Here’s one of my favorite notes ever. It’s from a Lucy Leith, about her experience at Maker Faire, which she attended last year with her dad, Andy. My name is Lucy Leith, and I am a 13-year-old maker. I heard about Maker Faire through MAKE magazine, and thought that it would be a cool thing […]
I have often opined that truly creative problem solving comes from limiting one’s options, rather than expanding them. Which is why prisoner’s inventions fascinate me so much. (If you’ve not had a chance to browse Angelo’s Prisoners’ Inventions book, BTW, I highly recommend it–it’s not about shivs or improvised weapons, but about how prisoners make game pieces, heat water, control the climate in their cells, etc., etc. using only the odds and ends they are permitted by, or can slip past the attention of, the state.) Compare an object like this prop handgun, which was reportedly used by John Dillinger in his escape from the Crown Point, Indiana Jail in 1934, to, say, a modern-day toothbrush handle, or a Nike sneaker, designed by a professional working with a CAD-CAM system, industrial machine tooling, and a smorgasboard of rainbow-colored polymers and elastomers, most of which add no functional value at all, and are employed just to make a product stand out from competitors on the shelf. Granted, an escaping prisoner and a product designer have wildly different goals, but if asked “which is doing more creative, original problem-solving,” I know how I’d answer.
Amazing lineup of over 150 makers and performers, including our pals Jake von Slatt and the band HUMANWINE. More details here.
Ricky Wolbrom of New York City is edmdesigns. She creates one-off and limited-edition jewelry items in the steampunk vein. Shown uppermost is her Steampunk Ring with Turquoise Crystal, which was featured in the February 9 issue of Auxiliary magazine.
I’ve been hiring Angus Hines of Carrolton, VA, for a couple of months now for all my contract laser-cutting, and I can’t say enough good things about him. But, heck, I’ve never met him, so let’s focus on the empirical: Angus consistently quotes me about half what the big-laser cutters want to charge on the same jobs. (Hopefully he knows that, and I haven’t just shot myself in the foot by pointing it out.) Seriously, Angus himself says, “one of my goals is to help bring the price of DIY tech down to a more reasonable level.”
Now Angus is offering a kit of all the acrylic parts for the open-source Fab@Home Model 2 3D printer at about 75% of what the Fab@Home preferred vendors are charging. [Thanks, Angus!]
This amazing origami model, which appears to be a skull when resting on a mirror, was designed in the late 90s by renowned paper-folding artist Herman Van Goubergen, who seems to have no web presence of his own. The upper model was made and photographed by Flickr user M_V_origami. Instructions for folding the model are included in OrigamiUSA’s 1999 annual collection, which is available for sale here.
Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich created this installation, simply called The Swimming Pool, for The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. A 10cm layer of water over a piece of glass separates above from below. It must be a pretty serious piece of glass; some back-of-the-envelope math based on the published dimensions gives 1,100 kg (2400 lbs) of water that it has to support. Plus its own weight. [via Dude Craft]
