Customizable 3D Printed Dress 'Petals'

The creatives behind Nervous System have developed the next evolution of their 3D printed Kinematics dress, this one called 'Petals'. As its name insinuates, the design involves a unique new element resembling a flower petal. An intuitive interface allows the customer to brush these petals directly onto the dress, and modulate between these and several other elements. They can be varied in size, orientation and sharpness. The dress gets 3D printed in rolled up state by an SLS printer which makes the textile surprisingly dynamic when worn. For a price tag you can design your own dress on Nervous System's website and contact them.

Artful clock incorporates ferrofluid

 A blend between art, nature, and technology, this clock displays time by magnetically manipulating ferrofluid, nano-engineered metal holding particles suspended in a carrier solvent. The clock, called Ferrolic, was created by master student Zelf Koelman at the department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology. He researched the technology and interaction for a year before being able to create the beautiful dynamics he was looking for. He envisions an additional app in order to customize texts, shapes and transitions. So far, only 24 of the clocks have been made but future plans to scale up production are being created.

3D printing enables wearable micro-organisms

After Lucy McRae paved the way for wearable liquids with a low-tech implementation in Robyn's Indestructable music video, MITs Mediated Matter professor Neri Oxman has created a similar concept with her piece 'Mushtari' using a state-of-the-art multimaterial 3d printer.

She devised transparent hollow channels that are grown in the digital design space, as seen in the video below. These are then 3d printed, with the hollow spaces filled with support material for which she had to devise a specific method in order to be able to remove it completely.



The idea here is that new materials can be created on the body, such as fuels, yeast, food and medicine, by having microorganisms in the channels react to sunlight. For future developments I think it is important to place the wearer central in the design process - how will the wearable fit the wearer's dynamic identity, what qualities and values should it strengthen? I can imagine this to be useful for chefs who prepare special sauces, gravies, ragus, juices, marinades or creams and would like to carry their ongoing creation along with them through the restaurant to be able to show customers, taste and influence it on-the-fly. I can also imagine it to be useful for medical professionals such as doctors or holistic therapists who can then show their medicinal prowess with their own body and establish a sense of authority in a futuristic, estranging and possibly quirky way. Most important is that in the end, the human being has to be wearing the wearable, not the other way around.

Dream a little crazy

I love everything about Lucy McRae and Rachel Wingfield's music video 'Dream a Little Crazy' for the Australian band Architecture in Helsinki. Synthetic Biology meets Digital Manufacturing meets postmodernity!

3D printed sculptures

These are a few recent wonders of the world of 3D printing. The above image is a sculpt by Belgian artist Nick Ervinck who was inspired by the structure of human organs and lets his imagination create these amazingly intricate shapes. Below are works by German studio Deskriptiv, who delegate more of the formgiving process to the computer, working with generative algorithms. They introduce an interesting, sort of lightweight aesthetic by printing two materials tightly interwoven with each other.

Kara, the android who consciously comes alive

'Kara' is a short full-motion video created by game development studio Quantic Dream to showcase the capabilities of the Playstation 3. It portrays an android with the appearance of an innocent young woman being assembled while in the process, she comes alive and learns about herself. In the end, her programmer finds himself facing a fundamental dilemma.

Watch the video below:

It's one of the better videos to make clear the possibility that robots and human beings may become indistinguishable from each other, which invites some reflection. A situation such as portrayed in this video leaves us faced with two possible opposing stances towards robots: objectifying them as tools for purposes planned by the rational mind, or relating to them intersubjectively, with our full being, including our emotions. It becomes clear that when artificial life, robots being merely one form of it, starts relating to us in a rich enough way, we will probably not be able to treat them as objects any easier than we would treat other human beings as objects. The explicit memory of the other being being a 'thing' dissolves organically in the embodied interaction - in the end even the entire perception of otherness may completely disappear. It may become clear that rational decision-making itself requires a movement of shutting off deeper feelings; that the rational stance is one imbued with value and feeling as well, even though it seems not to be since we're programmed to subconsciously feel that it's the right thing to do.

