If you miss our workshop we held yesterday in the Fish Tank at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo you can watch it here.

Ideas that seem impossibe[sic] to realise with traditional media, including design software, often trigger concepts for self initiated projects. Using technology not just for the sake of it but as an aid device in order to design with it, we built some custom tools. Those tools allowed us to experiment with the type of Shakespeare’s «Romeo & Juliet». Along this text the word Juliet appears 180 times and the word Romeo another 308 times. We finally brought them together with 55,440 red lines.

It’s always fun to see graphic design projects use digital tools in new and interesting ways.  Check out more about the project, and Beetroot’s other work at Beetroot’s Romeo and Juliet.

Tam and I needed a workbench for our new workspace. The design challenges for the piece were the typical limits of affordable furniture. Quick and simple fabrication and assembly and using few resources were both guiding principles of the design and entire process.

Design:
The work bench is designed for both of us to use daily. It includes two workstations for computing, a central share work space for tutorials, individual small filing cabinets flanking the sides, and multi-purpose cable drops to accommodate media versatility. The top and supports are cut out of a single sheet of plywood, and a 2×2 and a 2×6 are employed as a structural runner and backing board. The 4′x8′ sheet of plywood is designed and cut to create less than 5% waste.

Fabrication:
Although digital fabrication was not a main desire for the design, it was used to create simple notching connections, minimize waste, and shop time. The table top and supports were cut out of a single sheet of plywood on a 3-axis CNC router. The dimensional pieces were cut with a table and chop saw. The 2″x6″ backing board is dadoed out to be friction-fit on the back.

Craft:
We used the tools available to create the best product possible. Using the computer as a design tool necessitated thoughtful craft in both digital and physical technique. Measurements were taken and designed for to the sixteen of an inch in some cases.

As thousands descended on Wall Street in a mass protest, another type of grassroots movement was at work: Grassroots Mapping. On October 1st, a small team set about the task of documenting the protests, not from the ground, but from the air. A small team, led by Oscar Brett, Zach Postone, Yaeir Heber, and Anjali Cadambi, used 100 helium balloons, some twine, and a digital camera to catch a different perspective of the action. The group, inspired by the organization at grassrootsmapping.org, led a colorful, artistic collaboration to suspend the camera high above the protest throughout the day.

From the team:

The project was inspired by Grassroots Mapping – a group that uses accessible technology such as balloons and kites for community-based mapping projects around the world. With the mainstream media focused on today’s arrests and clashes with police, the DIY rig was able to capture the massive crowds streaming in solidarity from Liberty Plaza to Brooklyn. The large bundle of multicolored balloons hovering above the crowd was well received by demonstrators and police alike – and despite some tangled lines and gusty winds, returned to report back with these initial photos.

After processing, the hope to stitch the entire set into a large-scale photographic map. We wish them the best of luck and love to hear their story, bringing digital technologies to new ‘heights’ and changing the way we see the world. Great job guys.

Check out more Grassroots Mapping at GrassrootsMapping.org.

Markus Kayser’s Solar Sinter Project pushes our ideas of technology and making on more than one front. His mechanical experiment using Makerbot electronics and hardware, even some skateboard wheels, to make a solar powered 3d printer is a great idea. Not only are the mechanical operations solar powered, the ‘print’ isn’t extruding a raw material, so much as it is melting sand into glass by the raw power of the sun.

Any one interested in digital fabrication or 3d print no doubt is impressed by this show of ingenuity. But what is more interesting is the idea of a possible net zero manufacturing facility using only the sun. Often, energy use conservation is thought to offset average household or office space energy use and maintenance, not energy-intensive manufacturing processes. The possibility of a net-zero manufacturing plant in the desert is certainly an interesting one. More at Markus Kayser’s website.

…This project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In this experiment sunlight and sand are used as raw energy and material to produce glass objects using a 3D printing process, that combines natural energy and material with high-tech production technology.

Solar-sintering aims to raise questions about the future of manufacturing and trigger dreams of the full utilisation of the production potential of the world’s most efficient energy resource – the sun. Whilst not providing definitive answers this experiment aims to provide a point of departure for fresh thinking.

There is a new grasshopper tutorial - Split a curve with intersection points. It goes over graft, curve|curve intersection, shatter, and containment buttons. The definition was used in a larger definition which we will share later.

The definition is revised and updated for the latest grasshopper version. We highly recommend going over the waffle definition tutorials because there are core ideas to learn from that definition. However, feel free to grab this one.

download here (version 0.8.0008) : waffle.ghx

(right click and click save link…)

The definition comes with no notes.

Feel free to comment or ask questions.

http://www.ronenbekerman.com/interview-with-luxigon/

http://www.ronenbekerman.com/interview-with-mir/

Ivan Sutherland is a computer scientist and forerunner of human-computer interaction research and design. This video, narrated by his student, Alan Kay. The video follows a demonstration of his Ph.D. research, a program called Sketchpad, that he developed in 1962. It set a standard for many computing paradigms we use today, including the graphical user interface, object oriented programming, and alternative methods of human-computer interaction. It also showed the budding computer industry that computer graphics could be used for technical and artistic means, and became the benchmark for early CAD programs with features like zooming, parametric rules, and blocks. This interface is more recognizable as the predecessor to a Windows environment, but shows great imagination in HCI theory and CAD history. More on Ivan at Wikipedia and Oracle Labs.