fabric | rblg

Note: I'm joining here two posts that hit the blogs recently. The FilaBot 3d printer that print from garbage and the sort of narcissic-souvenir 3d photo booth from Omote 3d. Will it become possible to 3d print snapshots of ouselves, our houses, even our food with our own garbage (including therefore food garbage...)? Which would be a decent way to recycle trash (best way actually might be distant heating).

Via The Creators Project

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Of the many fictionalized, futuristic innovations shown in the Back to the Future movies, one of the most beneficial belonged to the DeLorean at the center of it all, and I don’t mean the ability to time travel. Rather, if even regular engines could run on garbage, we’d solve the issues of fuel availability and waste disposal in one fell swoop. That’s why it’s nice to see that this concept has come into existence right at the upswing of the 3D printing phenomenon.

FilaBot is a desktop device that breaks down various types of plastics and processes them into filament that you can use for your home 3D printer. That includes your botched 3D printed experiments, so you won’t be wasting filament when you’re testing out a design.

Their Kickstarter campaign, which closed in early 2012, clocked three times its goal, and should prove to be a great accompanying device for home 3D printers like MakerBot. Founder Tyler McNaney plans to create a whole range of products that offer this functionality, some with great potential for customization.

FilaBot is a welcome arrival to a burgeoning world of creativity that threatens to create an immense amount of waste, something that we’re already pretty good at rapidly creating in large volumes. Now, instead of adding to the garbage pile, we can process some of our existing waste into something useful… well, depending what you’ll be designing and fabricating.

[via The Guardian]

@ImYourKid

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Un photomaton d’un nouveau genre vient de voir le jour à Tokyo: il crée une figurine à l'image du modèle. Complètement mégalo mais idéal pour les amateurs de petits soldats de plomb.

A priori ce n’est qu’un gadget de plus pour consommateurs en mal d’ego trip. Mais les figurines créées par Omote 3D, photomaton installé pour quelques semaines à Omotesando, coeur de la consommation de luxe tokyoïte, prouvent que l’impression 3D est en passe de devenir un produit grand public.

Le Pop up studio ouvrira dans une galerie de Tokyo le 24 novembre prochain. On pourra s'y faire tirer le portrait, à la façon d’un photomaton - mais avec l'aide d'un photographe professionnel. Le portrait sera ensuite scanné et à partir des données enregistrées, et une figurine à l'image du client verra le jour. La machine, appelée Omote 3D, propose donc de transformer le chaland en petit soldat de plomb – mais en plastique et sans fusil. Pour 200 euros (la figurine de dix centimètres), le laboratoire Party, Rhizomatiks et Engine Film livrent l’objet, qu'il s’agit ensuite de colorer soi-même.

Les prix sont encore assez élevés mais la technique en est à ses prémices : de 21 000 yens (200 euros) pour une figurine de 10 cm à 42 000 yens (400 euros) pour la plus grande version de 20 centimètres.

En juin dernier, durant les Designer's day, les Français de Sismo proposaient déjà aux visiteurs de modeliser leurs visages et les faisaient surgir de pièce de monnaie. Le studio Sismo édite également des reproductions de crânes, vanités des temps futures, contre quelques milliers d'euros.

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Personal comment:

An interesting twist with 3d printing: to use it as a way to recycle our old PET bottles or plastic trash (and by extension any trash, including organic waste to 3d print food?). And a way to potentially produce strange self consumption portrait.

Via ArchDaily

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Designed by N H D M / Nahyun Hwang + David Eugin Moon, the Nam June Paik Library is a new public art library in Nam June Paik Art Center in Yong-In, Korea, which opened to the general public in 2011. Inspired by Nam June Paik’s artistic processes, the library was designed as a multi-functional spatial device, which redefines the relationship between library users and information. While the conventional library is characterized by the one directional transmission of the static, centralized, and predefined content, this library aims to promote non-linear and random access to information, and its production beyond the consumption. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The goal of the Nam June Paik Library is to collect, preserve, and provide access to historical and contemporary material related to the history and activities of Nam June Paik and his art. It offers to scholars a space for professional research, and to the local community an open forum for cultural engagement. The library houses and circulates the Center’s Nam June Paik Archives Collection, Nam June Paik Video Archives, and a rare Fluxus Footages Collection, as well as the user generated materials. The design and construction of the library was made possible by City of YongIn and Gyeoggi Province Government’s Small Library Fund.

Through spontaneous expression and juxtaposition of ideas, the consumer of information becomes the producer, and the static contents of the library turns dynamic. The collective generation and appreciation of information makes the library experience multi-directional and reciprocal.

The Library Machine located in the center of the library deploys the following 6 architectural and programmatic devices.

1. Scattering – The juxtaposition of the dispersed information produces complexity that contrasts the simple geometric initial form.

