Link, has established since 2005, is aimed to exhibit at the international design trade fairs as not just students in the product designcourse of Tohoku University of Art and Design but independent professional designers.
So Sakai, of the link design group, exhibited this piece as part of the designersblock exhibition in london. phase of sound #08 'reflection' vibrates the surface of the water, creating interference patterns from the waves produced by the two or more motors. the various patterns produced draw out a visual expression on the water of the inputted wave form and its boundaries.
This project investigates the self-organization of two materials, plaster and elastic fabric, to produce evocative visual and acoustic effects. Inspired by the work of the Spanish architect Miguel Fisac and his experiments with flexible concrete formwork in the 1960-70s, p_wall attempts to continue this line of research and add to it the ability to generate larger and more differentiated patterns. Starting from an image, a cloud of points is generated based on the image’s grayscale values. These points are then used to mark the positions of dowels which constrain the elasticity in the fabric formwork. Plaster is then poured into the mould and the fabric expands under the weight of the plaster. The resultant plaster tile has a certain resonance with the body as it sags, expands, and stretches in its own relationship with gravity and structure. Assembled into a larger surface, a pattern emerges between the initial image’s grayscale tones and the shadows produced by the wall.
The passion for cooking and food are the central theme of Pixar's recent film - Ratatouille. This complex and multi-faceted problem posed many challenges that were solved using diverse computer graphics and production techniques. In this course we will comprehensively cover all aspects including modeling, dressing, shading, lighting and effects.
The story called for working cooking stations and sloppy mess of a busy, functional kitchen. We will review some of the set concepts, visual framework and even dynamics simulation techniques that were used to create this illusion. We will illustrate with several examples including final plated dishes, mis-en-place setups and the Food Locker.
The challenge of shading food on Ratatouille was to work within the stylized look of the film and yet keep it recognizable and appealing to eat. We developed subtle illumination techniques that added up to a general approach we could use on a variety of objects. We will breakdown examples ranging from vegetables to plated dishes.
Lighting played a key role in making the food look appetizing, a task further complicated by different types of food such as bread, cheese, soup and wine that pushed the boundaries of standard surface based lighting. We will discuss our general approach to lighting food as well as specific challenges and solutions posed by the various dishes.
Mleak : "These are my testers for a project I'm working on using processed lunch meats etched with a laser cutter. Ultimately, I would like to show the entire process from animal to ambiguous pink slice of meat over the course of a package of lunch meat, beginning here with bologna. This neat packaged disc of food has always seemed so far removed from its source."
The Bubblegum Sequencer is a physical step sequencer that lets you create drumloops by arranging colored balls on a tangible surface. It generates MIDI events and can be used as an input device to control audio hardware and software. Finally, people can't claim anymore that electronic music isn't handmade.
Here's how it works: A grid of holes, consisting of several rows with 16 holes each is the canvas. On it, you arrange colored gumballs. The 16 columns represent the 16th-notes in a measure. Each color is mapped to a specific sample.
Because the output is generated in the form of MIDI events, the Bubblegum Sequencer can be used to control any kind of audio hardware or software.
If you'd like to know more about the Bubblegum Sequencer, read their paper
In partnership with Sodexho, the Dutch University of Wageningen's opened a new €3 million research center-slash-restaurant, the "restaurant of the future," that is focused on the study of its patrons' eating habits by way of dozens of unobtrusive (but still totally creepy) cameras and close monitoring. Ultimately, these studies will "help the Center for Innovative Consumer Studies 'find out what influences people: colors, taste, personnel. We try to focus on one stimulus, like light,'said Rene Koster, head of the center, as overhead bulbs switched through green, red, orange and blue."
From a hidden control room, researchers maneuver the hidden cameras to zoom in and spy on diners and what and how they munch--everything from how someone walks with a tray of food, what food they choose to jam on, where they sit, and what they waste.
WD-2 can make facial expressions that, if possible, are more human-like than some humans can make. WD-2 is short for "Waseda-Docomo face robot 2," and is the most recent version of the face robot developed by researchers from Waseda University in Tokyo led by mechanical engineer Atsuo Takanishi.
According to a recent article at Robot World News, WD-2 may provide insight into the creation of personal robots. In the future, personal robots may serve a multitude of purposes in work and entertainment with humans, and therefore must be able to communicate in a human-like manner.
WD-2 not only makes facial expressions, but changes its facial expressions with nearly the minute detail of a human face. According to the article, "While other robots make expressions that mean ‘happy,' ‘sad,' ‘excited,' or ‘angry,' WD-2 can make tiny movements to reveal a wide spectrum of meanings."
