Category Archives: Inspiration

Material Hunt

1. High precision open mesh monofilament fabrics for industrial and consumer use. 100% Polyester. Applications include filter for air, blood drain, speaker and so on. The front silver and the back has a metal blue shade.

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2. Glass with frosted stripes on both side which generates an opaque effect.

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3. Plastics with decorative thread patterns. There are three layers combined together in this kind of materials. The threads are  between two layers of the plastics.

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3D Printed Interactive Speakers (!!!!)

Just when you thought sound couldn’t get cooler…

3D Printed Interactive Speakers

We propose technology for designing and manufacturing interactive 3D printed speakers. With the proposed technology, sound reproduction can easily be integrated into various objects at the design stage and little assembly is required. The speaker can take the shape of anything from an abstract spiral to a rubber duck, opening new opportunities in product design. Furthermore, both audible sound and inaudible ultrasound can be produced with the same design, allowing for identifying and tracking 3D printed objects in space using common integrated microphones. The design of 3D printed speakers is based on electrostatic loudspeaker technology first explored in the early 1930s but not broadly applied until now. These speakers are simpler than common electromagnetic speakers, while allowing for sound reproduction at 60 dB levels with arbitrary directivity ranging from focused to omnidirectional. Our research of 3D printed speakers contributes to the growing body of work exploring functional 3D printing in interactive applications.

Yoshio Ishiguro (Disney Research Pittsburgh)
Ivan Poupyrev (Disney Research Pittsburgh)

Evan Roth Talk

Just stumbled across the *amazing* talk from DT alum Evan Roth, founder of Graffiti Research Lab. This is especially relevant for any of you starting your public space project or anyone pondering how to leverage small interventions to create big change. Take a break and watch it.

Week 1 – Life Saving Nail Polish – Grace

Four college students from North Carolina State University have started to invent a nail polish that changes color when it contacts with date-rape drugs, including Rohypnol, Xanax, and GHB. They markets themselves to be “the first fashion company empowering women to prevent sexual assault”.

This product may not relate to any materials we talked about in class, but I found this one a very brilliant use of wearable technology, and also a very good combination of technology and social issue. When it comes to wearable/crafting technology products or accessaries, we often think of how to enclose the technical things using beautiful covering materials or sewing skills and make it neat, but this one just remains the original decoration. Although this doesn’t use any circuits and it more relates to the chemical reaction, it provides me an additional option of how to make my project neat.

The image below indicates how this product works in pubs and bars. As you can see, when woman want to detect their drinks, they have to put their fingers into the cup and stir. Some people think it is not the neat part when it comes to use. Also an article came right after their promotion, saying they don’t really understand anything about sexual assaults and most of the sexual assaults do not happen in the bars and relate to drinks.

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These reviews may have their point of view, but this product opens the possibilities of using our body decorations as a practical way to protect ourselves. In the aspect of computational craft, this also inspires me to use certain parts of my body to be the conductive switch that triggers a circuit.