2. Non-Textual Content / Off-Site – Objects related to Paik’s work are scattered, plugged, and mapped throughout the surface of the machine. Reprogrammable dynamic media can communicate Paik’s previous works, as well as information on artistic and other happenings from the off-site locations of interest.

3. Physical Engagement – Additional storage areas and unique shelving in the long drawers are incorporated to help the future expansion of the collection, while inducing curiosity, interactivity, and playful engagement.

4. Production Lab – Inside the machine is reading, installation, video laboratories, and a space also for debates and group workshops.

5. “Representation Cells” – Content is also generated by users who can contribute to the information exchange. Small spaces or vitrines are made available for public display.

6. Library “Machinettes,” The Propagation Aides – Parts of the machine can detach as independent modules and can freely travel to other rooms or even outdoors to perform communicative functions, such as video projections or sound performances.

Architects: N H D M / Nahyun Hwang + David Eugin Moon
Location: 85 Sanggal-dong, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, GyeongGi-do, South Korea
Client: Nam June Paik Art Center
Program: Art/Media Library
Status: Opened 2011

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Personal comment:

Very interested in the experimental materiality of this house, its semi-transparent roof, isolation and coating. Makes me think of the "ghost appartements" made out of nylon by the korean artist Do-ho Suh, only this one is inhabitable.

Via MIT Technology Review

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By Katherine Bourzac

Researchers who have used the biomolecule to encode MP3s, text files, and JPEGs say it will be a competitive storage medium in just a few decades.

DNA could someday store more than just the blueprints for life—it could also house vast collections of documents, music, or video in an impossibly compact format that lasts for thousands of years.

Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, U.K., have demonstrated a new method for reliably encoding several common computer file formats this way. As the price of sequencing and synthesizing DNA continues to drop, the researchers estimate, this biological storage medium will be competitive within the next few decades.

The information storage density of DNA is at least a thousand times greater than that of existing media, but until recently the cost of DNA synthesis was too high for the technology to be anything more than a curiosity. Conventional methods of storing digital information for prolonged periods continue to pose problems, however. The magnetic tapes typically used for archival storage become brittle and lose their coating after a few decades. And even if the physical medium used to store information remains intact, storage formats are always changing. This means the data has to be transferred to a new format or it may become unreadable.

DNA, in contrast, remains stable over time—and it’s one format that’s always likely to be useful. “We want to separate the storage medium from the machine that will read it,” says project leader Nick Goldman. “We will always have technologies for reading DNA.” Goldman notes that intact DNA fragments tens of thousands of years old have been found and that DNA is stable for even longer if it’s refrigerated or frozen.

The U.K. researchers encoded DNA with an MP3 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a PDF of a scientific paper, an ASCII text file of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and a JPEG color photograph. The storage density of the DNA files is about 2.2 petabytes per gram.

Others have demonstrated DNA data storage before. This summer, for example, researchers led by Harvard University genetics professor George Church used the technology to encode a book (see “An Entire Book Stored in DNA”).

The difference with the new work, says Goldman, is that the researchers focused on a practical, error-tolerant design. To make the DNA files, the researchers created software that converted the 1s and 0s of the digital realm into the genetic alphabet of DNA bases, labeled A, T, G, and C. The program ensures that there are no repeated bases such as “AA” or “GG,” which lead to higher error rates when synthesizing and sequencing DNA.

The files were divided into segments, each bookended with an index code that contains information about which file it belongs to and where it belongs within that file—analogous to the title and page number on pages of a book.

The encoding software also ensures some redundancy. Each part of a file is represented in four different fragments, so even if several degrade, it should still be possible to reconstruct the data.

Working with Agilent Technologies of Santa Clara, California, the researchers synthesized the fragments of DNA and then demonstrated that they could sequence them and accurately reconstruct the files. This work is described today in the journal Nature.

Goldman’s group estimates that encoding data in DNA currently costs $12,400 per megabyte, plus $220 per megabyte to read that data back. If the price of DNA synthesis comes down by two orders of magnitude, as it is expected to do in the next decade, says Goldman, DNA data storage will soon cost less than archiving data on magnetic tapes.

Victor Zhirnov, program director for memory technologies at the Semiconductor Research Corporation in Durham, North Carolina, says that because the current cost is so high, data-storing DNA will probably find its earliest use in long-term archives that aren’t accessed frequently. Looking ahead, he says, he can envision “a more aggressive technology” to replace flash, the nonvolatile memory technology found in portable electronics, which is already reaching its scaling limits. The key will be developing entire hardware systems that work with DNA, not just sequencers and synthesizers.

Harvard’s Church says he is working on this very problem. “We can keep incrementally improving our ability to read and write DNA, but I want to jump completely out of that box,” he says. Church is currently developing a system for directly encoding analog signals such as video and audio into DNA, eliminating conventional electronics altogether.

Personal comment:

Make me think a little bit of both the mystery spot and this other previous article about Julian Hoeber exhibition,Demon Hill.