Design for Exploration 2014: Inspiration

Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2014

Firefly by Ned Khan

I mentioned this earlier today at Pier 23. Here is a video showing the piece during the day and at night.
http://nedkahn.com/portfolio/firefly/

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Singing Glass Contraption

Found this as I was searching for photos of Glass Harps on the internet.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Sample Exhibit Sketch - Magic Wand

A projector produces a real image in space. Waving the wand provides a surface for the image to reflect from, so the light can get into the viewer’s eye. Persistence of vision—the eye's capacity to retain an image for a short period of time—lets the brain see the moving reflections from the stick as one whole picture. Other images in space can be found by waving the wand closer to or farther away from the projector, but only one image is in focus.

This exhibit is related to Alex Z's experiment with acrylic rods and lasers. Disappearing Glass Rods is a planned discovery exhibit popular with teachers because the content is very relevant to school curriculum. In this video, a teacher is narrating the experience.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Logic Gate experiment

This is for Alex K. A mechanical AND logic gate that my colleague Paul Stepahin made.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Polyethylene not wax

We found this artist Roxy Paine who creates art-making machines. One of them makes big piles of a red substance which looks like wax at first sight, but apparently it's polyethylene plastic. It reminded me of Bryan's recent prototype.
http://roxypaine.com

Friday, February 7, 2014

Rashad Alakbarov and Shadow Painting

Thought this was relevant to what we talked about today. I'm not sure if this is who someone may have been talking about but there's one particularly spectacular shadow painting:

Another good one:

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Pinhole Viewers

How to make a simple pinhole viewer:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/sln/light_walk/pinhole_todo.html
...and another version:
http://www.exo.net/~emuller/activities/personal_pinhole.pdf

Bob Miller's Light Walk - Sun images and more

Sun images and pinhole explorations are part of a "light walk" that the artist Bob Miller developed at the exploratorium. He also created "Sun Painting" and "Sophisticated Shadows". Try some of the activities described here this weekend!
http://www.exploratorium.edu/sln/light_walk/

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Pe Lang - looking closely at movement

Pe Lang takes a pretty sober, minimal approach to motion. The video shows interesting close ups of magnets moved by small motors. There is also one motor with velcro which I really like.

http://www.pelang.ch/video/moving_objects_30_V2.mov

Ben Cowden - contraptions using everyday objects

Ben Cowden's often uses everyday materials in new contexts. I like that there is often a whimsical aspect. Find more videos on his youtube channels.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Mechanical Movement - videos of interesting mechanisms

Boston Museum of Science has a wall of mechanisms.From our play-invent-explore web page:

http://pie.exploratorium.edu/scrapbook/mechanisms/index.html

(it takes a little while until the video loads after you click on the image)

Sunday, January 26, 2014

3D Drawing Machine

Posting on behalf of Alice, who made this comment on my first blog post: http://dfe2013.blogspot.com/2014/01/exhibit-critique_13.html?showComment=1390697306520#c3427747482746711179

She stumbled across this piece (a 3D drawing machine)
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/09/3d-drawing-machine/

Sebastian mentioned it how it explains a bit about stereo vision + it will be relevant for our upcoming topic of light + optics.

Thanks Alice!

Using linkages to define motion

The Ghost of a Bird from keith newstead on Vimeo.

Keith Newstead is one of the artists who formed Cabaret Mechanical Theater. The "Ghost of a Bird" video shows how to create complex motion with a simple mechanism. Notice the technique Keith is using: There is only one shaft that moves side to side (and up and down) driven by the crank. The motion of all other parts of the bird is a response to that up and down motion defined by linkages (the hinged wires). I looked up "linkage" to get a better sense of what’s happening here and found this Wikipedia link useful: Mechanical Linkage
In particular "A mechanical linkage is an assembly of bodies connected to manage forces and movement."

Linkages can be an interesting addition to the mechanisms we explored on Friday. For example, the arms in Britt’s cardboard automaton and the tips of the wings in Alon’s automaton could be driven by the center shaft and controlled by a number of linkages.

On a different but related note, "Ghost of a Bird" is an example of using wood and stiff wire to create mechanisms. You can see the same idea in the video below executed on a smaller scale in cardboard, wire, and plastic trash. "Heron and Fish" was made by my colleague Walter Kitundu. Some of you might have seen him working in the Tinkering Studio on Friday during our workshop.

Heron and Fish Automata with trash, cardboard and linkages from Kitundu on Vimeo.