Category

Design Frontiers

04.11.10

Designing for the epidermis Design Frontiers | (0)
Creating an embedded monitoring system to for personal health. User may customize balance/ratio of nutrients and system vitals to fit his or her needs. For example, a body builder may need specific protein levels and electrolytes, whereas the pregnant user may want to monitor toxins, anitbodies, potential illness, minerals, etc, for heathy fetal development. Preggers: Vitamin B-9. Synthesize and repair DNA. Cell division and cell growth. Microarray of repurposed bacterial designed for biological feedback. Each bacterial "pixel" corresponds to a metabolic condition and and visually represents its value through color saturation. Matrix snapshots are taken at a steady ...
03.23.10

Putrefashion Design Frontiers, Rapid Prototyping, The Softness of Things | (0)
[flickr size="medium" float="left"]http://www.flickr.com/photos/fauxtauxs/4439578120/[/flickr] Assignment: Create a material or design an object exploring materiality. After waiting for several weeks for my silver nitrate (to mirror glass), it was time to cut my losses and come up with a new solution to meet the criteria of this assignment. Jorge Just had also been looking for inspiration with little time before the deadline. We decided to work together to hasten the creative process. We ran the gamut of conductive materials: glue, paint, gack, cloth, paper, etc. Without a specific function in mind, they seem to fall under the recurring projects at ITP. Jorge was drawn to ...
02.22.10

Mirroring Glass Design Frontiers | (0)
While cruising through chemistry experiments on youtube for inspiration, I came across a recipe for mirroring glass. Peter Esveld and are drawn to this chemical reaction (of silver nitrate and sodium hydroxide) because it produces something permanent and beautiful in a relatively short period of time. Here are two informative videos: Mirrored glass is an expensive material due to its production process but there certainly is no shortage of glass objects. As exciting as mirroring a flask or jar may be to the chemist, they're rather boring objects to be mirrored. We have all the solvents needed and we're waiting on the ...
02.08.10

Phenomenological Design Design Frontiers | (0)
02.01.10

Revisiting the Science Fair Design Frontiers | (0)
For our first assignment, we were to revisit science fair projects. Most of the projects I remember to be pretty lame, so I started scouring chemistry videos on MIT open course ware and youtube. Some of my more interesting finds were mirroring glass with silver nitrate, making glow-stick chemicals and making sodium metal from lye and magnesium. The time constraints meant I wouldn't have time to order the chemicals online. I remembered the videos of non-newtonian fluids that I'd seen. Pete Esveld and I found some cornstarch at the grocery store and mixed up a batch of the curious ...