Benjamin Males' Perspective Chandelier

Benjamin Males' latest project blends bespoke electrical engineering with the magic of optical illusion. From most angles, what you see is a jumbled group of seven light bulbs. When you stand in a particular place, however, your perspective reveals another story.

The bulbs of the Perspective Chandelier flicker on and off, each at their own rhythm. A subtle clicking noise accompanying the random blinking reminds me of a neon sign reaching the end of its life, unpredictably flashing its last bits of luminosity. The chandelier also has an Abstract Expressionist quality - the array of tubes looks like a 3D Jackson Pollock form. Or maybe it is a frozen moment of an explosion, captured in time.

When you walk around the chandelier, notice how your perspective changes as you move through space. (see the video here.) At a certain point, Males' magic trick becomes clear. In classic "now you see it, now you don't" fashion, the bulbs coalesce into an arrangement that is immediately familiar.

Its seven distinct tubes align to become a small grid. They flash through their sequence, not randomly as you might have thought, but programmed to write out the numbers 1 through 9. You realize that you're looking at a numerical display, like an isolated digit from an alarm clock.

Males has been programming complex electrics for a number of artists and designers in London. His own artistic impulse is clear in the Perspective Chandelier, which follows in the long tradition of artists subversively embedding optical illusions in their work. Salvador Dali and Felice Varini are examples of artists who asked their viewers to take a double-look.

One of the most famous examples is Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, which has an anamorphic skull at the bottom of the canvas. Holbein never discussed it, and for centuries, the shape was thought to be a "strange mirror or fish". It actually wasn't discovered until 1900 when a maid looked up at the painting from the right angle and instantly recognized the truth about the smudge.

Hans Holbein: "The Ambassadors" 1533

A classic 7-segment numeric display - inspiration for the Perspective Chandelier

The Perspective Chandelier leaves you with the uncanny sense that somewhere, in the midst of fragmented stories and missed connections, there really is an underlying pattern in this world.

Links:
http://www.benjaminmales.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf9dwdeIosg

Sakurako Shimizo: Sound Artifact Jewelry

"I Do" Wedding band in gold and palladium, 2008

"Sneeze Brooch" in silver, 2007

Every time we have a conversation through skype or a mobile phone, our voice travels through many digital and analogue forms. Sound get processed through countless media and comes out 'natural' at the other end, but what about all the steps in between?

Sakurako Shimizu is a traditionally trained jeweler who holds an interest in new media arts. These divided worlds collide in her "Waveform Jewelry". She mines the data of digital audio recording for the strange shapes that appear on her brooches and necklaces. To most of us looking at the jagged pieces of precious metal, we see what appears to be an abstract slash mark. A sound engineer would recognize that these 'abstract' shapes are part of a data language - they represent snippets of recorded sound.

About how she came to this fascinating idea, Shimizu says, "In Summer 2007 I was invited to participate in a group exhibition at Dorsky Curatorial in Long Island City. I decided to create a new body of work for the show. Then I wanted to try to make jewelry using the shape of sound waveform. I used a free sound editing software “Audacity” to visualize the sound.

For this exhibition, I made three brooches made with the sound of human expressions such as yawn, sneeze, and somebody said “wow”. A necklace “giggle” was made with a sound of a girl laughing. I also made a pair of earrings with a voice said “right ear” and “left ear”. A bell sound of a Church in Europe from digital sound archive was used to make a silver cuff bracelet “Bell”. A DVD player and a monitor was installed in the exhibition for the audience to enjoy both the object and the actual video of a sound wave played back.

In 2008, I extended the project to custom made wedding bands with waveform of a couple’s own voices. “I Do” project offered a unique opportunity to own a timeless representation of your partner’s voice. (Usually a couple wear a ring made with each other’s voice.)"

For more, visit http://sakurakoshimizu.blogspot.com/
or email info@sakurakoshimizu.com

The Digital Aesthetic of Mike & Maaike

Stolen Jewels is a project that explores "tangible vs. virtual in relation to real and perceived value." Designed by the duo Mike & Maaike, who also create products and concepts for high tech companies such as Google, this collection rips images of expensive jewels from image searches and scales them up to lifesize. The pixelated result is rendered in colored squares on leather, making for a very flattened form with jagged edges.

This quirky collection no-doubt has its appeal to the clever geeky shoppers in San Francisco, where the studio is based and sells. The pieces are certainly for those who shop with their mind rather than their eyes. Conceptually, they have much to intrigue. They make reference to our digital world, which is bold, but where is the style? To me, the style got lost somewhere between Super Mario Brothers and Microsoft Paint. I know it's not about aesthetic, but...

The aesthetic really does seem out of date. Why? It's not as if this has ever been done before. Still, it feels old. It feels kind of '90s. Probably, the sight of a pixelated image is in itself becoming outdated. In this time of ultra high-res images on computer screens and cameras, the pixelated image is dying out. When is the last time you zoomed into something so far that you got to see the pixels? It's been awhile, and my guess is that as time goes on, pixelation will start to be an artifact.

http://www.mikeandmaaike.com/#p_stolen-jewels

Computation & Craft Symposium

My colleagues from the Digital Crafting Research Network are getting ready for a very exciting symposium dedicated to Computation & Craft. A great bunch of people: designers engaging fabrication and computation within the design process, software developers integrating physical behaviour in design environments and engineers working on the integration of analysis and design will discuss the impact of computation on design from their perspective. Together they will work to synthesise a vision for design and making in the 21st century.

The DigitalCrafting symposium is open to the public and addresses practitioners, students as well as researchers.

