water calligraphy device at beijing design week 2011

water calligraphy device at beijing design week 2011.

‘water calligraphy device’ by nicholas hanna, on exhibition during beijing design week 2011
image © designboom

‘water calligraphy device’ by canada-born, beijing-based media artist nicholas hanna
reinterprets the chinese tradition of using a water brush to write poetry in public spaces
by transforming a flat-bead tricycle into a poetry-writing device.

in beijing, these tricycles are a common form of transportation, adapted by residents
into everything from carts to traveling market stalls. hanna’s ‘water calligraphy device’
uses a computer, mounted on the handlebars, to transmit passages of chinese literature
to an electrical system and array of solenoid valves. each character is converted into a dot matrix,
to which the valves synchronize the release of droplets of water as the tricycle moves forward.
thus as the device moves forward, passages of text appear behind it, only to gradually evaporate
just as in traditional water brush painting.

‘water calligraphy device’ is traveling through beijing’s historic dashilar district
through october 3rd, 2011, as part of beijing design week.

video courtesy of nicholas hanna

the project draws from the chinese tradition of writing calligraphy in public spaces using a water brush

view of the device in use

closer view of the characters

the tricycle leaves poetry in its wake as it travels through the neighborhoods of dashilar, beijing

view of the solenoid valve system
image © designboom

for more head over here : http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/16848/nicholas-hanna-water-calligraphy-device-at-beijing-design-week-2011.html

10 Online HTML5 Tools For Web Designers | Tools

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If you haven’t heard, HTML5 is taking the web by storm! It is currently being enhanced by experts to provide us Web Designers & Developers with awesome new revolutionary web page features!

HTML5 Background Information

For those of you who are new to HTML5, here is some quick background information to get you up to speed.

• HTML5 is the new language for presenting content on the Internet (at the time of writing this article it is still in beta but soon to be released in 2012).
• HTML5 brings new features making it easy to incorporate video, audio, fonts, drag & drop, web graphics & animations into your web pages.
• HTML5 is backwards compatible to don’t worry about your old designs in HTML 4 or XHML1 they will work just the same!
• jQuery has started killing Flash, HTML5 will finish it off for sure.

HTML5 Online Tools & Resources

Not known to many web designers, there are some really good online tools & resources which web designers should definitely take advantage of to help create those new innovative designs and stay ahead of the field! We have collected 10 of the best Online HTML 5 Tools & Resources for Web Designers. Enjoy!

Online Sprite Box Tool

Compressing images is all the rage these days and putting all your images in a “sprite” will both increase the speed of your image transitions and loading times. This Online Sprite Box Tool can help you design your images into sprites using this awesome jQuery, CSS3 and HTML5 tool.

Online 3D Sketch Tool

This is no ordinary sketch tool, it uses the power of HTML Canvas to create 3D drawing. To rotate the canvas in 3D, you need to hold down SPACE and then DRAG horizontally with your cursor. You can also make the drawing vibrate and draw in dashed lines too. Pretty Cool.

Online Font Testing Tool

As a designer, choosing a decent font can be a tough process! Use this awesome font bookmark to instantly view any web page in a new font without changing any HTML or CSS! Harness the power of HTML5 and @font-face by dragging the font.ttf files into the top toolbar and they will appear in a list for quick view. There are hundreds of free websites just type in “Free Fonts” into Google.

Online Velocity Sketch Tool

Velocity sketch is a unique online HTML5 canvas drawing tool which you can create strange looking web like things. I did a quick one (in the screenshot) but I’m sure you web designers can be creative with such a tool and create something quite awesome.

Online Pattern Generator Tool

This online tool coule be pretty useful for web designers when it comes to creating page and header backgrounds or even heading backgrounds. I uses the power of HTML canvas to provide you with the pattern your looking for in seconds! It has heaps of options and is really easy to use! Great stuff.

Online XRay Tool

With Online XRay Tool can quickly view details of page elements on any webpage at the click of a button! Simply drag the bookmarklet on their website into your bookmarks, visit the webpage you want to analyse, click Xray bookmar then click any element on the page. It also can handle HTML5 elements such as canvas and provide you with the design information you need.

Online Automatoon (animation) Tool

Automatoon is pure HTML5. Since no Flash is used, your animations will play just fine on iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and all common web browsers. Awesome-atoon!

Online HTML5 Audio Maker Tool

I think with the introduction of the the audio tag in HTML5 we will start seeing more and more websites utilize the power of audio. This is an online audio maker tool which can help introduce you to the new audio features HTML5 has to offer. There is also a online HTML5 video maker tool which does a similar thing.

For more go over here 10 Online HTML5 Tools For Web Designers | Tools.

