openMaterials

Last March I had the opportunity to teach an openMaterials workshop at the very special École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence (France). It was part of a larger event in which the school invited researchers and artists from several fields to lead a one week class for 2nd year art students. The goal was to show [...]

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 [...]

Augmented Photography- is questioning the meaning of photography and going beyond still image. The installation is audience aware, it means when someone approaches the photograph, doll on the picture opens her eyes and starts to blink to a viewer. If none is looking at the picture the doll’s eyes are closed. Only time-to-time, she is [...]

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 [...]

This mitten lights up when its wearer shakes hands with someone. It has two exposed soft contacts around the thumb and across the palm which, when bridged by bare skin, turn on the LED embedded on the flower. The mitten itself was created by fashion designer Isabel Tomás, and we then sewed a simple touch [...]

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, [...]