I’ve been designing things for Pork Pie Hatters for a year, now. This has included their site, a custom door, some signage, an extra large stamp, a series of hats, and a host of other things. Recently, we’ve been talking about displays, interior decoration, and finding ways to maximize the hats on display while keeping a lid on the clutter. The main problem with selling anything in Manhattan is finding a place to put any stock that isn’t out on the shelves, and the problem with buying anything in Manhattan is sorting it into your microscopic apartment. So, I came up with some flat pack hat stands.
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Foldy Zoetrope
I made little foldy zoetropes to send folks for the holidays. Now that they’re all sent out and people have had a chance to enjoy them, I figured I could reveal the design without anybody feeling less special. I should release the design and talk about the process behind making them. I should have time for that soon. In the meantime, check out the construction tutorial video after the fold.
Continue readingPrincess Jellyfish Laser Bento
I’m a big fan of Princess Jellyfish. It’s stuffed with features and themes near and dear to my heart: gender identity and ambiguity, discovering a world outside your nerd bubble, finding outlets for your passions through building things, how style and aesthetics are a language unto themselves, the clash of cultures between the nerdy and the stylish. It’s lovely stuff.
Continue readingSilver TARDIS Ring
So, after some trial and error, I finally have some lovely TARDIS rings to show off. They’re cast from a high resolution 3d print generated in SolidWorks. One of the beautiful bits about using a CAD program to drive the design is that I can change the proportions of the ring, shank, and TARDIS independently while keeping it within some attractive, reasonable proportions.
Continue readingGuy Fawkes Bandannas
After seeing protests erupt all over the world I wanted to make something that could change the game a little. I want people to be able to protest with OWS without the risk of being fired for showing solidarity. I wanted to make something useful, portable, something that could make the biggest difference to the most people. I came up with this mask.
Continue readingHackerspace Passports
For the past month I’ve been designing some passports with Mitch Altman. The purpose is to get people visiting more hackerspaces, interacting with the communities held within, and spreading ideas across different groups.
I find the scavenger hunt element – trying to fill every blank space in your “visas” section with stamps from hackerspaces across the world – incredibly appealing. I’m eager to see the stamps spaces come up with, the inks they use, and the clever elements they find to tuck in with their own passports.
Continue readingPillow Mace!
I just put the finishing touches on a mace-shaped pillow, fashioned for NYC’s Pillow Fight Flash Mob this Saturday. It rocks the awesome. Surprisingly it took a good yard of cushion foam and two bags of poly-fill to do this one up right and get it nice and spherical. In other interesting news this may be the first dodecahedron I’ve ever constructed.
Continue readingThe Anywhere Organ
I’m developing an enormous interactive musical sculpture called the Anywhere Organ. It uses organ pipes, salvaged from discarded church organs. With a combination of some electronics and CAD I’ve designed a system that can easily be expanded to more voices and pipes as I gather more pipes and add to the instrument.
This sculpture is about replicating all the most incredible aspects of pipe organs: the way they fill a space with sound, how the instrument and the building that houses it are all part of the same sonic system playing each other, how beautiful the pipes are when seen rank upon rank together, how they can mix different voices and instruments together to create complex other-worldly sounds. The crucial difference between your ordinary run-of-the-mill organ and the Anywhere Organ is that the Anywhere Organ can be brought anywhere, turning any space into a cathedral of sound.
Continue readingFairytale Fashion
While Diana Eng was a resident at Eyebeam I was asked to assist her with her project: Fairytale Fashion. The objective was to use wearable technologies, tessellated structures, and 3d printing to produce unusual, fantastical, and otherwise impossible fashions. There was also an education aspect to the project. In addition to generating algorithms, prototypes, and 3d models, I also produced a series of demonstrations and interviews about the technologies we were using. All of the videos are available here.
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