WD-2 changes its facial features by changing 17 specific facial points on a mask, with each point possessing three degrees of freedom, for a total of 56 degrees of freedom. To make certain points of the face move, a shaft is driven behind the mask at the desired facial point, driven by a DC motor with a simple pulley and a slide screw.
According to the article, the researchers say that the mask can be modified to "copy" a human face, even displaying a person's hair style and skin color when a photo of their face is projected onto the 3D mask.
EVERY DESKTOP IS A COMPUTER :: INTERACTIVE SURFACES
The newest line of computers does not require a mouse or a keyboard, just your fingers.
"And when I put my fingers on it, there's a camera that recognizes where I'm touching. In fact, I can touch it different places, from any side of the table. And so it's actually a windows personal computer, but with this new surface capability.
The table-top computers are not only touch-sensitive, they can also recognize devices equipped with wireless or Bluetooth capabilities. Product Director Jeffrey Gattis from microsoft says it also reads credit cards.
"I'm in a Sheraton Hotel, I can take my room key or my Sheraton-preferred card, just throw it down on the surface. It instantly knows who I am. It sees that I have 5,500 points in my account."
It also lets consumers buy music. Place a portable music player on the surface and you can use your fingers to upload music. It is all done without wires.
And digital photos are literally a snap. Gates says the computer recognizes Wi-Fi-equipped cameras and downloads the pictures instantly.
"Any photo I've taken and I want to add to this collection, it can actually see that there's a camera there and it'll use the wireless connection to actually get the photos and bring those down onto the surface."
Software companies have been investing heavily in developing natural interfaces that can be used for practical applications, such as ordering food or drinks. Microsoft Surface Computing General Manager Pete Thompson believes the new technology will make computing easy for anyone, including technophobes.
"One of the things that I'm personally very excited about with surface computers is the fact that it unlocks the power for people that have been intimidated before with computing products. Now this is just "drop-dead" simple. You don't have to know computing to be able to use this product and that is extremely exciting."
But at a cost of between five to ten-thousand dollars per unit, it will be available only to commercial outlets, at least for the time being.
Mr Gates said: "We used to say a computer on every desktop and now I would say that every desktop will be a computer."
CAN plants hear? They all respond to light, which affects how they optimise growth and survival. Plants also have a sense of touch, allowing them to stiffen in response to wind, and a "taste" for nutrients. But whether they respond to sound is a mystery.
Now Mi-Jeong Jeong of the National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology in Suwon, South Korea, and colleagues claim to have identified two genes in rice that respond to sound waves. They also say that the promoter of one of the sound-sensitive genes could be attached to other genes to make them respond to sound too.
The findings follow a host of similar, but unsubstantiated, claims that plants respond to sound. If the researchers are correct, they say their discovery could enable farmers to switch specific crop genes on and off, such as ones for flowering, by blasting sound into the fields.
Though these results "have been greeted with profound scepticism" by other researchers, if the tests can be repeated they'd indicate "that sound could be an alternative to light as a gene regulator." It's not photosynthesis, then, but audiosynthesis. Geneto-acoustic biology.
Roots is a dreamlike screen that follows an old persian image: a bush growing heads. – In a green and brownish fluid iron crystals grow steadily...Bubbles ascend like jellyfish. Branches break off and sink to the dark ground. They start to dissolve and become thick clouds hovering over the scene.
Sound and Electricity Electricity is pulsed through the whole Sculpture. It is the key to the constant transformation. Growth changes the flow of the current. The modified flow changes the growth. Software and Hardware leave the next step to the material. The voltages at each wire are put through a resonance filter and thus transformed into sound. The 4/4 pulse results in a sublime rhythm.
Utopian Screen The installation is based on the model of a chemical computer by Gordon Pask in the early 1950s. It was open to the environment and it managed to grow to a configuration which was able to distinguish between different frequencies. Roots refers to a time when the big synthesis and simulation of image, sound, thinking and memory was soon to be started.
No one's even sure what to call it. "Claytronics," "synthetic reality" and "programmable matter" have been proposed. "Dynamic physical rendering" is the label Intel uses. Its an emerging field of engineering concerning reconfigurable nanoscale robots ('claytronic atoms', or catoms) designed to form much larger scale machines or mechanisms. Also known as "programmable matter", the catoms are said to eventually have the ability to morph into nearly any object, even replicas of human beings for virtual meetings.
