Another interactive mechanical mirror from Daniel Rozin from his current exhibition at the bitforms gallery in New York - a congregation of soft toy penguins that turn in formation when approached:
“Penguins Mirror” is an installation scattered on the floor and
comprised of 450 motorized stuffed animals. Reductive in palette, yet
baroque in behavior, it performs an absurdly homogeneous system of
movement. Playing with the compositional possibilities of black and
white, each penguin turns from side to side and responds to the presence
of an audience. As they perform, the penguins’ collective intelligence
is puzzling, yet somehow familiar, as the plush toys enact a precise
choreography rooted in geometry.
You can find out more about the exhibition at bitformshere
“One of my favourite Steve Jobs stories was the time the engineers working on the iPod brought their finished prototype to him in his office. He said it was too big, they needed to make it smaller. They said it was as small as they could make it, it couldn’t be made any smaller. So he took the prototype over to his aquarium and dropped it in. The iPod sank to the bottom, and as it did, tiny little bubbles came out. ‘See those bubbles,’ he asked. ‘They’re air inside the iPod. Make it smaller.’
“Another story about Steve Jobs was when they brought the prototype for the iPad 2 to his office. The engineers told him it was faster than the first iPad. He took it over to his aquarium and dropped it in. ‘Look how slowly it sank,’ he told them. ‘Make it faster.’
“One time a newly hired intern had been sent out to get Steve a sandwich. When she brought it to him, he looked at it. ‘I thought I ordered the beef on rye,’ he asked. She told him it was indeed beef on rye. He took it over to his fish tank and dropped it in. ‘Does that look like beef on rye?’
“He was always dropping things in that fish tank. We couldn’t stop him. We told him he had to stop, he wouldn’t listen. It was full of stuff that shouldn’t be in an aquarium.
“The fish had all died years ago. One had been crushed under an early generation iMac. The others were all poisoned. He didn’t care.
“It got to the point where there was no room for anything in the fish tank. When we emptied it after he died, we found a body in there. We never found out who it was.”
Provenance: presented to George V on October 29th, 1918 by Emperor Yoshihito of Japan who deputed Prince Yorihito of Higashi-Fushimi to bring the sword over to England to present it. This is the only sword of its type outside Japan
The sword has a grip of tampered steel encased in part with gold panels engraved with scrolling foliage and flowers. The centre features applied gold flowerheads, while the top is pierced for suede carrying strap with faceted tassels. The sword a pommel and pierced shellguard.
[Gosse Adema] made his very first instructable by detailing his Lego 3D printer build. It’s Prusa i3 based, and originally started out as an A4 plotter with repurposed steppers out of an old HP printer. After upgrading to some NEMA 17 steppers, it became a full-blown 3D printer.
It turns out that NEMA 17 stepper mounting holes align perfectly with Lego, making it super easy to mount them. Check out this Lego ‘datasheet’ for some great details on measurements.
The brains of the printer are occupied by Marlin running atop a Atmega 2560, and Pronterface for the PC software. He tops it off with a Geeeteck built MK8 extruder boasting a 0.3 mm nozzle that accepts 1.75 mm filament.
As with almost any DIY 3D printer build, his first prints didn’t turn out so well. After adjusting the nozzle and filament size in the software, he started to get some good results. Be sure to check out the video below to see this Lego 3D printer in action.
ESA’s Philae comet lander has once again gone silent. According to the space agency, the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on a comet lost radio contact with the Rosetta orbiter mothership on July 9. Despite this setback, engineers are still transmitting commands to the unmanned probe in the hope of reestablishing communications and getting it to continue observations.
The Diphelleia grayi or “Skeleton Flower” is finally a reason to look forward to rainy days. This rare flower transforms into a translucent beauty [its skeletal form] when exposed to water, its white petals becoming completely clear while wet, then transforming back to their original color once dry.
