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A stackable electric city vehicle
2008-05-15 17:37:00
I had previously posted on cars that fly, swim or shrink. I mainly referred to the retractable scooter that Bill Mitchell showed us at the Media Lab Open House'08. It is an impressive piece of gear that I cannot wait to get!However the city car is pretty neat as well ...The City Car is designed by the smart cities group at MIT Media lab directed by Prof. Mitchell. The project is created by Ryan Chin, Wayne Higgins, Mitchell Joachim, Will Lark, Raul-David "Retro" Poblano, Peter Schmitt, Andres Sevtsuk and Franco Vairani at MIT.The City Car is the coolest idea: a stackable electric city vehicle for use in dense urban areas! Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receive...
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All you can eat!
2008-05-14 17:18:00
... and you can eat even more!In the spirit of eating your keyboard, your pencils, eating candies in the form of pills, drinking latte with laser printed patterns, up to making coded silverware ... the field of food products is quite large by now!I recently found a tie that is made of breakfast cereals by Bryony Birkbeck. The artist proposes a series of eatable ties exploring the redundancy of the tie in modern society by giving the garment a new set of functions! Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Crayons en chocolat / Chocolate pencils
2008-05-14 00:48:00
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
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Portable Life Size Camera Obscura
2008-05-12 19:12:00
Passionate about photography, I am excited about this project, the perfect portable camera obscura designed by Allison Roberts also discovered on Zones of Emergency.Capturing large format pictures is the dream in photography. Making a lightproof "tent" to captures the life-size outdoor is a fantastic idea. Allison explains that this is meant as a solution for an urban gardener to still be able to have a greenhouse, or simply anyone else who wishes to do indoor gardening: this portable alternative to a permanent grow room can be assembled in about 25 minutes without any tools! Once assembled, you have an indoor greenhouse that is completely sealed and virtually light proof. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
More About: Life , Camera , Portable , Camera Obscura , Size

DIY videos by young artists
2008-05-12 18:32:00
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.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Pa...
More About: Videos , Artists , Young

Happy mother's day
2008-05-11 17:16:00
... to all mothers and mothers of mothers of mothers!By Wikipedia:In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May ...
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New blog!
2008-05-11 02:02:00
I recently migrated Architectradure.blogspot onto its own server and domain name. Please join us at Architectradure's new home! It has a new RSS feed as well, so update your bookmarks, feed readers, spider programs of all sort and welcome to the new participatory world of Architectradure! Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion

A chair to peel
2008-05-10 18:27:00
The Cabbage Chair , 2008Nendo designed the cabbage chair for XXIst Century Man exhibition curated by Issey Miyake to commemorate the first anniversary of 21_21 Design Sight in Roppongi, Tokyo.Miyake asked the designers to make furniture out of the pleated paper that is produced in mass amounts during the process of making pleated fabric, and usually abandoned as an unwanted by-product. The designers' solution to his challenge transformed a roll of pleated paper into a small chair that appears naturally as you peel away its outside layers, one layer at a time.Resins added during the original paper production process adds strength and the ability to remember forms, and the pleats themselves give the chair elasticity and a springy resilience, for an overall effect that looks almost rough, but gives the user a soft, comfortable seating experience.Photo by Masayuki HayashiSince the production process is so simple, the designers thought that eventually, the chair could be shipped as one c...

Biojewellery
2008-05-10 03:07:00
The aim of Biojewellery is to strike up a range of relationships with an audience over the issues that surround biotechnology, tissue engineering in particular. The collaboration is between a core team of a bioengineer and two designers. By using an invasive medical procedure to procure cells the creators of Biojewellery are then manipulating these living organisms to produce designed objects.A model of the ring using a combination of cow marrow-bone and etched silver. The inscription reads Ab Intra, "from within".Tissue engineering is one element of scientific study, which is beginning to have a profound effect on how disease and physical disorders are treated. What are the implications of medical research and how do we introduce the issues surrounding them? Creative responses perform a critical function in terms of challenging/raising public awareness, whilst engaging with the technologies themselves to create new methods of producing work. Biojewellery uses the device of a recog...

