openMaterials

The Resistor JelTone is an edible toy piano created by NYC Resistor members Ranjit Bhatnagar, Astrida Valigorsky, Mimi Hui and myself for the Jello Mold Competition. As part of our experiments we realized that jello and fruit, which contain a lot of water, are conductive. Embedded in each jello/fruit key is a sterling silver pin (food [...]

Interesting article at The Japan Times :) TSUKUBA, Ibaraki Pref. (Kyodo) Researchers at the National Institute for Materials Science have found that an iron compound becomes superconductive — where electrical resistance disappears in a substance — if it is dipped in wine, sake or beer. “It is still not known what it is in sake that causes [...]

ghost dress grown from a vat of green tea Treehugger recently reported on BioCouture, a fashion research project based at Central Saint Martin’s College in London and led by Suzanna Lee, which seeks to grow textiles from a vat of liquid: The process uses a sugary green tea recipe, to which, a bacterial culture is added. It [...]

This is from quite some time ago, but a beautiful artwork from Philip Beesley called Hylozoic Soil which I saw at VIDA 11.0 last year. I just love the way he’s used nitinol in the work-

The worldwide first EAP propelled airship was made at Empa in collaboration with aeroix GmbH and the Technical University of Berlin. This lighter-than-air vehicle with 8 m in length consists of a slightly pressurized Helium filled body of a biologically inspired form with Dielectric Elastomer (DE) actuators acting as muscles and deforming the body and [...]

Refarm the city (aka re:farm) is a collective project started and led by Hernani Dias with the purpose of developing open source software and hardware tools for urban farmers. In its creators’ words, the project is a cross between a good meal (the crop, the seeds, the friends), hardware (the urban farm, the composter, the [...]