dana gordon

Interactive Rebellious Chairs at EnsAD

Administrator — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:31:37 +0000

Like every year, January arrives and once again, I have the great pleasure of running the ENSAD/MIT workshop. This is a collaboration between the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and the MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech group. It is a hands-on, extremely intensive workshop - and this one, of 2012, is a really great one! The brief is exactly in my favourite area of research. New interaction with familiar objects, and more specifically, the students were asked to redefine our relationship with a chair.
We had the skilled and devoted support of Jennifer Jacobs and Sam Jacoby, both are research assistants at the High-Low Tech group.
Along with the more or less “usual sensors”, they also brought with them some very powerful servo motors, thermochromic ink and many soft / crafty conductive materials.
The students had creative ideas for their chairs personality and worked very hard (and fast) to deliver their beautiful and working prototypes.
Check out their totally wicked work here!
And also some photos, mostly of the working process here.

Our Migratory Nest

Administrator — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:25:11 +0000

This project is another exciting collaboration with Myriel Milicevic - It is a proposal prepared for a nature/art event in Germany.
Following the trails of a great mythical bird, we create a unique space and special tools for observation into its remarkable story. Looking at this story we open a discussion mostly about migration but also thoughts about nesting. We look at the narrative behind relocation and the strange similarities between animals and human society.

New hardware for the FabFM

Administrator — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:26:45 +0000

Dave and I are trying some new possible design, as we are looking at manufacturing the FabFM board and kit. This means we look at new components and structure, which can be soldered and built by a wider audience.
This affects the design of the board, but also the external shape of the radio. As much as we like the look of our chubby little radio (as well as its dirty assembling process…) - we also must consider some other approaches, cleaner, simpler, which may be more friendly for our audience. This brings us to a whole new look - a style which is a direct result of the laser-cutting technology and the press-fit method of connecting the pieces.

Screen-printed electronics with MIT+ENSAD

Administrator — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:09:43 +0000

Once again we celebrate the meeting of design and technology, high-low tech style: combining the exquisite crafts practice at ENSAD with the new materials and technology from MIT. This year we focused on Screen-Printing, Professor Leah Buechley from High-Low Tech group of the Media Lab, arrived with 4 of her students and great materials to experiment with. Each group had to produce an interactive A1 sized poster. We focused on two elements: change of colours ,using thermochromic ink / liquid crystal paint, and movement, using Nitinol wire.
Check out the beautiful results, the experiments and the process on the workshop’s website and some of my photos on flickr.

MediaMatic Dev Camp ‘10: ikBijt

Administrator — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:38:09 +0000

Last week I participated in the Mediamatic hacker camp 2010. As always in Amsterdam, there were great people, sweet ambiance and plenty of coffee. I had the pleasure to collaborate with Nadya Peek and JB Labrune and design our obsessive social-networking installation: ikBijt.
The ikBijt is a unique piece of furniture, which confronts us with our on-line social activity and our web 2.0 sins. Shaped as a kneeler, this bite-activated device recognises your mediamatic profile and uses the network information to whisper narratives of guilt and shame straight into your bones - highly addictive!
The narration is transmitted through bone conduction, so only the person who bites the device can hear the shameful secrets, while people around can only notice the changing light according to the bite intensity.
Here are some of my photos, and Nadya’s.
And also, here’s ikBijt on the Mediamatic website

Fab FM for TEI 2011

Administrator — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 13:04:42 +0000

The paper about Fab FM got accepted to TEI 2011(the conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction). So if you are interested, and planing to go to Madeira next year, make sure you hear Dave’s presentation and see the demo.

Fab FM workshop at the Media Lab

Administrator — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:03:24 +0000

Last Friday we had a first hands-on workshop for our radio kit, the Fab FM. This project is collaboration with Dave Mellis, at the MIT Media Lab High-Low Tech group.
Fab FM allows people to fabricate their own radios, or even manufacture small series. People can follow our basic kit design or modify it - its function or look. All is open: the electronics hardware, software as well as the casing design.
The kit includes the electronic components, our new board and the design files: electronic circuit and case design. For this workshop these files were sent in advance to the participants, this way they could personally explore different possibilities of change and suggest their own modification.
Through Fab FM we would like to explore the possibilities, problems and qualities of open source hardware.
Check out the photos from our workshop on flickr: Dave’s and mine.

PlayIDHO at the Interaction Lab, Holon

Administrator — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:14:27 +0000

A visit at IDHO’s Interaction Lab, to give a little talk about play experience and to check out the students presentations of their own play experience designs. So far they focused on game-play and some screen based stuff - but their semester has just started… We will keep an eye open to check their website and to see what Hands-On Play they will create.
On the picture above is one fun project that the students made: Breaking glasses (all different shapes and sizes) using our human voice :]

Hybrid materials workshop at Ensad

Administrator — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:27:07 +0000

I had the pleasure to guide the workshop at the great Parisian school of design, ENSAD. The mixed background students, worked in six groups of two and created awesome hybrid projects blending old tradition and new technology. You can read more about each one of the projects and process or watch the videos, on our English (!) workshop blog. This school has the most beautiful hands-on workshop space i have ever seen, old-school traditional machines to make their own fabrics, prints, and whatever…
On the picture above is one of the students project: the magnificent “Flampoule”. It is a light-virtuosity instrument, a hybrid of a flute and ampule (meaning a bulb).
More pictures on flickr.

Fab Radio on Make blog

Administrator — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:59:36 +0000

The Fab Radio just made a fabulous appearance on Makezine. Fab Radio is a lovely project allowing everyone out there to build their own personal radios.
This was part of Dave Mellis‘ project for the Neil Gershenfeld’s famous class: “How To Make (almost) Anything”. We were looking to design a simple radio, easy to assemble, and that could use the personal materials we each already have. You know… these kind of weird stuff we somehow end up keeping from an exotic trip or a special adventure - then, we really have noting to do with all that stuff… We also sometimes call these things “souvenirs” - and because we have sentimental relation with them, we keep just collecting them. This radio is one example of how we can maybe make something useful using these very personal and special materials.
Also, dear Mellis posted for you all the schematics and process documentation.