Online platform to trade concert tickets!
2008-05-10 02:49:00
Finally a site that works as a ticket hub between buyers and sellers of concert tickets, sports tickets and theater tickets. How convenient to have the info gather into one site, especially when the platform invites seller and buyer of tickets to trade with one another. I have not tried to get some tickets there yet, but I wonder how hard it is to get some tickets for Wimbledon.This online exchange is for Europe only, so this site can be especially useful for the ones of you who live in Europe, and I wonder if there is a similar service for the United States. I still find difficult in Boston to know what's going on and an online system to trade tickets for shows, concerts, art events is a fantastic approach.The viagogo web site sponsors the following weekly UK events list:Rock and Pop Concert Tickets :· Celine Dion Tickets · Boyzone Tickets · Bruce Springsteen Tickets · Foo Fighters Tickets · Nickelback Tickets · Madonna Tickets · James Tickets · Queen tickets · Paul Rodge...
More About: Trade , Online , Platform

Mini tech in fashion
2008-05-09 22:28:00
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...
More About: Fashion , Tech , Mini

International PhD Studentship in Tectonic Textiles!
2008-05-08 18:54:00
An announcement for the good cause. I know how hard it is to find a great PhD in a field that you love! Here is a call for an international PhD studentship in tectonic textiles between the Centre for IT and Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, and the Textiles Future Research Group, Central Saint Martins, College of Art and Design. The position will be based in both research environments so as to make full use of the expertise and equipment available. The applicant will be expected to move between the institutions placed in Copenhagen and London, respectively. The position is offered as a 3-year contract under the regulations of the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Federation of Professional Associations, AC. This Ph.D. application will be administerd by CITA. Click ->hereThe deadline for application is 23 May 2008. Material received by CITA after this time will not be taken into account. A bit of research context for the studentsh...
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Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and T
2008-05-08 04:18:00
July 2008 I have authored a chapter in the book Fashion able Technology , edited by Sabine Seymour! I present my work on fashion garments designed in the context of technology -including the Touch Sensitive apparel developed with Yasmine Abbas. The book just came out and is available for pre-order on Amazon -> hereAbstract: The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublish...
More About: Science , Design , Fashionable

Keep in touch: a tactile-vision intimate interface
2008-05-07 19:08:00
Keep in Touch designed by Nima Motamedi at Simon Fraser University, Canada, is a networked fabric touchscreen designed to support and maintain intimacy for couples in long distance relationships. To achieve this she created a novel sensorial interface by combining the visual and tactile senses together. Each partner is presented with a blurred digital projection of their lover. When they touch their partner's body, the image comes into focus revealing their features.In the paper presented at TEI in 2007, the authors describe how this sensory mapping creates an expressive and emotional interface allowing couples to communicate through touch, gestures, and body language.See also her paper: The aesthetics of touch in interaction design!See also Mutsugoto by Tomoko Hayashi, Stefan Agamanolis and Matthew Karau. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Interface , Vision

Design a multi touch pad in 15 min
2008-05-07 16:23:00
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 FrameFinger Tracking Software * Touch lib Beta v2: - Written by David Wallen * Download, unzip and copy the config.xml into your touchlib directoryMore by AudioTouch - Via. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.................
More About: Design , Multi

Three days in Vancouver, Canada …
2008-05-05 18:39:00
Granville IslandI was off for a few days to Vancouver city, the town that brings together the mountain, the ocean and the forest. I was here to give a talk at Simon Fraser University for the 25th Anniversary of the Faculty of Business Administration. The department will make a DVD of the talk (for education purposes only).My trip to Vancouver was delightful! My hosts: Dr. Judy Zaichkowsky (Research Director and Marketing Area Co-ordinator) and Dr. Olga Volkoff, professor MIS, were fantastic. From my stay in a lovely hotel (Four Seasons Hotel), walking, driving trips throughout Vancouver, boat tour to reach the Island where all you find is handmade craft work as well as houses floating on the water, to the most delicate restaurant: Le Crocodile, I never felt so empowered in giving a talk!!! The crowd was enthusiast and receptive: a combination of business & art & tech professors and students with business attendees. The research we do in our group was embraced and according ...
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The new Ars Electronica Centre, opening January 2009
2008-05-05 07:40:00
The new Ars Electronica Centre , opening January 2009*********** JOBS @ ARS ELECTRONICA ***********Ars Electronica Futurelab is hiring artists and researchers. artists /software engineers (openGL, C++). artists / hardware engineers (sensors and programming). artists / modelers (3D, real time graphics). technical planners (software and/or hardware and CAD). project managers (software, exhibition). designers / architects (exhibits and media in architecture)Ars Electronica Futurelab, the R&D division of Ars Electronica founded in 1996, is an atelier/lab for media art, design, research, and production. Members of the Ars Electronica Futurelab represent a broad variety of different disciplines and nationalities, working in such areas as computer vision, sound analysis, mobile computing, generative graphics, computer controls, and computer networks.Ars Electronica is embedded in the activities for Linz, Austria. As the European Capital of Culture in 2009, a continuously growing, vital ...
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Attachments to artifacts: Collect to connect to construct
2008-04-30 01:17:00
I am thrilled! My proposal for book chapter titled Attachments to artifacts: Collect to connect to construct has been accepted! It will be part of the first Franco-English book that will tell you all you ever wanted to know about new technologies of the self, mobilities and (co-)constructions of identities.In this book chapter, I explore the psychological trade-off between what we call virtual and tangible “attachments”: I focus on people’s attachments to things, and through things, their relations to people (virtual and digital). I address the digital object collection mechanism in relation to the way we gather artifacts in the physical world.Edited by Fred Dervin, Senior Lecturer, Department of French Studies, University of Turku, Finland and partner in crime Yasmine Abbas, Doctor of Design, Harvard, USA, ReD Associates, Denmark. The book will be published in Autumn 2009.More info ->hereSYNOPSIS extraits/excerpts, in both French and EnglishL’hypermobilité physique comme v...
More About: Connect

