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.

---

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!!

Related articles

• How 3D Printing Will Change Absolutely Everything It Touches (forbes.com)

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

Related articles

• 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

Related articles

• Sniffer dogs can be used to detect lung cancer (eurekalert.org)

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

Related articles

• IBM Makes Brainy Breakthrough in Computing (tjantunen.com)

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/

Related articles

• Augmented reality windows being developed for Toyota (gizmag.com)
• NASA tech lifts augmented-reality shooter (news.cnet.com)
• Augmented Reality in Plain English (freetech4teachers.com)

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

Related articles

• New Rules for Making Hybrid Animal-Humans (foxnews.com)

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:

Eye-Controlled Laptop and ‘Telepresence’ Robot Debut

The future is happening at CeBIT, the world’s top tech fair in Hanover, Germany.

 

THE GIST

• A laptop that allows users to open files, play music and view pictures using their eyes was on display.
• So was a humanoid robot that could transform business meetings and reduce the need for long-distance travel.

Billed as a global first, a laptop allowing users to open files, play music and view pictures using just the power of their eyes was turning heads Wednesday at the CeBIT, the world’s top tech fair.

The otherwise unremarkable laptop integrates cutting-edge “eye tracking” technology by Swedish firm Tobii that follows the movement of the user’s eyes and allows him or her to operate menus and select icons.

The prototype is also good for the environment as it recognizes when you are not looking at it and automatically goes into screen saver mode, saving energy, Tobii says. It restarts as soon as the user glances at the monitor again.

“It’s definitely going to be in the laptops of the future,” said Anders Olsson from Tobii. “You can do pretty much anything you would do with your normal laptop.

“We’ve been stuck for a quarter of a century with a keyboard and a mouse. It’s time to move to the next step and eye control technology is the perfect solution.”

The technology is already used in other areas, including in car safety where a sensor tracks eye movement to determine whether the driver is drowsy, and in helping paralyzed people operate everyday objects just with their eyes.

Read more over here: http://news.discovery.com/tech/eye-controlled-laptop-and-telepresence-robot-debut-110303.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Klipp Future Camera by Mac Funamizu

Mac Funamizu is back with a new concept.

 

Highly inspired by the WVIL concept camera demonstrated is CES 2011, Mac conceived of a similar device that looks smaller and thinner. Klipp, the future camera concept by Mac Funamizu is totally idyllic. The idea is pretty clear. The lens has a clip behind it so that you can place it over various places. The lens system is literally self-contained with all the necessary things required to take SLR high-quality photos. Regardless of where you clip it, the lens system sends the pictures to a hub device – a transparent screen, wirelessly.

Designer : Mac Funamizu

via: http://www.tuvie.com/klipp-future-camera-by-mac-funamizu/

Suspended Staircases

Cantilevered from the wall, made from heavy steel, concrete or glass, these stair treads seem unfettered by the laws of physics, hovering in the air. All manner of engineering tricks were used to make these 18 modern staircases into works of art that we just can’t stop staring at.

Suspended Stairs at the Godzilla House, South Korea

South Korea’s ‘Godzilla House’ is quite an interesting piece of architecture as a whole, but the curved shape and chameleon-like     metal facade are just the beginning. One particularly striking element included by Chae Pereira architects is a wooden staircase with white vertical supports that almost look like rope from a distance.

Ribbon Illusion Stairs by HSH Architects

If you have to stare at your staircase from the living room every day, why not make it a work of art? This beautiful ribbon staircase by HSH Architects puts ordinary stairs to shame, distributing weight down to the floor through hidden brackets mounted into the wall.

Barely-There Stairs Above a Reflecting Pool

The way that these stairs play with light and reflection in the space around them is almost more important than the stairs themselves – design-wise, at least. Positioned above a reflecting pool, the cantilevered stairs provide a bit of shady respite on the way to a sunny terrace.

Incredible Bird’s Nest Suspended Staircase

These stairs definitely aren’t trying to hide – they’re the most interesting element in the room. Reminiscent of a bird cage, the chaotic criss-crossing metal bars are balanced by the serene white of the walls and cabinets.

Hanging Black-and-White at BUMPS, Beijing

These highly unusual blocky black-and-white stairs are a visual echo of the BUMPS building’s exterior, which consists of black and white rectangles seemingly stacked Jenga-style. Each step is connected to the next leaving negative space as they descend, resulting in interesting optical effects when viewed from the lower floor.

Minimalist Black Stairs by Ecole

Like an Escher drawing sprung into three dimensions, this floating staircase by Ecole is made all the more dramatic with the use of bold black against a white wall.

Read more over: Here