iTrek

iTrek a project I was involved with at Computer ClubHouse when in Dublin last year. This idea was run as part of the summer program for the children in the area. This Carbon Conscience program got the kids out exploring the city in an educational and creative way. Trek is a physical and mental challenge taking place both virtually and in reality across Dublin city and countryside. The activity has been organised by SWICN Computer Clubhouse and The Digital Hub Learning Initiative. The gauntlet has been thrown down to 16 young people who will form 4 opposing team. Each team faces the task of completing three missions before taking part in the away mission for the Final Countdown mission.

The challenge is to help prevent environmental disaster through gathering evidence and building up knowledge skills. Technology will play an essential part of the challenge, facilitating faster communication and sophisticated transfer of information. Each mission will focus on a particular aspect of humanity’s impact on the environment. The teams will work against the clock on many tasks but must remember that speed is balanced against their need to reduce their carbon footprint. The first three missions will take place across the city centre in various locations. The Final Countdown will be an away mission which will take place on Larch Hill. An fully interactive website has been created to facilitate this project. The teams will use this website to co-ordinate tasks for the day and document their success.

Each player will set up a personal profile with an Eco Hero avator and teams will upload photos, video status reports and mission evidence. This will ensure that all the teams have access to the whole iTrek experience during and after the event, in addition to allowing parents and supporters to pay tribute to their success. The winners of the overall challenge will have the opportunity to take part in a summer course where the iTrek story will be transformed into a video game. This game will become the crowning glory of the project.

Dan Shipsides

I called into Dan Shipsides's studio at Orchid Gallery (beside FlaxArt studios) to see what he was up to. I had a preview into Dan's work at his presentation at the Pecka Kucks night at Catalyst Arts in October. It made me consider climbers at playgrounds and how I could construct more interested devices? On the Elastic Frontiers project Dan worked with six children from the Oldbury Court Primary School in Bristol initiated by Creative Partnerships and Arnolfini. During this time the children learnt to climb. they explored ways of moving through space and making art using the classroom, school buildings, surrounding areas, local climbing centre and places out in the landscape as their learning environments. The equipment they used ranged from traditional art materials, tables and chairs to specialised climbing equipment. An exhibition was held at the school and Golden Thread Gallery. It included Dan's new climbable sculpture, The Big Cheese, an almost vertical 'slab' wall made of school tables, with holes cut to act as hand and feet holes.

Patrick Walsh

Patrick Walsh exhibited 'The Human Connection' at The Bad Art Gallery in Dublin, 8th Nov - 6th Dec. The IronPig got me thinking about the illusive object; taking the objects out of it's original situation and creating something misleading.

A documentary 'The Genius of Photography' on BBC4 brought up this concept in Man Ray and the Surrealists work. They force the viewer to look closer at the object. They have photographed the object in it's own, obscuring the objects origins. Man Ray found objects, manipulated them and reduced them to photographs. I find Patricks interpretation of his objects interesting. He dissects and constructs them into a sculpture of their own. In the images shown he uses a gas cylinder manipulating it into various meaning .

3D Design Workshop with Deepak Kaushal and Johanna Van Daalen

We were given a brief by Johanna and Deepak to design a product or range of products and create a prototype(s) for a company called TRICO, a small furniture and product manufacturer. For this project we took inspiration from the questions below in creating a wearable item which deals with functionality rather than a fashionable piece of clothing; using our skills and our various backgrounds to look at clothes from a different perspective.

• Why do fashion designers sell their work seasonally?
• Why do fashion designers have to deny their past works after half a year?
• Why do fashion designers produce such an amount of work for such a short time?
• Why do fashion designers sell their work at sale prices afters only a season?
• Why can't we buy our favourite clothes again and again?

My group consisted of a Graphic Designer (Lee), two Textile designers (Beth & Hannah) and (me) a furniture maker/designer. We have 5 hour to develop our ideas and produce a/range of prototype(s). We began by thinking about how are clothes could have another function. Inspired by CuteCircuit's work we came up with 'Mobile Glove'. This is a glove with speakers/headset located within the fibers. Sensors would notify you when their a call. It would answer when you raised your arm up. Deciding that this product is too problematic to produce, we started brainstorming ideas of further multi-functional clothing. We played around with ideas of producing socks/footwear that would prevent wet soaks, reflectors on clothing for cycling, disposable clothing made from recycled paper, jacket that converted to a blow-up neck cushion and blanket etc.

