MAKING STUFF: Stronger, Smaller Cleaner, Smarter is a four-part PBS television series focusing on materials science:

While reports on “smart materials” or “bionic humans” are familiar enough from TV news and magazine shows, Making Stuff will be the first documentary to provide the basic science behind these and many other technology breakthroughs. Each of the four one-hour public television programs – Stronger, Smaller, Cleaner, and Smarter – will embrace developments in traditional and emerging materials as well as current research in rapidly expanding fields such as nanotechnology and biomaterials. This series will also explore the human stories that helped shape important breakthroughs in the past – the visionary talent, sheer luck, and dogged determination that turned a wild idea into a useful material.
>>Materials Research Society

For more details check out the Materials Research Society and PBS/NOVA websites.

This solar clothes washer was made by 2nd year art students from the École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence (France). The challenge was to make a DIY washing machine using only materials available in the sahara. The prototype shown above uses bicycle parts (the tires and wheel), bamboo, and a solar panel connected directly to a recycled electric motor (from a photocopier).

The Open Source Washing Machine project was created by France Cadet, Jean-Noël Montagné and Jean-Pierre Mandon at the École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence. Three machines were designed by the 2nd-year students over a three-day period.

Here’s a short video and photos. More about the project at oswash.org.

I’m looking at the machine right now and trying to resist the urge to do my laundry in the school’s patio :)

The OpenStructures project is an open and modular construction system where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid:

It is an ongoing experiment that wants to find out what happens if people design objects according to a shared modular grid, a common open standard that stimulates the exchange of parts, components, experiences and ideas and aspires to build things together.

When we look at modular construction systems we can clearly distinguish two different models:
- Closed modular systems, where one entity designs a complete system for everybody, and which operate according to a hierarchical (vertical) model.
- Open modular systems, where everybody contributes a small piece to a common system, and which operate according to a (horizontal) network model.

Within current hardware constructions we observe the existence of various closed systems:
- Designer A designs modular system 1
- Company B designs modular system 2
Although all these systems enjoy the benefits of modularity within their system, they most of the time are completely incompatible with one another.

Within software constructions however we are witnessing the emergence of open modular systems.
- Wikipedia, open knowledge sharing
- Linux, open programming

The OS project tries to find out what happens if we would initiate an open modular system for hardware where different entities design different parts and components but all according to one shared modular grid.

Conceived by designer Thomas Lommée, the project was first shown at Z33. The exhibition was comprised of several OS project scales, starting with “open parts” - which are the smallest OS - elements comparable to cells. These “open parts” are then assembled into functional self-sustaining entities: the components or organs of the OpenStructure-system. Following, different components are composed with frames and joints to form structures. Structures then have the capacity to develop and can eventually grow into an assembly of different structures that together function as a superstructure.

The exhibition in Z33 follows the story-line of the different scales and furthermore highlights a collaborative installation as a first “BetaTest” of the system. Just like software, that is reviewed before its launch, the model is tested by setting up a fully-functional kitchen. It demonstrates the streamlined process between different functional entities on the one side and is a vivid patchwork of various personalities, materials, inspirations and motivations on the other.

In preparation for the exhibition, Thomas Lommée collaborated with the KHLimburg and the Hogeschool Sint Lukas in Brussels. During several workshops, students were told about the topic and the first tests took place. This process is going to continue next year through collaborations with Sint Lukas Brussels and the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Thomas Lommée has invited the following designers, craftsmen and enthusiastic autodidacts to collaborate on this project and design within the grid: Laurens Bekemans, Biogas-E vzw, Nicolas Coeckelberghs, Kar Yan Cheung, Brussels Cooperation, Alistaire Dewit, Lise Foré, Christiane Hoegner, Bob Jacobs, Fabio Lorefice, Lucas Maassen, Jeroen Maes, Samyrah Moumouth, Karl Philips, Thermopolnv, Unfold, Jo Van Bostraeten.

OpenStructures is a collaborative effort (open to everyone), originally conceived at the Institute without Boundaries and now being further developed and tested by Intrastructures in association with the research group 4Dimensional Design of the Department of Architectonic Engineering Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Learn more about and participate in the project @ the OpenStructures site:
:: purpose, goals, and potential
:: grid
:: parts
:: components
:: structures
:: designer platform
:: blog
:: participate

The Z33 art center also has an upcoming show titled Design by Performance which will feature, among many other interesting works, Unfold’s Claystruder (paired with a virtual trowing wheel that scans 3d hand movements and generates virtual objects to be printed at a later time) and David Bowen’s Growth Modelling Device. If you’re in the neighborhood (Hasselt, Belgium) or can make it there, don’t miss this exhibition!

UPDATE :: The Open Structures project is currently part of the ‘Up to You’ exhibition @ Stroom (The Hague, Netherlands).

Methylenchlorid, also known as methylene chloride and dichloromethane, is an organic chemical compound and solvent.

It’s commonly used as an adhesive for architectural models because of its ability to bond materials transparently and quickly without sticking to your fingers.

The following plastics are suitable for bonding with methylene chloride - polystyrene, acrylic, polycarbonate, PET-G, and ABS.  Note you can’t use it to with polypropylene or polyethylene.

Here in Vienna I am able to buy polystyrene and methylenchlorid at ARCHIDELIS, which has a range of model building materials for architecture, design and fabrication.