New interaction technique for timeline control in video scenes
2008-04-29 23:01:00
Dragon is a research project by Thorsten Karrer, Malte Weiss, and others at the Media Computing Group, RWTH Aachen University in Germany.Objects on video scenes are used to control their trajectories in time, basically any object that appears in the video becomes a slider that can control the video timeline. The project is meant to be a "more" frame-accurate in-scene video navigation than usual systems and during studies users found more natural the use of this video navigation "slider" than traditional timeline sliders. It seems to me a great WYSIWYG for video!->Video AbstractWe present DRAGON, a direct manipulation interaction technique for frame-accurate navigation in video scenes.This technique benefits tasks such as professional and amateur video editing, review of sports footage, and forensic analysis of video scenes.By directly dragging objects in the scene along their movement trajectory, DRAGON enables users to quickly and precisely navigate to a specific point in the vide...
More About: Technique , Timeline , Control , Scenes

Chocolate is the key
2008-04-29 04:16:00
Everyone needs to relax a bit from the computer. Let this sweet keyboard show the way ...Chocolate Keyboard by designer Michael Sholk Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion

A little bubble and a little LED
2008-04-23 04:45:00
Tri-Color LED, Tilt sensors, 1.5" diameter sphereBubble Bobbles by James Clar are water-resistant floating globes each embedded with a tri-color LED. Tilt sensors are placed in each Bubble causing it to change colors depending on which direction it's tilted. Used in multitudes Bubble Bobbles can be placed in a pool or lake, causing ripples of colors with each splash and wave.-> Movie Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Your email in the future
2008-04-16 18:22:00
After Fuzzmail a program that allows to write a message that unfolds in time -with Fuzzmail you end up sending what you dynamically write instead of a flat/clean email!- we now have Time Machiner, the email time machine that sends an email in the future! It does not go beyond 2030 so you cannot go too crazy, but still it leaves you time to prepare some freaky surprises. Also one can imagine pre-sending the birthday wishes, so that you will never seem to have forgotten, see example below!When the email is being sent, you receive this nice confirmation screen. The team has a sure sense of humor! Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Email , Future , The Future

Talk at Simon Fraser University
2008-04-15 07:26:00
The Faculty of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, invites me to talk for the Anniversary Speaker Series: 3 Campuses, 3 Speakers, 3 Themes, 3 Important celebrating two significant milestones: 25 years as the Faculty of Business Administration and 40 years since the launch of Canada’s first Executive MBA.Theme InnovationWhen? May 2, 2008, 10:30amWhere? Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus, Westminster Savings Credit Union Theatre, Room 2600.Sign up here! ($25, free for SFU students + Alumni)Talk summary Cati Vaucelle, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab will present two recent projects developed for the Media Lab's Tangible Media Group focused on Gesture Object Interfaces.At the Media Lab, the future is lived, not imagined. In a world where radical technology advances are taken for granted, we design technology for people to create a better future.The Lab comprises rigorous research and graduate degree programs, where trad...

