openMaterials

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, [...]

Pa++tern, created by Daito Manabe + Motoi Ishibashi, is a combination of an installation and an esoteric programming language for embroidery in which a series of industrial sewing machines are controlled by twiterers. Here’s the process: using a simple environment, users create a short program for an embroidery pattern and send it over to the [...]

Open Source Embroidery is a socially engaged art project initiated by Ele Carpenter in 2005, investigating the relationship between programming for embroidery and computing. It’s based on the common characteristics of needlework crafts and open source computer programming: gendered obsessive attention to detail; shared social process of development; and a transparency of process and product. [...]