Found in only three locations in the world, the flower grows in the colder regions of China and Japan, and within the United States’ Appalachian Mountains. In addition to its transformation capabilities, the flower is also recognized by its large, umbrella-like leaves and bright green and yellow centers. To watch the transformation of the Diphelleia grayi from white to translucent, watch the video above. (via Bored Panda)
Latest installment of online project curated by nicolassassoon features a series of artists who use computers to make their work, which is then exhibited in real world exhibitions.
OH MY GOD DO YOU GUYS UNDERSTAND HOW AMAZING THIS IS I HAVE BEEN READING ASTRONOMY BOOKS FOR YEARS AND EVERYTIME THERE’S JUST A PIXELLY BLUR FOR PLUTO NOT ANYMORE. NEVER AGAIN.
“That’s lower than the 2013 polio immunization rates for 1-year-olds in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Algeria, El Salvador, Guyana, Sudan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Yemen, among other countries, according to data from the World Health Organization,” Seattle public radio station KUOW reports. This in the same state where a woman recently died of measles , marking the first U.S. death attributed to the disease in over a decade.
When you make a costume, you have a practically endless amount of choices when it comes to materials. We talk about them all the time — Worbla, foam, fabric. I don’t think we’ve touched on the usefulness of organic materials much though. They might not be a long term cosplay solution, but supplies harvested from nature are an option. Artist Christophe Guinet has used botanicals in several of his projects, including a wearable Batman cowl and cape.
The bark and moss look for the Dark Knight makes the vigilante look a lot like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. It makes me want an art exhibit featuring out of the ordinary takes on Batman’s look. Guinet worked with Warner Bros. France and Splendens and according to Design Boom, he:
“designed the iconic batman suit primarily out of tree bark, vegetal moss, lichen and fungus. a foam mold of the batman suit and helmet has been carefully wrapped and covered in layers of tree bark, forming the suit’s distinctive pointed ears, opening for the mouth and nose, and defensive shoulder covering.’the bark of the tree is like the suit of the superheroes — a protective force,’ guinet says. ‘the foam strengthens the balance that exists between the symbiosis of nature and that of this mythical character.'”
Hey saucie... isn't this what we talked about ages ago?
Mid-Century Modern furniture can be difficult to find and expensive to buy. You can dress up your own piece of furniture by adding DIY hairpin legs to provide that Mad Men touch you’ve been looking for.
Autodesk introduced a new product called, “Within” that generates lattice structures within 3D models. It could change everything.
The software accepts a 3D model and attempts to dynamically generate an internal structure that, when 3D printed, is far more lightweight than a solid structure. It accomplishes this by placing a number of equally spaced nodes and expanding connections between them. These connections can be thickened or thinned, depending on the need for strength.
The tool also includes methods to optimize the lattice solution by thickening a critical portion of the internal lattice, and also adjusting the object’s skin thickness to complement the strength provided by the generated internal lattice.
Once your design is completed, you can then test its strength with a design simulation, which attempts to show visually how stress works its way through the exterior and interior of the object.
We think this is a very profound feature that will soon be used whenever 3D printed parts are designed. The main advantage of 3D printing is to do things precisely like this: make lightweight, strong parts using complex internal structures that cannot be manufactured in any other way.
But because design tools almost always assume “solid” objects, many 3D printed parts are just that: solid. This means that the parts are strong, but they aren’t necessarily lighter than conventionally produced items. Worse, the solid prints use more material than those with internal lattices. This is a very important factor during metal 3D printing, where the cost of metal powders can be exorbitant.
It may be that this feature, when combined with metal 3D printing, could enable the financial viability of printing more production 3D metal parts. If it’s cheaper to design and produce them, then more will appear. And this could lead to increased sales of 3D metal printers.
One feature we hope Within includes: an ability to insert a “drain hole” to pull unused powder from the interior of the print. If no such feature exists, then the print may as well be solid, as the metal powder would be trapped inside anyway!
I have also used Adobe Kuler to pick color palettes from images
From one of our pages in 100 Tuesday Tips – Creating easy color palette, a.k.a. cheat sheet color palette.
This is the simplest way to create color palette on Photoshop.
1. Find an image
2. Filter – Pixelate – Mosaic
3. Color pick a general color
4. Saturate the color.
