Bio-Computer

We were delighted to have Sam Henderson of Farm: Shop educate us about the future potential of aquaponic farming at last week's Future of Food forum. But we didn't think that aquaponics and the geeky 'computer modding' (or hacking) scenes were a natural fit. Now, hardware hacker Mike Schropp has proved us wrong with an awesome hybrid 'bio-computer'.

Mike hacked together the remnants of several old computers to create a 'bio-modd' desktop computer which can also grow wheatgrass. With computers of all shapes and sizes generating a lot of excess heat, Mike modified the innards of a regular computer to put the heat to good use and create the perfect environment for germinating and growing wheatgrass.

This type of 'hacking' , known as the Bio-Modd scene (or the symbiosis between biological and electronic systems) has been quitely blossoming in Indonesia for quite some time, but large scale efforts are less suited to urban dwellers. Now, with innovative ventures such as this bio-computer, city folk could soon be trying it out for themselves on a smaller scale.

If you feel like adding a sustainable flourish to your home computing set up, check out the wonderful 'how to' guide on Mike's blog.

• 
• 

Sketch Synth

This Gizmo Lets You Draw A UI On Paper, Then Turns It Into A Touch Screen

YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WATCH THE VIDEO TO APPRECIATE THE AMAZING POSSIBILITIES OF THE SKETCHSYNTH, CREATED BY BILLY KEYES.

You know those huge multichannel mixers--the massive boards that audio engineers manage during concerts to control everything from sound to lights? It’s the sort of highly specialized hardware that the average person would never come into contact with, because why would they? But what if you could just draw it?

That’s the idea behind the SketchSynth, by Carnegie Mellon student Billy Keyes. It allows you to draw your own specialized piece of sound hardware--in this case, a MIDI board--on any random piece of paper.

Check it out in more detail here.

MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone

opy

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

What's MaKey MaKey?

MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It's a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything inbetween:

It comes ready to use out of the box with everything you see above: MaKey MaKey, Alligator Clips, USB Cable.

What Can I Make?

That's up to you! First, load up a computer program or any webpage (yes that's right, you're surfing the internet to invent). 

Let's say you load up a piano. Then, instead of using the computer keyboard buttons to play the piano, you can hook up the MaKey MaKey to something fun, like bananas, and the bananas become your piano keys:  

Or let's say you Google for an online "Pacman" game and draw a joystick with a pencil (yes, an actual ordinary pencil):

Then you can play Pacman by touching the drawing with your finger.

Or you could load up facebook or gmail and send a message on a custom-made alphabet soup keyboard:

How Does it Work?

Alligator Clip two objects to the MaKey MaKey board. For example, you and an apple.

When you touch the apple, you make a connection, and MaKey MaKey sends the computer a keyboard message. The computer just thinks MaKey MaKey is a regular keyboard (or mouse). Therefore it works with all programs and webpages, because all programs and webpages take keyboard and mouse input. 

Make + Key = MaKey MaKey! 

Who is MaKey MaKey For?

Artists, Kids, Educators, Engineers, Designers, Inventors, Makers... Really it is for everyone. Here is an 8-year-old girl in a Maker Space:

She invented a "knife-and-log" interface for cutting virtual wood in an online game.

We ran a workshop in February 2012 with some professors and grad students who specialize in interaction design. One grad student made this beachball game controller:

Another grad student made this working pressure sensitive switch by layering Play-Doh under a spring:

The workshop took place at Queen's University during a conference.

With MaKey MaKey, kids can start inventing right away, and experts can make working prototypes in minutes instead of days.

What materials work with MaKey Makey?

Any material that can conduct at least a tiny bit of electricity will work (if it doesn't already work, just rub it with bananas, spray it with water, or apply copper tape). Here are some materials people have used in our workshops including Ketchup, Pencil Graphite, Finger Paint, Lemons, etc.:

Other materials that work great: Plants, Coins, Your Grandma, Silverware, Anything that is Wet, Most Foods, Cats and Dogs, Aluminum Foil, Rain, and hundreds more...

Requirements?

MaKey MaKey works with any laptop or computer with a USB port and a recent operating system. How recent? We have tried it with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OSX.