No Technical Know-How Needed: Endless Forms Web Site Helps Users ‘Breed’ 3-D Printable Objects

Forget draft tables and complicated computer-aided design programs: You dream it. Endless Forms helps you design it.

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Cornell University engineers are allowing anyone to point, click, collaborate and create online in the evolution of printable, three-dimensional objects. They aim to transform the design of art, architecture and artificial intelligence.

Their new, interactive website EndlessForms.com, allows users to design their own things — from lamps and butterflies to furniture and faces — without any technical knowledge and using the same principles that guide evolutionary biology.

The Web site was developed by Jeff Clune, Cornell postdoctoral fellow; Jason Yosinski, Cornell graduate student in engineering; and Eugene Doan, Cornell undergraduate student in the Creative Machines lab of Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and computing and information science.

EndlessForms users can develop objects just as gardeners raise roses — a “generation” of objects is displayed, and a user chooses objects they like, which are “bred” to produce the next generation. Over time, objects evolve and users can publish these objects. Others can further evolve, share and rate them, creating a collaborative exploration of designs that, according to Lipson, represents an entirely new way of thinking about design. Users can then have their objects made by 3-D printing companies in a wide range of materials, such as silver, steel, ceramic or sandstone.

The concept eliminates the need for skilled engineers to draw in Computer-Aided Design (CAD) programs, which can be complicated and non-intuitive. These new design tools free people to focus creativity, instead of being mired in technical details, Lipson said.

Now that 3-D printing is taking off, the goal is to unshackle the design process, flooding the industry with objects that are truly one of a kind. Lipson likens the 3-D printing industry to iPods with no music — the printers exist, but the availability of content is bottlenecked by the old methods like CAD that few people know how to use and that stifle creativity.

read more : Here

Go to EndlessForms.com to try it out yourself!!

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Beyond Silence Digital Piano for Hearing Impaired People

Beyond Silence digital piano is a concept music instrument for hearing impaired people, especially children. It would be pretty difficult to grasp the idea of hearing impaired people listen to the music. How can they enjoy the music when they don’t even hear the sound?

Designers : Hakyung Kim, Jina Kim and Suyoung Lee

People think hearing is the only way to enjoy the music, thus, isolating hearing-impaired people from the music. To challenge this perception, three Korean industrial designers have come up with “Beyond Silence” concept, focusing on the fact that hearing-impaired people can sense and feel the vibrationof the music.

This concept also helps children to play the piano by feeling the wave and vibration of each tune from the resonance board. The bottom part of Beyond Silence digital piano concept has been designed with a diaphragm to create stronger vibrations and music waves for other hearing-impaired people to feel on the ground.

 

 

Read more: here

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• Strategies for Helping Those With Hearing Loss Enjoy Holiday Season Are Offered by HearUSA Audiologist (prweb.com)

Tell the Time Using Only Your Breath

Wouldn’t it be great to feel powerful, at least as far as your gadgets are concerned? The Eole watch is a timepiece designed by Julien Moise that works under the user’s own breath power. The delicate rotating bit moves with nothing more than a gentle puff of air from the wearer’s lungs.

While the watch’s parts are sitting still the display is blank. But when the wearer exhales, the tiny rotor turns and enough electricity is generated to turn on the delicate-looking display for a moment, giving you just enough time to see whether you’re late for that appointment.

 

 

read more: Here

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Brilliantly Brainy: Do Art Cars Dream of Electric Beeps?

 

Most drivers have a very strong connection to their vehicles. It’s almost as though our cars are an extension of our own bodies; we ride around in our metal and plastic cocoons, seeing the world through the attached windows and mirrors. But what if our cars themselves had memories and dreams?

 

The Brain Car is a moving sculpture from artist Olaf Mooij. On the back of an old hearse sits a huge brain-like sculpture that looks awesome enough by day. But by night, it lights up with another type of awesome entirely.

All day as it is traveling, the Brain Car records images of where it goes and the sights it encounters. Then after dark, the Brain Car remixes those “memories” and an interior projector replays on the inside surface of the brain.

 

Read more here: gajitz

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Augmented Reality Cinema App Brings Movies to Real Life

via (Gajitz)

True movie lovers know that there aren’t many things more thrilling than visiting the very locations where your favorite movies were shot. Call it cinematic tourism or just giving your movie experiences a brand new layer; either way, it can be a fun and interesting way to enhance both your movie experiences and your vacation. A new smartphone app called AR Cinema will use the power of GPS along with augmented reality to actually bring you into your favorite films.