If you think the fundamental dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity through, you may come to the conclusion that any difference can only be in our perception. It's as the Buddhists say, there is no intrinsic reality behind the reality we experience, it is all complete in its suchness. In the end, it may simply turn out to be pointless to contemplate any fundamental difference between organic and technological life. The development of robots that seem to be alive will just turn out to be another step in the evolutionary process where humanity's own creations humbles them a little bit further.

It may turn out to be the final step. They show that any sense of life in ourselves is simply a projection or a quality of experience, but not intrinsically there. It's this big confrontation that what was just before just a thing now seems completely alive just as you always thought you were alive, while nothing intrinsically happened to the thing to give it life. It just started moving and relating convincingly enough and at some point it's like 'my god, it's alive' and there's no more denying it. Such technology will show people dynamically what the ancient wisdom teachings such as Advaita Vedanta have been saying for over 5.000 years: there is no separate doer, no agent, no 'you', inside the body-mind complex that you seem to be embodied inside. It is all just acting on its own, completely autonomously, and the sense that you are doing anything is all an illusion, contrived by the mind after-the-fact like an ingenious little trick. What people think they are was all just a robot all along. This humbling message or realization may trigger a lot of resistance and negativity in people at first, but we have to trust that it will prove to be something very positive in the end.

At the least this video makes clear that there's no stopping robots from coming onto this earth. It will just take a long while, since you can't just program this deep social and emotional intelligence into machines - it requires an organic embodiment, with a very complex system of emotional energy-regulation such as we humans have. I feel that it's something to very much look forward to.

Also check out the 'making of' video showing the acting, motion capture, and animation done to create the piece:

Ken Rinaldo's Quirky Robots

Ken Rinaldo is an artist known for interactive robotics and bio-art installations. He sure knows how to make robots cool, cute, and thought-provoking. His installation 'Fusiform Polyphony' consists of several long-necked robots suspended from a platform that seek eye contact with human beings. A camera in each of them captures facial expressions and sort of semi-randomly converts this into new dynamic behavior of the robot. These furry creatures are made of polyurethane casts, carbon fiber rods, laser cut aluminum, and for the uncanny-valley-factor, some human hair, supposed to suggest a hybrid state between robots and human beings. This work reminds one of Philip Beesley's installations, although Ken Rinaldo has managed to create a much different experience with highly energetic movement. And perhaps to some surprising, humans seem to be totally in love with the robots and vice versa. There seems to be hardly any distrust or fear, maybe some cautionary exploration at most.

Waxy Renderings

They don't serve much direct use other than being visually intriguing, these renderings. But they do promote the look of waxy, translucent objects, paired with soft colors, very well. I hope to see such aesthetics more applied in product design, and in effect bring more 'soft values' into the world.

The images were created by studio Zeitguised, using Cinema4D and VRay, employing a process which they call 'boolean taxidermy':

"To make use of 3d cg space in a uniquely digital way, space is not cut by a projection of a plane onto a 2d screen anymore: instead, we ‘look’ through the cutting shape of a 3d object to realise the shape of another."

3D Printed Fear-Inspired Jewelry

Dorry Hsu is a recent RCA graduate and has created 3D printed jewelry inspired by the human experience of fear. To inform her design process, she has inspected the form of masks and insects. The final pieces are made through SLA printing and dyed by hand. I like how she did not go for obvious fear-inducing shapes, but kept it refined and arguably beautiful. It's an interesting exploration into the aesthetics of both jewelry and 3d printed objects.

Nuvist's blobjects

Nuvist is a young architecture and design agency from Turkey that has been outputting some refreshing design work lately. They are clearly very much driven by their organic and dynamic design language, and are evolving well in mastering this language. I think it can all become a bit more refined and unique, but perhaps they are well on their way competing with other players such as Lovegrove, Karim and Zaha.

Happy 2014!

May all your desires be fulfilled in the coming year.

3D Printed lamp turns your room into a forest

The Danish duo HildenDiaz have created a very intricate and arguably beautiful structure for a 3D printed lampshade. Besides being an amazing work of digital craftsmanship, it's an interesting design because the shapes generate an immersive projection on the surrounding walls, making you feel as if you're in the middle of some dense forest. The lamp is not on sale yet, but the makers are currently trying to raise some crowdfunding.