MaKey MaKey is part of the Kickstarter programme check out the site for more info and to back this great project!! 

Milk, Please

Ever got back home from the supermarket and realized you've forgotten to pick up a crucial item? A new concept, Milk Please!, aims to alleviate these annoying situations with a new crowd-sourced food delivery system.

Milk Please! is a service accessible from the web, smartphones or special in-store displays. If you need something from a local shop but don't want to go out and get it, you can send a request via the site with your order. Other local shoppers can check these requests, accept any they fancy, and pick up and deliver the goods to you. The system handles the online payment and compensates those who deliver the items.

It's a nice project as it aims to benefit everyone using the system and bring communities together to help each other out. Check out the video above to find out more, Lets hope this hits London soon!!

Patterned by Nature

Patterned by Nature was commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for the newly built Nature Research Center in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The artwork, a collaboration between Plebian Design,Hypersonic Engineering & Design, Patten Studio, and Sosolimited, celebrates our abstraction of nature's infinite complexity into patterns through the scientific process, and through our perceptions. It brings to light the similarity of patterns in our universe, across all scales of space and time.

10 feet wide and 90 feet in length, this sculptural ribbon winds through the five story atrium of the museum and is made of 3600 tiles of LCD glass. It runs on roughly 75 watts, less power than a laptop computer. Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.

The content cycles through twenty programs, ranging from clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes. The animations were created through a combination of algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena and compositing of actual footage.

An eight channel soundtrack accompanies the animations on the ribbon, giving visitors clues to the identity of the pixelated movements. In addition, two screens show high resolution imagery and text revealing the content on the ribbon at any moment.

The Descriptive Camera

Most cameras these days are pretty complicated with settings for just about anything you can think of. The Descriptive Camera, on the other hand, is pretty simple: point the camera, press the shutter and an image comes out like a Polaroid. This camera, however, instantly produces an image that is a text description of the content — no photo at all.

The camera consists of a USB webcam, a shutter button, a small printer and an Ethernet connection. Once the user 'takes a photo', the image is transmitted via the Ethernet cable to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk API, where workers completing 'human intelligence tasks' (HITs) take a look at the image and then describe what they see. Once a description has been assigned to the image (through a combination of HIT responses), the thermal printer on the camera prints out the text.

Take a photo of a cupboard for example — the text description comes out with, 'looks like a cupboard which is ugly and old having name plates on it with a study lamp attached to it'. A photo of a building, meanwhile, yields, 'this is a faded picture of a dilapidated building. It seems to be run down and in need of repairs.'

The project was created by Matt Richardson as part of New York University's Telecommunications course with the hope that one day it could be used for managing photography collections. He explains, ' I was picturing a time in which cameras could possibly capture more useful information that can then be searched, cross-referenced and sorted.'

Check it out here.

• 
• 

Beauty in the Making

Last week, British paper company GFSmith hosted a free five day event to showcase the skill, passion and craft behind their products. The event, Beauty in the Making, was a collaboration with It's Nice That,Monotype and the British Council's Architecture, Design and Fashion department and took place in a magnificently cavernous basement in Bloomsbury.

On entering the space five, huge, metre high stacks of vibrant paper stock revealed the week's schedule, while the rest of the space immersed the viewers with the history of paper and design. Workshops in envelope-making and letter pressing taught new skills while It's Nice That curated a series of speakers events by artisans and exponents. There was even a screening of Linotype:The Film, a feature length documentary about the Linotype typecasting machine directed by Doug Wilson.

The event celebrated every aspect of the design process because as they explain, "It is a sad truth that most people never see the skill and craft that happens behind the scenes in so many parts of the creative industry. There is real beauty to be found in the everyday processes that provide the creative community with the products and services they take for granted."

While many brands showcase their craft through behind-the-scenes videos or campaigns, its great to see a brand curate a physical event and exhibition that celebrates the knowledge and heritage of the brand and encourages people to celebrate 'the making' as an art form in its own right. 

I was lucky enough to get a pair of Free tickets to the Wednesday night talk, featuring Wired’s associate online editor Olivia Solon, NB Studio’s co-founder Nick Finney, illustrator and co-founder of This Is It collective Rose Blake, and gallerist Hannah Barry. Check it out here.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•