with your standard USB wall charger (or using a solar panel).
2/ Is your phone’s battery dead? Plug the Voltmaker into your phone. You can fully charge it with the energy contained in     your Voltmaker’s battery.
3/ Are your phone AND your Voltmaker’s batteries dead? With a few whirls of the wrist this hand-held device is capable of generating a few extra minutes of power for your telephone or other small, low power devices (MP3 players, torches, GPS devices, cameras, etc.)
4/ A clever USB system transforms the Voltmaker into a torch, making it multi-purpose.

 

The Voltmaker is ideal for hikers, travellers and businessmen whether in the city or in the countryside and it is particularly useful in places where electricity is scarce. Being small and compact, this device tucks away nicely in your backpack, handbag, glove box or even your jacket pocket, ready to save the day.

The Voltmaker is now on Indiegogo

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/voltmaker

www.thevoltmakers.com

www.facebook.com/thevoltmakers

www.twitter.com/thevoltmakers

www.youtube.com/user/thevoltmakers

Notendo Glitch Blankets by Glitchaus

I designed this 8bit glitch blanket with my prepared Nintendo Entertainment System. The pattern is a composite video capture which was dithered in order to be rendered as a 50/50 merino wool, soft acrylic blanket.

The design is knit at a 1:1 pixel to knot ratio, preserving the correlation between textile and pixel art. The result is a 6×5’ glitchy blanket.

Check out glitchaus.com for more and follow on twitter and tumblr for updates!

Organized by eTextile masters Mika Satomi, Hannah Perner-Wilson, and Meg Grant, the eTextile Summer Camp (taking place in Poncé sur le Loir, France) is an intense hands-on 5 day workshop that is not to be missed. 

 

You will get a chance to work with some of the most talented e-textile aficionados so drop whatever you are doing and apply today!

 

Deadline Extended to May 20th.

 

Details below: 

 

The eTextile Summer Camp 2013, Call for eTextiles Practitioners!

The eTextiles Summer Camp (eTextile-summercamp.org) is a five day event that brings together expert practitioners of eTextiles and Soft Circuitry in one place to share their knowledge and skills through hands-on workshops, and facilitate discussions around their practices. We are looking for makers, designers, engineers and artists, who work in the field of eTextiles and soft circuitry to participate.

 

The first Summer Camp was held in 2011 in Borås Sweden, with 20 experts (http://stdl.se/summercamp/). This year, we are planning the second edition of the eTextiles Summer Camp from 17th to 21st of July in Poncé sur le Loir, France, hosted by Paillard Centre d’Art Contemporain & Résidence d’Artistes (http://moulinsdepaillard.com/).

 

We are gathering eTextiles practitioners such as you, from around the world to participate in this event. We are expecting to host 20-30 participants. Please send us 1) the filled form (please down load from our website: eTextile-summercamp.org ) 2) web link where we can see your work to info@eTextile-summercamp.org by May 15th 2013. 

 

Please note that the eTextile Summer Camp is intended for eTextile practitioners. If you are interested in eTextiles and seeking an introduction to the field, the content of the event is not suitable for you.

 

 

The E-textile Summer Camp’s 2013 theme will be “Soft + Slow Electronics”. Many of us as engineers, designers and artists are working with soft materials such as textiles and paper, exploring the potential of soft, malleable and flexible electronics. Our practices often involve techniques that require intensive hand work, often resulting in long production processes. Some of the techniques we employ are almost archaic, but because we see value in making our own materials in our own ways, old-fashioned and slow techniques often come into play. We propose to see these practices as “slow”, rather than “time consuming”.

 

In today’s society “slowness” has gained positive connotation and acknowledgement through movements like Slow Food, Slow Cities and Slow Design Principles. These movements not only embrace the amounts of physical time consumed in a process, but also the social and cultural impacts resulting from slow processes.

