From traditional crafts to modern crafts, we’re covering news and interesting projects to educate you and keep you inspired. Design trends and pop culture related projects are here to inspire.
Photo shoot with Consuelo and Oraia in July(?) of 2004. Launched retropod.com a couple of days afterwards, then got a cease-and-desist from Sony six weeks later. Sony was worried that the Retropod would confuse consumers: “Moreover, they will be misled into thinking that Sony is backward in its design of products and is going away from miniaturization, as the size of the tape player housing is quite large by today’s standards.” Link.
Peter “Musical Pants” Kirn has a round up of sonic clothing, projects and resources on wearable, interactive clothing with integrated electronics that respond to or generate sound. Musical gloves, Denim Synth jackets, noise shirt and sonic dresses, sensor shoes and more. Link.
These fellows made their own high-altitude balloons to take photos using a Dakota Digital camera, a Hi-Value Radio PocketTracker, two latex balloons from Kaymont and a parachute from Public Missiles. They also found a closeout on DigiTraveler GPSes from RadioShack. The balloon made it up to 52,000 feet, the pictures are really neat. Link. Via /.
Great use of retired cigarette machines! What is an Art*o*mat? Art*o*mats are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. There are 76 active machines in various locations throughout the country. What do you get from an Art*o*mat? The experience of pulling the knob alone is quite a thrill, but you also walk away with an original work of art. Ker-plunk! What an easy way to become an art collector. Link
The knitPro tool will take any GIF, JPEG or PNG image you throw at it and make a knitting grid in PDF as a guide. Handy, it’s also part of a larger project called “logoknitting” microRevolt fiber hobbyists use the tactic of “logoknitting” for sweatshop awareness. Logoknitting means knitting a logo into a garment. They knit logos of well known sweatshop offenders, as a way to promote discussion on how advertising, labor, production and consumption relate. Link. Gallery.
Incredibly lo-fi DIY attempt in making panoramic video, with interesting results- Ingredients: Old plastic Christmas tree bauble found in the garden, Felt tip pen, Blu Tak, “Polar Coordinates” distortion in After Effects. Seems possible to make a version with a larger mirror ball, the effect is pretty neat. Link.
Looking to take VR photos of objects? Here’s an interesting DIY way…“Used together with my Coolpix 990 remote control, this turntable forms an automatic studio for simple VR-object movies. It rotates the object on 360° and shoots photographs with equally spaced angles. You can then animate these images with a VR-object viewer such as PTviewer, Freedom-VR or Objplay. Remote and turntable can both be built with Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System (only parts included in this box are needed)”. Link.