*update 11 dec 2009*
This experiment relates to an exhibition of mine at Museums Quartier in Vienna, details are below-

Niki Passath - QUANTITY
Open: Wed 16.12.09, 19h. Exhibition closes 16.1 2010
Electric Avenue, quartier21 Electric Avenue, quartier21

From the curatorial essay-
“The title “QUANTITY” derives from the simple fact that it is an
installation containing a collection of objects that through their
shape, have the ability to expand and contract. The objects are
designed so that the continuous expansions and contractions are
“clumsy” and strenuous attempts to express movement. Over time and the
limited space of the staging results in forced collision of artifacts
to each other and the surrounding walls. As a result of which the
geometrical forms either change the direction of their movement
patterns or develop a common collective locomotion.

The diversity of interactions and collective forms that fascinate
evolve over time, before the eyes of the observer, completely without
his intervention, becoming socialized.

But what does it mean if it is possible for an artist to inscribe the
social behavior of biological forms “hijack-ing architectural bodies?
For Passath it’s just one more proof of the many possibilities of
techno-organic being.”

Some things are so simple we don’t even think about writing them down. We assume everyone knows them. Well, that may often be true, but not always.

The materials 101 series is our attempt at systematizing, through a series of thematic blog posts, some basic materials-related knowledge that is ‘out there.’ The series will thus provide brief intros to the usage of several interesting, fun and useful materials, and will include descriptions, applications, links, and tips & tricks from the DIY community. Our selection criteria will not be based on the simplicity of the materials themselves (in fact, some will be very complex) but on the simplicity of their usage.

The idea behind this series is twofold. First, we seek to encourage those who are curious about materials and DIY techniques, but are still afraid to go hands-on, to actually start experimenting. Secondly, we’d like to contribute to a written repository of these wonderful, albeit simple, techniques the DIY community has been using and sharing for a long time.

Let’s start with the staple on every maker’s workbench: hot glue.

Teaching Resources at Middlesex University (MUTR) is a UK-based online store with a mission to support technology teachers. They provide wonderful materials at affordable prices: from expancel, carbon nanotubes, SMAs, SMPs, photochromic and thermocromic materials, paper-making sets, to motors, solar panels, electronic components, as well as traditional materials such as paper, wood, and metal - everything your heart desires to explore creative uses of materials:

(…) We want to help drive our subject forward, but at the same time retain the vital skills that enable young people to engage with materials and turn ideas into real products.

MUTR also works closely with the Technology Enhancement Programme (TEP) and the Science Enhancement Programme (SEP).

For the last couple of years a colleague of mine Ken Gregory has been researching kites as sound instruments. What he has produced is an Aeolian Kite, the kite functions similarly to an Aeolian Harp or wind harp. Rather than having stretched strings vibrated by the blowing wind to produce sound, the sound is produced by amplifying the vibrating tow line that is attached to the kite while it is in flight.

“the tow line vibrates at different frequencies induced by the various constantly changing wind intensities which can be heard as whistles or hums at very low levels. The basic idea is to experiment with acoustic and electronic amplification systems so that these sounds can be heard by the naked ear.”

Audio from the kite can be found on his site http://cheapmeat.net/soundmachineplay.html

articule Gallery in Montréal featured an installation by Ken entitled “wind coil sound flow”  for Elektra festival held every spring in Montréal. In this installation Ken created an analogue of his Aeolian kite and its process; images can be found on his blog http://cheapmeatdreamsandacorns.blogspot.com/.

“For his exhibition at articule, Ken Gregory will build an acoustic electro-mechanical system that poetically reproduces the processes involved in operating an Aeolian Kite Instrument in the field, a wind instrument based on an Aeolian harp. The kite’s towline is acoustically coupled to a resonator. The resonator amplifies the wind induced vibrations of the towline and resonates harmonically. A large one stringed guitar played by the wind. Receiving the audio recordings from this outdoor instrument, his electro-magnetic sculpture in the gallery not only becomes a poetic and kinetic representation of a sound speaker, but also mirrors the different components of the Aeolian Kite Instrument used to capture the wind’s voice.”

I have not seen the installation but I can imagine that it is a delight to see and hear.

Over the course of three weeks we gave and attended talks, participated in debates, experimented and hacked, built the projects, and had a wonderful time working together and getting to know each other. This was actually where most of openMaterials’ collaborators met… And many of us are talking about a range of other collaborations as well, so stay tuned.

We can’t choose our favourite project from Interactivos?’09, so here’s a list of all them:

* Rompetechos, una plataforma aérea abierta - Igor Gómez Gil de San Vicente

* The Sounds of Science (los sonidos de la ciencia) - Jay Barros

* Glob@s - Susanna Tesconi

* Re:farm the city (re:cultiva la ciudad) - Hernani Dias

* Fruit Computer Laboratory (laboratorio de ordenadores-fruta) - Alejandro Tamayo

* Build a 3D Printer (construye una impresora 3d) - Zach Smith

* Garage Astrobiology, microbes and EMF (astrobiología de garaje, microbios y campos electromagnéticos) - Andy Gracie

* Hormiga Interactibus - Adrián Santuario Hernández

* The Five Filters (los cinco filtros) - Keyvan Minoukadeh

Muchas gracias to Marcos, Laura, Sonia, Danny and all the crew at Medialab Prado for hosting such an awesome event, and bringing so many fantastic people together.

Interactivos?’09:Ciencia de Garaje (Garage Science) on Flickr

On We Make Money Not Art:
Fruit Computer Laboratory
Garage Astrobiology
Re:farm the city

Created by Northeastern University researchers Justin Schunick, Mark Hollenbeck, Luke Shaheen, Scott Gillette and Glenn Black, the 3D Computer Interface is able to detect the x, y and z coordinates of a hand moving above it. This sensing device provides very accurate reading, doesn’t require the user to hold a controller or attach any markers to her body, and uses an array of simple sensors made out of copper plate. The researchers demonstrate how it can be used to manipulate 3D objects and a midi controlled, but it’s easy to imagine a million other applications.