 

During the Summer Camp, we propose a celebration of slowness within soft electronics practices. We will look at techniques that take time to master and accomplish with skill, such as weaving, paper making, origami folding, pleating, embroidery, crochet, block printing and so on. Together we will explore what values slowness adds to our practices, and what values our practices contribute to society.

 

Contents/ Activities:

The Summer Camp contains three major activities; Skillshare Workshops, Discussions, and Group Projects. The Skillshare Workshops are where the participants teach their skills to others in hands-on workshops. We will make a survey of all the participants prior to the event, asking which skills you want to share and which skills you want to learn. According to the answers we get, we will arrange mini-workshops for the first two days. A discussion session will be held each evening to discuss topics related to our practice and the theme. The last two days will be dedicated to work on group projects. We will divide the participants into small groups to work on a collaborative project which reflects the theme.

 

Financial Requirement:

All the participants are asked to cover their cost of travel to the site themselves. The nearest international airports are in Paris and Tours. From these three airports, you can take a train to Vendome TGV station where we will arrange a pick up.  We will let you know the further details of the pickup as it gets closer.

We ask all the participants to pay the shared cost of the work material, food and facility running costs (electricity, water). This amounts to 150 Euro per person. You can stay for free at the Paillard Centre d’Art in a shared dormitory room or camp outside. If you need more comfortable and private accommodation, you can stay at a B&B near the location at your own cost.

 

Location:

Paillard Centre d’Art Contemporain & Résidence d’Artistes is located in Poncé sur le Loir, a small village at the entrance of the Loire Valley, 214 km from Paris. The historic site of the Moulins de Paillard, an 18th century paper mill, returns to the creativity and the innovation of the industrial revolution thanks to a contemporary arts centre and its program of expositions and performances.  www.moulinspaillard.com

 

Dates and Schedule:

The Summer Camp is scheduled to be held from 17th (Wednesday) to 21st (Sunday) July. We plan to start the workshop on the 17th at 1:00 pm. It takes 2-3 hours from Paris Montparnasse station to Paillard, including pick-up. If you are coming from far, you may want to get to Paillard on the 16th. We can accommodate you on the night of the 16th at Paillard as well. If your flight is getting to Paris in the late evening of the 16th, you may need to stay in Paris for one night and continue your journey early on the 17th.

 

Accommodation:

The accommodation we can provide is very basic. It will be shared dormitories (4-7 person in one room) with shared bathrooms. If you prefer to have more comfortable accommodations, there are B&Bs near the location for a reasonable price, where you can stay at your own cost. Please let us know if you prefer this option. We will provide you with a list of B&Bs near the location.

 

The eTextiles Summer Camp 2013 is organized by:

Mika Satomi (KOBAKANT, www.kobakant.at )

Hannah Perner-Wilson (KOBAKANT, www.kobakant.at )

Meg Grant (www.meggrant.com )

Shelly De Vito (Paillard Centre d’Art Contemporain http://moulinsdepaillard.com )

James Porter (Paillard Centre d’Art Contemporain http://moulinsdepaillard.com )

 

Contact:

If you have any questions, comments or good ideas, please feel free to contact us at info@eTextile-summercamp.org

Digitally printed, made to order leggings and more from Glitchaus:

View the collection here*

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

2nd WORKSHOP on SMART MATERIAL INTERFACES:
“Another Step to a Material Future”

Will be held during 2013 International Conference on Multimodal
Interaction (ICMI 2013: http://www.acm.org/icmi/2013/)

December 13th, 2013

Coogee Bay Hotel, Sydney, Australia.

http://smartmaterialinterfaces.wordpress.com

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1. CALL FOR PAPERS
2. ABOUT SMART MATERIALS INTERFACES
3. SMART MATERIAL INTERFACES ORGANIZERS

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1. CALL FOR PAPERS

Goal:
The objective of this workshop is to draw attention to the emerging field of smart material interfaces which spans the areas of design, engineering and architecture. These novel composites, which in some cases are already celebrated as the answer for the 21st. century’s technological needs, are generally referred to as materials that are capable of sensing the environment and actively responding to by changing their physical properties, such as shape, size and color.