Cameras would capture the movement of an object or person and then this data would be fed to the atoms, which would then assemble themselves to make up an exact likeness of the object.
Professors Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein of Carnegie Mellon University came up with the idea based on "claytronics," the animation technique which involves slightly moving a model per frame to animate it.
"We thought that a good analogy for what we were going to do was claymation - something like the Wallace and Gromit shows," Dr Mowry told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.
"When you watch something created by claymation, it is a real object and it looks like it's moving itself. That's something like the idea we're doing... in our case, the idea is that you have computation in the 'clay', as though the clay can move itself.
"So if it was a dog, and you want the dog to move, it will actually move itself. But it is a physical object in front of you - it's not just a picture or hologram or something like that."
Ok, the nanokrispies idea is merely a sketch but maybe a small step closer towards a new world of "programmable food" concepts. So lets dream and just add "imilk" to our krispiesbowl and watch robotic characters grow out. Once they've finished assembling, get exercise and nutrition by hunting and eating them.
A new electronic music interface from Sebastian Tomczak using lasers, photocells and water.The laser shines through the water in the dish, and light dependent resistors on the other side respond to the position of the laser points.
FROM SUPERBOT TO MOLECUBE - PROGRAMMABLE FOOD CONCEPT
SuperBot is a new type of robots that are modular, multifunctional, and easily reconfigurable. Its modules can be dynamically configured into different robots to fit the user's needs. For example, it can crawl, walk, roll, climb, carry, fetch, or survey. The reconfiguration and module exchanges are easy and do not require any special knowledge or training. Such robots are economic because a single robot can provide diverse behaviors and can be changed frequently. This is ideal for home campanions, search and rescue, security, surveillance, and so on.
A step further is that we produce these modules on nano scale and create nanorobots. Since nanorobots would be microscopic in size, it would probably be necessary for very large numbers of them to work together to perform macroscopic tasks.In such plans, future medical nanotechnology has been posited to employ nanorobots injected into the patient to perform treatment on a cellular level.
Far-fetched? The processed-food giant Kraft and a group of research laboratories are busy working towards 'programmable food'. One product they are working on is a colourless, tasteless drink that you, the consumer, will design after you've bought it. You'll decide what colour and flavour you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter - presumably Kraft will sell you that, too.
Mike Kuniavsky is a writer, researcher and designer exploring the intersections of high technology and everyday life. People around the world use Mike’s 2003 book, 'Observing the User Experience,' to understand the relationship between people and products.
His talk was a somewhat speculative presentation tracing some of the history of appliance design and how ubiquitous computing may change that. In his talk, he presents the history of blender controls as an example of the encapsulation of knowledge into our tools. He then showed several examples of how networked kitchen devices may (or may not) present a fundamental shift in the nature of how we relate to our kitchen tools:
"Imagine that every time you used this [networked, barcode-reading microwave], it quietly told a database somewhere--say, in your iPod--how many calories you just ate. Then your iPod could query your shoes about how much you had run the previous day. The next time you went for a run, your iPod would pick songs with a different tempo to encourage you burn off that Mac and Cheese. Now that’s starting to get interesting. It is now possible for our tools to automatically encapsulate knowledge and share it with each other."
According to researchers, Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale. Winston Churchil, a carnivore to the core, already in 1936 predicted that “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” Today, growing meat in the lab still seems the stuff of science fiction, but reality is not far behind.
The picture above shows the Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow project by James King, who proposes scan the countryside looking for the most beautiful examples of cows, pigs, chickens and other livestock. Once located the animals are scanned from head to toe, creating precise cross-sectional images of its inner organs.The most interesting and aesthetically pleasing examples of anatomy are used as templates to create moulds for the in-vitro meat (we wouldn’t choose to eat the same old boring parts that we eat today). The result is a satisfyingly complicated and authentic form of food. The project was inspired by the Disembodied Cuisine project.
Erich Berghammer, also known as Odo7 is an aroma jockey or AJ for short. He blows scents over his audience with huge fans and has stocked up a pantry with exotic spices, roots, leafs, oils, extracts and herbs. The smells are vaporized using hot water. This video from Roskilde gives you an idea of the set up (but no smells unfortunately).