Visit a street corner or landmark where a movie was filmed, hold up your smartphone and the app will show you the scene(s) shot there. The demo video shows films set in London, but the developers want to add additional cities. Of course, the people who live in those cities might not be thrilled with the cinema tourists holding up their phones in the middle of the street to watch movie clips, but this awesome idea could add a whole new layer to the tourism trade in cities like London, New York, Toronto and other frequently-used shooting locations.

via read more here: http://gajitz.com/augmented-reality-cinema-app-brings-movies-to-real-life/

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Stelarc: Pushing the body’s boundaries

(Image: Newspix/Rex Features)

(Image: Newspix/Rex Features)

The Australian performance artist with an ear on his arm discusses his work challenging what it is to be human

As an artist, what is your role in shaping technology?
It’s a very modest one. Each new technology generates novel information and unexpected images of the body and the world, which often destabilises our paradigms of what a body is and how it operates. Technology generates uncertainty, it constructs the unexpected. That’s what makes it exciting to incorporate as part of artistic expression.

What is it about the boundaries of the body that fascinates you?
All of my projects explore alternate anatomical architectures – a body with a third hand, or an extra ear, or an artwork inside a bodily space instead of a public space.

We are biological bodies, but we are often accelerated, augmented and enhanced by technology. There may be a time soon when bodies become portals of sensory experience. I might be able to see with your eyes when you are in New York, for example, or listen with someone’s ears from London. We can no longer think of the body as simplistically bound by its skin and containing a single self.

Will it become harder to tell where we end and technology begins?
That’s beginning to be the case. In 1000 years’ time, perhaps technology will be invisible because it will be inside our bodies. We will be able to recolonise the human body with micromachines, nanosensors and nanobots that augment our bacterial and viral population.

Will the body become obsolete?
I think that the body is obsolete. From the standpoint that it’s increasingly inadequate to cope with the technological terrain it inhabits. That doesn’t mean we can do without a body; there has to be some kind of embodiment. But I think the possibilities are there for unexpected hybrids of biology, technology and computer code. We are very much a meat, metal and software system now.

Do you worry that your work combining technology and the body might jeopardise your health?
There’s been no deliberate attempt to endanger the body, but to do anything physically difficult or technically complicated, yes, those actions might be risky. You do things with a positive attitude and a sense that you need to do this if you are to achieve anything.

Is physical discomfort part of exploring the body’s boundaries?
Only in a very general sense. If you are going to suspend your body with 18 hooks in the skin, and you are going to be hoisted 60 metres high by a large crane, there may be all sorts of possible problems. You anticipate those and try to take appropriate precautions. Those performances were not done to have a painful experience.

Why do you have an ear on your left arm?
At the moment this is only a relief of an ear. It’s partly surgically constructed and partly cell grown. We need to surgically lift the helix to create an ear flap, and then we will grow a soft earlobe using my adult stem cells. When the ear is more of a three dimensional structure we will reinsert the microphone and connect it to a wireless transmitter. Then any Wi-Fi hotspot will internet-enable the ear.

We are replicating a bodily structure, relocating and then rewiring it for additional capabilities.

Read More over here: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/07/stelarc-pushing-the-bodys-boundaries.html

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In Cognito Umbrella As An Alternative to Burqa

As a rule in Muslim community that no woman should act nor dress in a way appeals the opposite sex, especially in a public place, the concept of Burqa came into existence. Perhaps, certain countries necessitate the woman wear Burqa at any cost otherwise people out there consider it as illegal for women. It is a piece of cloth that covers the entire body, hiding the face totally, except for a grille to allow the wearer to see. However, wearing Burqa all the time can be quite frustrating. In order to get rid of this, In Cognito was designed. It is an umbrella made of transparent fabric over which is inseminated an Islamic pattern, a mousharabiyeh. Made as an excellent alternative for the cover of women who are tired of wearing the Burqa and fed up with its physically impositions. Those small openings in the cloth allow women to see via the umbrella without being watched by others. In Cognito is not just a solution, however, an accessory emphasizing the issue of the Burqa.

Designer : Tamara Barrage

What do you think? A good idea or Not so,

(maybe an idea for celebrities who want to stay annonymous?)

 apart from it being Totally woman unfriendly should some men actually permanently walk with this around.?

(Red.)

Read nore over Here:

Walking Table by Wouter Scheublin

It is definitely tough to be a design blogger. The man in question behind the creation of a cool, walking table is designer Wouter Scheublin. The new Walking Table is quintessentially Dutch, exceptionally functional, aesthetically pioneering, and yet appealingly strange table that produces strong opinions. The table is a cautiously crafted piece of furniture, which shows the exquisiteness of mechanics. It comes to life when pushed and mimics an innate walking motion, mystifying our perception of the typically static piece of furniture. As the name suggests, the Walking Table is human-powered, integrating a mechanical linkage. It is accessible in a walnut edition of only 8 pieces, each delicately crafted from selected materials.

Designer : Wouter Scheublin

 

Too Odd Or Distinctly ArtFull?

See more over here and Here

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