The Miroslav Tichy exhibit at the Pompidou Center shows a unique kind of outsider art: voyeuristic photographs shot by the Soviet artist using exclusively hand-made cameras pieced together from trash and household odds-and-ends to take complex if imperfect tele-photo and otherwise surprise visions of human nature. You can see all of his hand-made cameras and […]
Category Archives: customization
diy camera
Also posted in art, fabrication, free & open, futurecraft, product design
Comments closed
design for durability
The OLPC has driven important innovations in open software, hardware, universal design and environmental sustainability in order to be cheap and durable enough for widespread use in developing countries. At this week’s unveiling of new designs for second-generation laptops, I spotted this interesting exhibit on the design touches that make the OLPC stand out in […]
Also posted in children, conviviality, environment, fabrication, free & open, futurecraft, open objects, product design, supply chain, universal design, upcycling
Comments closed
open threads 3
Burdastyle is an open-source sewing resource where members upload patterns and visitors can consult instructional references (below) or download pdf patterns (above). By providing instructions for how to sew at the same time as open source ‘code’ for what to sew the site is a real open source free fashion resource. As with free software, […]
Also posted in blogogracy, fabrication, fashion, free & open, futurecraft, materials, open objects, product design, soft/glowing, universal design
Comments closed
open threads 2
The concept of making source code Open Source typically refers to opaque products whose construction cannot be discerned from their appearance – but even seemingly transparent products, such as buildings or clothes, hide a code of their own. The project Hacking Couture seeks out the hidden aesthetic code and its history in order to liberate […]
Also posted in fabrication, fashion, free & open, futurecraft, open objects, product design, soft/glowing, upcycling
Comments closed
phone-maker
The brilliant Schulze & Webb have done it again with the Metal Phone, a completely recyclable cell phone enclosure developed for Nokia. The project is a complete cradle-to-cradle life cycle process: a cell phone encased in a lead alloy (ok, solder) can be disassembled and melted down to be re-cast into a new cell phone […]
Also posted in energy, environment, fabrication, futurecraft, materials, open objects, product design, supply chain, upcycling
Comments closed
open source threads
We’ve seen do-it-yourself kits for wearable technology; now Studio 5050 has released the first open-source modular wearable technology collection, a series of hardware components that can be used to create computational clothes such as the temperature sweater which contains a discrete luminous numerical display in its cuff (pictured below), the masai dress which generates music […]
Also posted in fabrication, fashion, futurecraft, open objects, product design, soft/glowing
Comments closed
mesh and re-mesh
A the Lexus installation at the Salone del Mobile there was an interesting installation about generation of mesh structures which provided hints for their eventual re-generation and re-use. The chair above was manufactured using a 3D printer from 2kg of fused Nylon powder. As part of the exhibition a series of models depicted how the […]
Also posted in energy, environment, fabrication, furniture, futurecraft, materials, product design, soft/glowing, upcycling
Comments closed
light blocks
Yesterday at the Salone Satellite in Milano in the taro & sarah booth I was struck by this modular lamp: you can add polyhedral modules in any direction to change the shape and brightness of the chandelier in crystalline fashion. Each module is made of folded translucent plastic with magnetic contacts acting as both structure […]
Also posted in fabrication, product design, soft/glowing
Comments closed