Transmission LA: THE AV club

 

Check out these sexy thangs. I think benz is toning down the design but still pretty nice. I’m a sucker for the matte

Benz concept style coupe

 

Infographics than can change the world

Infographics and mapping is an extremely powerful tool. By observing the sheer red one can realize through graphics the power of nuclear arms. Check it out

It was called the Tsar Bomba, but the Russians nicknamed it the Kuz’kina Mat–or what roughly translates to the “We’ll Show You.” This 50,000-kiloton hydrogen bomb was the largest detonated nuke ever, and it’s considered the most powerful man-made creation in history.

Heck, it was immensely powerful on the galactic scale. If you built a bomb of the same size and shape from the material in the sun’s core, it would take 10 million years to generate the same amount of energy.

The human mind simply can’t fathom the numbers, but this extra-long infographic by Maximilian Bode , a former art director at The New Yorker, begins to put the Tsar Bomba into perspective, at least in terms of other nukes. It gives you, even just sitting at your desk, a sense of the horrifying scale of the bombs we’ve made. Working your way from the top, you can see how tiny Little Boy and Fat Man were–the devastating nukes that the US dropped on Japan during WWII. If you’ve ever seen media of the aftermath, you might be able to grasp some of the mass horror of those weapons. But they were tiny in comparison to Tsar Bomba. Tsar Bomba was 1,400 times more powerful than Little Boy and Fat Man, combined.

see you soon

A

The invisible membrane- sonja baumel

extremely interesting project. Check it out.

life on the human body and its design applications

Thesis project
2008/2009

My thesis project deals with a re-evaluation of our second skin, clothing, which instead of focusing on valuated historic forms zooms on the microcosm which excists already on our skin.

The (In)visible membrane confronts scientific data and methods with fashion design in order to find a balance between individual identity and the surrounding local environment. By doing so, I want to create a new second living layer on our body based on the interaction between individuals and the surrounding.

How will a piece of clothing, which is defined by personal physical needs or, for example, our body temperature look like? What if we were able to use our skin bacteria for producing our clothes?

 

All these assumptions led to the crocheted membrane design in 2008. Crocheted membrane displays a fundamental change in the aesthetics of clothes. Usually, the conventional production of clothes is connected to some aspects of fashion design history, for instance, regarding an item’s shape: a shirt is defined as a shirt; trousers are defined as trousers etc. Opposed to this, the crocheted membrane process had a different starting point: an individual human body and its needs with an outdoor temperature of 10 degrees Celsius. Completely new functions, aesthetics and shapes emerged. This caused further questions: What if our second skin would be able to locally adapt to changing conditions in a flexible and autonomous way? Would the aesthetic diversity of our clothes with individual colors, shapes and structures, be more inspiring and would we be more aware of our surroundings? Is it possible that more significant clothes would develop which would accurately adapt to local conditions? Is it possible that even social integration would become more dynamic due to the adaptation of the outer layer to its surroundings?

In 2008, all these questions brought me to Wageningen University in the Netherlands. In order to learn more about the lives of bacteria, I had the opportunity to complete a microbiological internship. After having been introduced to the basics of microbiology, I started to experiment with skin bacteria and, at a later point, their reaction to textiles.

During this time I have learned how inspiring interdisciplinary cooperation between art and science can be for all the parties involved. New aesthetic and verbal vocabularies emerged. I noticed that scientists usually focus on their own special microcosm and that designers prefer interdisciplinary projects so that designers are usually in a position to recognize causal relations more easily.

This led to the next design steps. I called the next project bacteria mapping. I started to chart bacteria on my body. I developed a number system ranging from 1 to 20 and denoted different parts on my body in order to find out and document how and in what way bacteria varied on the different parts of my body.

 

see you soon.

A

 

my latest favorites of info mapping

Winde Rienstra Hand Crafted Fashion + Architecture

amazing! check these out. Inspirational

Winde Rienstra, where fashion meets art. The public was blown away by Winde’s handcrafted designs and this collection was definitely my favourite as well. I can’t wait to see more from this designer!

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A

Material Explorations: NUUE by Studio Koya

Check out this amazing that explores the method of creating materials.

NUUE by Studio Koya

“I have been experimenting and researching unconventional methods of creating garments. The technique I have developed can also can be applied to create products.

Wrapping synthetic fibre around a desired form or chosen objects fascinates me. Through a heating process, wound fibre transformes itself into a 3-dimensional moulded garment bringing expected and unexpected sculptural silhouettes.

I have a great interest in the shape of objects that we interact with, some of my work responds to the idea of human silhouette as object and object as human silhouette.

My collection shows conceptual garments that have been created through this process. These garments display the potential of this idea and a journey that I will continue to develop.

Words and photos: Courtesy of Jungeun Lee & This is Paper

Smart Textiles

Materials that transcend the way we think today, embodying technology, movement, and environment. Check out these smart textiles.

The fabric of the future won’t be just plain chiffon, silk or cotton. Instead electroluminescent material, microprocessors and LEDs may be woven together with clothing fibers to create smart textiles.