Date: Friday 10.12.2010

Venue: Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture
Auditorium 2
Philip de Langes Allé 10
1435 Copenhagen K
Denmark

Program: 10.30 Registration
11.00 Intro to the Digital Crafting Symposium and Network - Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Martin Tamke, Claus Peder Pedersen

11.15 Session 1: Computation and Fabrication – How to fabricate?
Enric Ruiz Geli (cloud9 / Barcelona) http://www.ruiz-geli.com
Martin Antemann (Blumer Lehmann AG/ Gossau) http://www.blumer-lehmann.ch
Fabian Scheurer (designtoproduction / Zuerich) http://www.designtoproduction.com

13.00 Lunch

13.45 Session 2: Computation and Simulation – How to Analyze?
Azam Khan, Autodesk Research (Toronto, Canada) http://www.autodeskresearch.com
Tristan Simmonds (Simmonds Studio / London) http://www.tristansimmonds.com
Sean Ahlquist (icd / University of Stuttgart) http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de

15.25 Coffee break

15.45 Session 3: Computation and Design - How to design?
Michael Meredith (mos-office New York) http://www.mos-office.net
Tobias Wallisser (Lava / AKA Stuttgart) http://www.l-a-v-a.net http://www.architektur.abk-stuttgart.de
Max Maxwell (Supermanouvre / London-NYC) http://www.supermanoeuvre.com/

17.30 Closing remarks and end of Symposium

Embracing Technology

This is the final week of Embracing Technology, a show of innovative craft curated by Angela O'Kelly. If you're near Kilkenny, you can see it in the gallery of the Crafts Council of Ireland. Jenny Leary and Jo Angell, of Puff&Flock, have both installed work there.

Jo's Solar Sanctuary plays with the natural light flowing into the gallery:
Jenny covered a doorway with her interactive Magnetic Walls:
Another highlight of the show is the work by Tactility Factory. They have developed a unique method of intertwining concrete and velvet, which you can see in floor-to-ceiling panels. The women at Tactility Factory are working to integrate architecture and textiles:
Jill Phillips expresses politically-charged memories in the form of laser-etched images in her upholstery for bus benches:
Rachel Kelly shows how digital printing onto adhesive has advanced with her Interactive Wallpaper:
Links:
http://www.tactilityfactory.com/
http://www.interactivewallpaper.co.uk/
http://www.jill-phillips.com/
http://www.ccoi.ie/
http://www.angelaokelly.com/

Architectural Robotics

An Emerging Case of Ubiquitous Computing in the Built Environment
September 30, 2009 in Orlando, Florida at Ubicomp 2009.

An promising workshop about architecural robotics that may be interesting for some textiles designers in respect to responsive architectural textiles & computing.

Abstract

Robotics embedded in our built environment will increasingly support and augment everyday work, school, entertainment, and leisure activities. Archibots, a full-day workshop at Ubicomp, aims to identify opportunities and challenges in research and education in the emerging area of "Architectural Robotics" - intelligent and adaptable physical environments at all scales. For Archibots 2009, we seek position papers representing diverse perspectives from the extended ubicomp community exploring possibilities and defining an agenda for Architectural Robotics for the year 2019 and beyond. Workshop participants will discuss these perspectives and then, in teams, sketch short videos to envision possible futures. The collected videos of the workshop are intended to stream to the Video Program. The organizers plan to publish selected position papers as an edited book or special issue of a journal, and further relations with industry and allied disciplines.

Website

http://www.archibots.org

Instruct Me!

Oh no! Textiles are in the news again. I found this piece of journalism tucked away in the back of today's Metro, thanks to the eye-catching title.

This is a short article, but the implications are drastic - what will the nation do when sock repair skills die out? I suppose we will need those benefits in order to afford a new pair for our poor cold feet.

Surprising that it's not front page news!

Sarcasm aside, this is another example of the popular perception that "traditional" and "new" skills somehow fall into completely different categories. In my point of view, skills are skills - either way, you have someone knowing how to do or make something. We can't assume that digital literacy is to blame for the loss of tyre-changing knowledge. And why assume that it's any less valuable??

Who knows....perhaps more "young people" are cycling.

Life involves changes - changes in our environment, objects, tools - and it's natural that we adapt our skills. If anyone is worried that the digital age is threatening craft skills, take a look at what you can learn how to do now, thanks to the internet: portrait painting...in chocolate!

Check out this and other DIY ideas at Instructables.

Parametric Approaches III: Digital Crafting Symposium

An international symposium on the development of digital architecture for students and professionals. Organised by Centre for Information Technology and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. Contemporary building practice is increasingly computer controlled allowing for a new production more efficient techniques but also of increasing complexity and variance.

This symposium invites researchers and practitioners to discuss how computational systems in the design and manufacture of architecture introduce a new nearness to craft, material and making in architecture. The symposium asks: how can we use these technologies to develop a new adaptable architecture production, how do they affect the way we think about material specification and how do they challenge design?

CITA presents an afternoon of speakers from the fields of architecture, computation, engineering and craft discussing individual approaches to digital design, craft and material showcasing work-in-progress research studies and built projects.

Date: 13.03.2009

Venue: Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Auditorium 2Philip de Langes Allé 10 1435 Copenhagen K Denmark

Context

The Centre for IT and Architecture (CITA) at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture exploring the emergent intersections between architecture and digital technologies. Identifying core research questions into how space and technology can be probed, CITA seeks to investigate how the current forming of a digital culture impacts on architectural thinking and practice. CITA examines how architecture is influenced by new digital design and production tools as well as the digital practices that are informing our societies culturally, socially and technologically. CITA is a cross disciplinary research environments consolidating new collaborations with partners from the fields of computer science, engineering, human computer interaction, robotics, artificial intelligence as well as the practice based fields of furniture design, fashion and textiles, industrial design, film, dance and interactive arts.

More Information can be obtained from CITA or directly here

Everybody is welcome