The workshop aims at stimulating research and development in interfaces that make novel use of smart materials, and will provide a platform for state-of-the-art design of smart material interfaces. In order to establish a rich live demo session throughout the conference we want to particularly encourage the submission of research that includes physical live demonstrators and experimental prototypes.

Topic Keywords:
Smart material interfaces, reality-based interfaces, organic user interfaces, programmable matter, smart textiles.

Topics of interest:
We invite original contributions in a variety of areas related to interaction design and development of interfaces that makes use of SMART MATERIALS. Main topic of interest is the application of smart materials in designing and building interfaces that communicate
information to the user – or allow the user to manipulate information – using different modalities provided by the material’s properties.

– Reality-based interfaces
– Tangible Interfaces
– Organic user interfaces
– Programmable matter
– Electronic textiles, computational textiles, smart textiles
– Robotics
– Relevant developments in materials science, mechanical engineering,
chemistry, biological engineering, nanotechnology, electrical
engineering, textile engineering, and other fields, coupled with
thoughtful speculation about applications
– …

We strongly encourage submissions with related DEMO.

Important Dates:
Workshop papers submission due: July 22th, 2013
Author notifications: September 7th, 2013
Workshop camera-ready paper due: October 7th, 2013
Workshop: December 13th, 2013

Submissions:
The workshop solicits original and unpublished papers concerning Smart Material Interfaces. Authors should submit papers not exceeding 6 pages in total. Submissions must be sent in PDF using the ACM format (as indicated on the main conference page and here http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html) to the address: smi.submission@gmail.com

For up-to-date details on submissions please refer to the official Workshop site:
http://smartmaterialinterfaces.wordpress.com/

Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop. All the workshop papers will be included in a USB stick with all the other proceedings of the conference. They will be also published on ACM Digital Library with associated ISBN.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Please visit the workshop website.
http://smartmaterialinterfaces.wordpress.com

And the conference site:
http://www.acm.org/icmi/2013

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2. ABOUT SMART MATERIAL INTERFACES

With the use of smart materials, SMI attempts to overcome the limitation of traditional and tangible interfaces. SMI focuses on changing the physical reality around the user as the output of interaction and/or computation as well as being used as input device. SMI promotes a tighter coupling between the information displayed and the display itself by using the tangible interface as the control and display at the same time – embedding the information directly inside the physical object. It uses the physicality of the object as a way to deliver information.
Utilizing smart materials’ properties, SMI can support cohesive interaction by maintaining both channels (input and output) on the same object of interaction. The interaction constructed in this way will grant the user a continuous perception of the object and of the output.

For more information refer to the site: http://smartmaterialinterfaces.wordpress.com/about/

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3. SMART MATERIAL INTERFACES ORGANIZERS

Organizers:

Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, Human Media Interaction group, the Netherlands, a.nijholt@utwente.nl

Manuel Kretzer, CAAD, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Switzerland, kretzer@arch.ethz.ch

Andrea Minuto, University of Twente, Human Media Interaction group, the Netherlands, a.minuto@utwente.nl

Leonardo Giusti, MIT – Mobile Experience Lab Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, lgiusti@mit.edu

Program committee members:

Jason Alexander, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Huihui Wang, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
Wim Poelman, Delft University of Technology, Delft, NL
Akira Wakita, Keio University SFC, Fujisawa, Japan
Orkan Telhan, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Dhaval Vyas, ABB Corporate Research, Bangalore, India
Patrizia Marti, University of Siena, Italy
Andres Lucero, Nokia Research Centre, Tampere, Finland
Kasper Hornbæk, Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, DK
Letizia Jaccheri, NTNU, Norway
Augusto Celentano, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy
Fabio Pittarello, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy
Federico Casalegno, MIT – Mobile Experience Lab Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

For contacts and other information: http://smartmaterialinterfaces.wordpress.com/