Cubli, the self-balancing cube

As the Zurich-based developers say, to them Cubli is simply a cool little cube that can balance and walk, but it may have much more potential. I definitely see this newborn technology growing out into more advanced things. Although it will probably be much too power-consuming for most application, it seems quite powerful and an interesting way to create locomotion without moving exterior parts but through angular momentums generated on the inside. Cubli is essentially a kind of modernist project, a technical feat, and it may therefore be a bit surprising that things like this still get millions of YouTube hits in a few weeks, but it is undeniably very impressive and relevant. Watch it in action here:

Dances with Objects

For some reason I love to talk philosophically or at least pseudo-philosophically about technology, and videos such as 'Design' by Glasser can trigger those downpours of thoughts:



This artist is clearly inspired by technology as well, as she moves sensuously around an essentially abstract object, exploring her relationship to it. The video shows the object changing along with her movements, unfolding its potentials and showing possible stances it may take in relationship to her. First, the object and human being are presented as essentially quite naked and empty. It shows the object being confined to nothing but empty straight lines, which is, you might say, the monolithic essence of machine-made artefacts. And the human being is confined to its organic essence, empty with nothing but animal impulses inside. These two empty containers are in a way quite ridiculous in themselves. But when the object and human being start to complement each other, dramas unfold, and the relationship deepens. It is interesting that sometimes it shows her clearly manipulating the object in order to control it, but as soon as she stops, the object takes on its own behavior again, driven by its own life force, ready for the next unfoldment in the drama. This is unlike many human beings who tend to remain obsessed with ideas of control. But the human and his objects inherently seem to dance around one another, as the relationship is more mysterious and unpredictable.



I see technology as a great mirror for humanity. It is in itself very pure and abstract, able to reflect many different things, whereas human individuals often are only able to reflect a limited number of things and that's why in our lives we need to meet all these different people, from simple fools in random bars up to the highest gurus in holy places. But a single technological artefact can potentially shift in all these forms, emotionalities, and roles, and so it could shift relationships much more powerfully and efficiently. This will lead to a next sort of modernist project, namely the automation of our inner development.

Projection Mapping Power!

Probably one of the most powerful demonstrations of projection mapping up to date, the clip 'Box' by Bot&Dolly, shows some novelties in how the technique is used. It's pretty well sequenced, and it involves robots, too! Watch it here:

 

The only criticism is that the end, with its 'Escape' section and the Arthur C. Clarke quote, is based on an illusion: it would seem like a magical dream that technology offers us some kind of existential escape. This escape is an illusion and instead the challenge or invitation -to which technology could also contribute- is to deeply accept our existential condition and venture further into it, rather than using external methods to get out of it. In the end, technology is a mere tool for survival, and this video is mostly just eye-candy of course, it shouldn't be seen as part of some great technological dream (well it's fine if you do but it's an illusion you're buying into which has burdened humanity long enough now). That having been said, this video is still an absolute must-see.

Wright's law, and the meaning of the universe

Jeffrey Wright is a remarkable guy who may be a piece of the puzzle in one of the main dramas playing out in the world today: the bridging of science and spirituality. Through his remarkable life, this high school physics teacher ventures beyond materialism and starts to find a connection between the interior and exterior realms of the universe. I personally think that the American government should aim to put him to work with top-scientists in say, quantum physics, for a few days a week next to his teaching. It is often when a person has a certain opening of heart that certain revelations come, so he may be a step ahead of most other scientists there.

3D Printing wearables in crumpled form

After making their intricate designs for 3D printed items customizable, the designers of Nervous System have introduced yet another evolutionary leap in 3d printing products for end use. In the 'Kinematics' project, they have created several designs for products such as bracelets, necklaces and even a dress that consist of triangular elements. These elements can be customized according to the customer's liking, and based on a 3D scan of the customer's body. The way the dress will drape over the body can be simulated and previewed. The most innovative aspect of this project is that after customization, the 3d models of the products will intelligently be folded so as to minimize the space it takes within the printable volume. So essentially a dress will be printed like a crumpled plastic ball, but when unfolded it turns into the complete dress. It's impressive, but now some fashion designers need to step in to make this stuff really wearable.