We present the jello printer, which enables to print shapes into jello. This is the first step to print food data in tangible and edible manner. Although the current system did not achive this goal, our system allows the user to easily deform and cut the shape to facilitate browsing, as well as tasting it. In addition, our system is capable to represent 3D height field. This feature makes it possible to interactively specify arbitrary cross-section to explore 3D structure. We present several examples that show how our technique represents shape information into jello media.Shigeru Owada, "Jello Printer", Visualization 2005, Interactive Demo lab SONY
Implant technology is already commonplace in the form of replacement surgery (artificial joints, pacemakers, etc). The Audio Tooth Implant (ATI) is the first commodity based in-body product. Augmenting our body’s communication skills it enables a form of telepathy.
A micro-vibration device and a wireless low frequency receiver are implanted in the tooth during routine dental surgery. The tooth communicates with an array of digital devices, such as mobile telephones, radio and computers. A dedicated device (also acts as the long-range receiver) is used to fully customise the set up for each individuals personal requirements.
Sound information is transferred from the tooth into the inner ear by bone transduction.Sound reception is totally discreet enabling information to be received anywhere at anytime.
All it takes is some german engineering + beercans. Random Screen is a mechanical thermodynamic screen that the user can’t control and that functions without any electricity. Conventional tea candles illuminate and generate the changes on the 4x4 pixel screen.Each individual pixel of Random Screen is an independent unit. Core components are a projection foil, a modified beer can and a small tea candle.The candle serves as a source of light; at the same time, the warmth it gives off sets the modified beer can in motion. The can, modified into a sort of freely rotating fan mounted above the candle, can spin around freely. The candlelight shines through a window cut in the beer can onto a projection surface and makes the pixel light up. Depending on how fast the fan spins, it gently turns the respective pixel either on or off. The larger the candle’s flame, the brighter the pixel shines and the faster its switching frequency. The candlelight is diffused on a second projection foil in the middle of the pixel box in order to generate as little shadow-flickering as possible on the projection surface. The individual pixel boxes stacked on top of and next to one another form the Random Screen. The modularity of the pixels allows the screen surface to be expanded at will, and this construct’s simple components make it easy for others to copy.
Another beautiful algorithmic artwork by Eno Henze. Designer own descriptive words : "Every real thing forms the nucleus of a multidimensional sphere, that constitutes it’s appearance. Besides it’s factual part, it’s „it is what it is“, every thing manifests itself in an ideal space through connections, references and deliminations. These connections may be historical, functional or significative, and they are fundamental to our perception of the reality of of every thing. Yet, accessing the factual is impaired by layers of ideal representation. Every factual nucleus is enclosed by shells that maintain an economy of exchange and delimination with it’s environment. From a makroscopic perspective the things of reality form an ocean of spheres – the Reality Foam. Rendering the Reality Foam „per se“, the denuclified reality, is an attempt to visualize the structure of our perception, or rather a formal approach to our creation of reality."
Food for design wants to be an open source for design, food and science cross-over. We are not interested in creating hypes, but in long term co-operations, where everyone benefits. Promoting quality and collective creativity are the things that count... So please take a seat and have a bite! Best view [res: 1024 x 768] x [browser: firefox]
_ random newsletter
_news
_m[eat]ing 003
17.03.2007::MATERIALS ::
Food for design was invited by the Meat & Fresh expo and will install a creative food laboratory at the rambla during the fair,
where people can find inspiration towards form and taste.
[+ more]
_m[eat]ing 002
18.11.2006::MATERIALS ::
A feast of surfaces, textures, colors and other sensorial elements, using a large palette of food materials.
The objective is to inspire new uses for food materials and provoke new applications within a design context.
[+ more]
_seminar
20.09.2006::MG SEMINAR IN BELGIUM ::
This seminar [ 20 november 2006 ] is organised by the innovation and knowledge centre of food for every one who is interested in food science, technology and cooking processes. This can be chefs, scientists, recipe developers, foodies,...
The guest speakers tell and demonstrate how food science and technology can inspire gastronomy...
[+ english][+ dutch]
_manifesto 001
03.02.2006::FOOD for design::
The first aim of this project is to explore and understand the physicochemical properties of materials / ingredients and apply this under-standing when designing.
_manifesto 002
28.01.2006::food for DESIGN::
A different way of thinking : abandoning the role of "creator" and "descending" to the role of a participant playing within the rules of an experimental process.
All experiments come into being as a result of self-formation processes.
_manifesto 001
22.01.2006::food FOR design::
In exploring the materials the main focus lays on the food as in exploring the structure the primary focus lays on the process.
The goal of this cross-fertilisation project is to add more senses / experience to design, it is a way of sustainable, random, natural thinking to in-spire others, giving food for the future.