Finally we created Hotty's, a collection of woolly products that heat up, by your wasted heat within your morning routine. Our collection includes a hat, scarf, socks and gloves. We all know that heat will help make us feel better. Our products retain heat from once you leave your house and arrive at work/college, making your trip snug and warm. We've used cherry stones and gel inserts in our woollies. The Cherrystones line the hat and scarf, gel insets within the palm of the gloves and arch of the socks. As an added plus cherry stones have many healing attributes: helps to improve circulation and cell function, decrease stiffness in tendons and ligaments, relax the muscles, decrease muscle spasms and help to lessen pain. Cherrystones retain heat and release it gradually to give long lasting and penetrating heat directly to the area of discomfort. They are also washable. Just 15 minutes on your hot pipes or wrap over your tea pot and they are ready. They can also becomes a perfect cold compress for sports injuries, bumps and puffy eyes.
Get up in the morning, put on the hot water, wrap socks and gloves around hot pipes, make a pot of tea, wrap woolly hat over teapot, pour cup of tea, rest cup over circular gel inserts of the gloves. You collection of woollies are now toasty and ready to wear.

Cute Circuit with University of Ulster staff

"Its products and art installations have been featured worldwide. Its Hug Shirt was named one of the Best Inventions of the Year by TIME Magazine. CuteCircuit combines telecommunication and smart textile technologies with innovative design concepts to create new user experiences. CuteCircuit designs products that make you happy!" CuteCircuit are concerned with HCI (Human Connection Interaction), questioning what is the experience of using their products? How people interact with them? What happens to the product when people are finished with it?

Clothes are 1000 of years off, fashion has changes but our clothes have not. CuteCircuit have revolutionized fashion in today's world. They have merged it with technology to create experiences for the buyer. Some of their technology advancements include Blue-Jacking and Pod-Casting producing this missing link has been Experiential Clothing Design. Designing clothes that empower the user. For example the Kinetic Dress, an evening gown reactive to the wearer’s activities and mood. The Hug Shirt, a shirt that makes people send hugs over distance. Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one. My favourite the Accessory Nerve, a Bluetooth mono-sleeve accessory for mobile phones that changes pattern (creating pleats on the fabric) when a user receives phone calls. The wearer recognizes the sender from the pattern the pleats create when receiving an incoming call. If the user is in a meeting or busy can simply flatten the pleats back into the original position, automatically the caller will receive a text message saying “I’ll call you back later”. The Accessory Nerve allows users to exchange information and greetings in a subtle and intimate way. Brilliant!


Cute Circuit worked closely with two lectures at our University, Liam McCormish and Christine Blaney developing a wearable technology system and interactive environment to aid pre-school children in learning to read called 'Jump, Skip, Learn'. Children wearing a smart textile wristband were able to magically control many activities and objects inside this environment. When the children raised their arms it caused the sun to come out, but dropping their hands repeatedly caused the rain to fall, and clapping their hands brought resounding thunder and lightning! I love this idea in creating interactive play environments that animates a healthy physical space whilst developing language and literacy skills. Synthetic Phonics are incorporated which aids the children to sound-out words. I was interested to find out the range of collaboration for such a project. It extended to children, educationalists, technologists, designers and typographers. It made me consider my own project and who I would look to for collaboration in realizing it.

Alexander Brodsky

I came across Alexander Brodsky's work in Another magazine. His unified architectural objects interests me.

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/bayly/time/home.html http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/artistsrffa/artbro01.html

Design on Film

Thursday 8th November 6.30 pm - Lecture Theatre, Belfast Campus Designs on Film Cinema . Showing Charles and Ray Eames' seminal 'Powers of Ten' (1977); 'My Architect' a documentary on internationally respected architect Louis Kahn by his illegitimate son Nathaniel Kahn.
Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten ‘Powers of Ten’ (1977) has long been heralded as a classic within cinema. Opening with a close up of a picnic blanket in Chicago and zooming out by a factor of ten every ten seconds the film soon encompasses the entire universe, before collapsing back inwards, zooming in by a reverse factor, ultimately reaching the nucleus of an atom: A timeless classic. My Architect Director Nathaniel Kahn searches to understand his father, noted architect Louis Kahn, who died bankrupt and alone in 1974. World-famous architect Louis Kahn (Exeter Library, Salk Institute, Bangladeshi Capitol Building) had two illegitimate children with two different women outside of his marriage. Nathaniel travels the world visiting his father’s buildings and haunts in this film, meeting his father’s contemporaries, colleagues, students, wives, and children.The National Assembly Building, Bangladesh, is the most amasing of all.