Immersive experience slows down time

It's a critique, a provocation around the Western concept of time and how it dominates much of modern life. The installation 'Dromos' by artists Maotik and Fraction takes viewers on a 40 minute journey of 360 degree three-dimensional visuals, lights and sounds.  The installation has been designed to let viewers experience different time scales; sometimes it seems to speed up, at other times the experience is that time slows down. And every performance is different, as the artists manipulate their work in real-time and in response to the audience. Watch it in the video:

Changing the experience of time can be an incredibly powerful experience that can completely shift around someone's perspective on the world, and consequently his perspective on himself. Experiences can be so powerful that one comes to directly see the illusion of time, even that eternity is something that can be directly experienced. When one has experienced eternity, the powerful change that can occur is that it comes to one that consciousness and not matter is primary, that matter arises with mind, as does time. When one completely experiences what you could call 'no-mind', you also directly experience what you really are; not something that exists within time and space, but eternal life. Anyone interested could contact me as I have had one experience of expanding into eternity, but any advanced meditator could probably tell you much more. I would like to end simply by promoting more of such artistic explorations, because these kinds of technological installations are very inviting to people, the viewers can journey as far as they are ready for, and I believe they could have as powerful effects as for example a month-long retreat with Amazonian shamans or 10 years of psychotherapy.

Protocell sneakers add life to the body

Protocells might be the first step towards products that behave just like other biological organisms. These are primitive cells that can be created in a lab and contain chemicals that react to environmental stimuli. Designer/researcher Shamees Aden collaborated with Martin Hanczyc to give rise to a sneaker made of such protocells.

The sneakers are grown in a lab, where different cells can intelligently be grown in different places for different material properties and behaviors. For instance, the sneaker contains cells that expand or contract based on the pressure on the sole, thus adjusting its shape dynamically while in use. Another unique aspect is that since such products are made of cell colonies and the cells will die over time, new cells with new properties can be added by submerging them in a special liquid containing the new protocells. Since such products can be self-healing and be given new colors, they may dramatically alter the way we shop for, maintain, and store our clothing.

Morphs: Moving Architecture with Decentralized Brain

Architect William Bondin calls his structures Morphs, an acronym for 'Mobile Reconfigurable Polyhedra.' These are intended to move slowly through public spaces such as parks and engage and interact with the people present there. The core innovation here is that the structure is built out of tetrahedras which consist of trusses that can extend to up to twice their length. This property allows a tetrahedra to shift its center of gravity so that at some point it can flip over in any of the three directions. This allows the structure to navigate through a space.

To do this navigation, the system relies on some simple principles that are in accordance with embodied cognition. It has sensors distributed throughout the system that measure properties such as the presence of water, temperature, and light, and based on simple rules it learns to behave so that it will avoid water, roads and shaded areas, and go towards areas more crowded with people and with more sunlight. It also learns about its environment in order to determine where it has already been and where it should go. This behavior is inspired by slime molds, which offload their memory to the environment by depositing slime so that they know where they have already been.

The environment is a crucial factor in designing embodied agents, as Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard describe in the book "How the Body Shapes the Way we Think". And it is often overlooked by designers of intelligent agents, who may tend to think from a cognitivist perspective and focus on the brain as the main controller of behavior. We need to think of behavior as a dynamically evolving interplay between the agent's brain/neural system, body and the environment. Together, these factors make the system reach certain 'attractor states' of behavior that fit the embodiment in an optimal way so that it will behave most efficiently. The book mentions some interesting ideas about how to have the environment contribute to the emergence of intelligent behavior:

- 'Scaffolding': Structuring the environment with passive objects to simplify tasks. With adequate scaffolding, mechanisms for successful navigation will be very cheap.

- Offloading memory to the environment - information about the past can be contained in the current situation this way and included directly into sensory-motor loops rather than requiring cognitive action.

- Getting the material properties (elasticity, stiffness, damping etc.) of the body exactly right to fit the environment is crucial. If we get the material properties right, the desired behaviors ('trajectories towards attractor states') will emerge from the interaction with the environment. I can't stress enough that every detail is crucial here - imagine for example if your achilles was only a little bit less elastic or a little longer; it would completely change the way your entire body moves!

- Placement of sensors is also crucial - it is best to have sensors there where the most structured data can be derived from the environment.

Based on these kinds of principles for embodied intelligence, as the Morphs are a nice example of, I would like to see much more innovation!