A new social network!
2008-04-13 05:58:00
I love testing new social communities, as a way of seeing what features make such a network unique. I recently joined 3GB, the 1st Arabic social community network, and in it, you create a profile, smoothly upload a photo album, navigate through your friends albums within your profile, create a blog, join groups for discussions and so forth. What is unique so far is the possibility to chat within profiles, integrate your friends photo albums into your profile, and listen to a selection of music. The music player is great! The chat application is clean as it runs within the browser fast! It will be great to see this community grow.A new social network is an opportunity. As someone interested in the web, and where applications on the web are going, when you join a network with 300 people on it, with interesting features and sort of a unique balance between the different features that separate it from the big current social networks, you’re diving into the emerging trends and possibil...
More About: Social , Network , Social Network

A dystopian future for bloggers
2008-04-12 08:16:00
I recently came across intense and surprising posts about friends-bloggers who got banned by Google for monetizing their site. Their electronic death is a disaster for them. Bloggers write digitally, they exist electronically, but their online creative efforts are real. I think Google should be more careful before shutting down a site. The ones who create a site are real, they are not computer algorithms, so a single algorithm should not be entitled to kill a human's joy! Anyhow, this made me think a little. Google search engine became pretty powerful.Rumors say that selling/buying links ads (except the Google ads) ruins the natural ecosystem of the blogosphere and that Google penalizes users for doing so (by killing their internet existence). We all know advertisers only care for traffic and trend, but for some reason it indirectly increases their ranking as well and Google fights radically against this. As a blogger-publisher, Google does not warn you and just remove you from the...
More About: Future

Gesture and shape define the state of an object
2008-04-11 05:45:00
Switch by Radi Designers.Gesture and shape both change the reading and functioning of the object; to cut the power one needs to break the object to interrupt the wire continuity on which it is integrated. It is the shape of the switch that makes sense as much as the sensation of breaking. The gesture is reversible and the switch takes two shapes: straight or bent to define the states: open or close -the usual schematic representations. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: State , Shape , Object , The State , Define

DNA, this little monster
2008-04-09 06:47:00
Following up on my post about the obsession for the future of human identification via DNA, interaction designers interrogate the influence of DNA analysis on dating. How will dating change when DNA analysis can reveal the presence of undesirable genes?Doll Illustrations by AbakeEvidence Dolls, created by Fiona Raby, are hypothetical products sold in a fictional shopping mall called Bioland. The Dolls were commissioned by the Pompidou Centre for the D-Day exhibition in 2005. The project consists of one hundred specially designed dolls used to provoke discussion amongst a group of young single women about the impact of genetic technology on their lifestyle. The Dolls come in three versions based on penis size (small, medium and large). A black indelible marker allows women to note down interesting characteristics of their lover. Hair, toenail clippings, saliva, and sperm can be collected and stored in the penis drawer. Four single women told us about their lovers -- past, present an...
More About: Monster

Body Mnemonics
2008-04-06 07:51:00
Media Lab just had an Open House and my adviser offered me to present in the auditorium my latest research! I was so thrilled. I also demoed Picture This! during the Open House.I had fascinating discussions with sponsors, very engaging, challenging and all of it relevant to our common explorations for new interactions design with current technologies. Researching on gesture interfaces, and new meaning for gesture interaction, i.e gestures that have a meaning to retrieve or interact with data, I regularly refer to Body Mnemonics project by Jussi Angesleva, who was researcher with me at the mythical Media Lab Europe in Ireland.I realized I never blogged about this work; it is a really cool project, and pioneer in its vision.Body mnemonics is a meta tool for portable devices that enhances their usability, shifts the interaction to the periphery of our concentration and makes them more responsive to our cultural background on the basis of three principles: proprioceptic sense, body ima...

Helvetica has gone wild
2008-04-06 06:13:00
Can Helvetica drop? Someone had to imagine it. Dropclock does it via a motion clock screensaver. Every minute of real time is numerically expressed with heavy helvetica dropping into water in slow motion. Thank you fat-man-collective!Video Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Wild

Absolut
2008-04-05 17:17:00
Absolut Quartet ad, shot by Laurent Seroussi and designed by TBWA.Jeff did it again. We followed his adventures right after he won the competition. Now he completed the proposal and currently exhibits his spectacular robotic work at the service of Visionary alcoholism. Music and vodka works in pair and this time beautiful mechanics come into play. Jeff Liebermann and Dan Paluska worked together on Absolut Quartet.Closeup of some of the 100 custom electronics boards fabricated, one for every note.Absolut Quartet, a commission for the Absolut Visionaries project, is a music making machine like no other. The audience becomes part of the performance, while watching something that appears impossible. You can log in to ABSOLUTMACHINES.COM for a chance to interact with the machine. You will enter a 4-8 second theme, and the machine will generate, in real-time, a unique musical piece based on the input melody you have provided.The marimba shooting mechanisms and closeup of the wine players....
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