“Clothing can be considered a second skin and by implementing technology in it, you are bringing it into your intimate space,” says Nicky Assmann, an e-textile designer whose work was part of a recent exhibition in the Netherlands. “You are not just carrying technology like a laptop or an iPhone, but wearing it constantly.”

The exhibition, Pretty Smart Textiles, which closed last week, gave a glimpse into what happens when technology meets fashion. Among the exhibits were a dress made entirely of circuit boards that could also be used to generate music, a garment that when worn takes the sound of a heartbeat and other sounds from the body and remixes it into music, and a trenchcoat that reads fabric punch cards and tells stories.

Electronic textiles are outgrowing their geeky reputation, says Melissa Coleman, who with Dorith Sjardijn curated the exhibtion.

“The open source hardware movement has allowed for quicker and easier development of electronics and made it accessible to artists and designers,” says Coleman. “The result is that smart textile applications have become more interesting conceptually and aesthetically.”

The exhibition, which ended last week, featured 16 works and seven interactive samples.

Most of the artists who showed their work were women. “Electronic textiles appeal more to women than men,” says Sjardijn. “Women who are already in technology find it a nice way to combine the stuff that they find appealing with the more clinical world of technology and programming.”

The Clear LED dress fits the bill for a lighter, more feminine outfit. The dress, created by Evelyn Lebis, has three pieces: the bodice and tutu — both made of tulle — and a long, sleeveless, open blazer.

The bodice includes some embroidery with glow-in-the-dark yarns that light up when bright artificial light is shined on them.

The blazer is woven with stretch fibers and yarn made of PMMA (Poly methyl methacrylate, a clear plastic that’s often used as a replacement for glass). The PMMA yarn transmits LED light. LEDs are attached at about a 90 degree angle to the yarn so with the help of a battery, the entire dress can glow in the dark.

Lebis says she’s working on making two more dresses.

The Body Speaker

If you want to make music, maybe you could look inside your body for inspiration, says Karina van Heck, who has created a ‘Body Speaker.’ The wearable textile allows the user to listen to sounds from their own heartbeat or blood rushing through their veins and remix it to produce music.

The Body Speaker, which is worn in direct contact with the body, places sound-capturing membranes on the skin and directs the sound signals to a control system.

van Heck says she was inspired by the fact that technology such as X-rays and CT scans make it easy to look inside the human body.

“By hearing the sounds from our own body we become aware of our own existence and the condition and necessities of our body,” she says. “In times of stress we tend not to listen to our bodies quite enough and take it for granted.”

Intimacy

A transparent dress may seem like a teenage fantasy, but a group of creative designers have tried to make it real. An exhibit called Intimacy uses smart foils that become transparent to create a dress.

The distance towards the garments determines their level of transparency. The foils transform the body of the wearer into a interface that acts as an “emotional meter.” The concept has been developed by Studio Roosegaarde and V2_Lab.

“Intimacy appealed to every visitor,” says Melissa Coleman, who was also one of the curators of the exhibition. “It uses an e-foil that becomes transparent with electricity. This material is uncommon that people have asked if it is really real!”

A Magical Carpet

For a modern take on a traditional rug, Dorith Sjardijn embedded electroluminescent material into a hand-tufted wool carpet. The resulting piece called 8 Bitskleed feels familiar, despite its eerie glow.

“I wanted to take a traditional craft like carpet weaving into the future,” says Sjardijn, who’s a textile designer. With Melissa Coleman (who created the Charlie trench coat), Sjardijn teaches e-textiles at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.

Sjardijn tufted fibers of the electroluminescent material into an existing carpet and backed the entire rug with rubber for durability.

“I can see this being used in interior decoration,” she says. “The potential for its use is not that far out into the future.”

 

 

The latest from Iris Van Herpen

Micro by Iris Van Herpen (via pleatfarm)

ris van Herpen‘s latest collection is another breathtaking look at her explorations with not just 3D printing, but also laser and electroplating bath techniques. Inspired by the scientific SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) photos from Scientific Photographer Steve Gschmeissner, the Micro Collection takes on the bizarre yet fascinating world of scaly organisms such as vermins, lice and termites.

 

Generative forms

lately inspired by:

depoArt

The “Vague Affinities” referred by the title of this work, relate to the basic tenets of the software engine that produces the presented structures. The basic rules are built on the concept of affinity and on its opposite: the diversity, the difference. We start by defining a group of several hundred agents with a color value associated, chosen from a palette with a continuous gradient which results in a different and unique color for each agent

11 Fictions Are takes digital renders of contemporary architectural projects and further fictionalises them. An automated pointilism procedure is used to abstract the renders using algorithms prevalent in parametric design itself, closing the loop of fictions with a machinic reference to the human hand.

Rhizomes

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A

R(air)ified symposium

New technologies and design methodologies will allow new forms, materials and strategies to emerge in support of renewed interests in creating and conditioning of environments. This symposium will consider the changing roles of atmospheres itself in architecture and how the design, distribution, filtration, and conditioning of air effects and affects space.

Speakers include: Gail Peter borden, an te Liu, Phillips rahm, Marcos Sanchez, Doris sung, warren techentin, Tom wiscombe

AirBeam

Airbeam computational membrane (done with roland snoo & Tom Wiscombe