2013
Games of Nonchalance
The Lattitude
San Francisco, 2013
San Francisco, 2013
Hired to develop, build and install interactive hardware system to be integrated into large scale, highly developed instillation. Worked within complex augmented realityuniverse and its aesthetics to have seamless gameplay for participants. Developed RFID system with RPi and Arduino for different interactivity responses.
As a buildout, the challenge lie not only in smoothly working hardware, but implementing it in such a way that the technology disappeared to let the narrative work its magic.
Note: Project is not yet live and NDAs are a thing. Links are to previous project by same group.
Note: Project is not yet live and NDAs are a thing. Links are to previous project by same group.
The Mongrel Jews
2013 Kickstarter Reward Shirt
Seattle based folk-punk band shirt designed as a special reward for their Kickstarter supporters. Single color silkscreen.
How do you represent a band in a single image? Their style, their mood, their cadence? A band’s shirt is often the first thing anyone will see of them; and translating music into visuals is an exciting challenge. With Mongrel Jews, it was imperative to me to represent their high-spirited, silly yet passionate sound and feel. The trope of a cartoon scuffle, with band relevant imagery, did this nicely.
Shirt:
Savage Industries
100 Adams
ComicCon 2013
ComicCon 2013
Created 100 of Adam Savage’s iconic mustache for his trip to ComicCon, to create a flash mob...of himself.
Jason Tucker/Transform Press
BurningMan 2013
CNC vectorization
Created dozens of vector illustrations to be cut out by CNC Plasma cutter, to be exhibited at BurningMan.
‘Wave’
Coachella 2012
Coachella 2012
CNC/Graphic design for large scale kinetic art piece shown at the Coachella music festival.
I first took traditional Islamic Girih tiling patterns, then warped and distorted them, removing the religious connotations, and fusing historic patterns with modern computational ones. Results were cut out on CNC plasma cutter.
The movement of a geometric pattern
Dialogues in Motion
2012 with Benjamin Carpenter and Sudhu Tewari
SFMoMA January to August 2012
SFMoMA January to August 2012
I was asked to be the designer and Illustrator for their project, to be displayed at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from January to August 2012. The piece was part of SFMoMA’s ‘Game Labs’ exhibit which was created to challenge visitors to the museum to participate and interact with the art in new ways. In our piece, every single piece of art in the museum became a game piece and part of a treasure hunt. As the visitor moved around the museum, they would carry our printed game card which was similar to a ‘bingo’ card. We chose 12 words and assigned a bodily motion to each of them. Players checked off a box each time they see (in the artist description), hear, or think of one of these words (and make the motion). They could also check boxes if they saw someone else make these movements.
http://www.benjamincarpenter.com/artwork-page/dialogues-in-motion-2/#sthash.U8ingqJZ.dpuf
http://www.benjamincarpenter.com/artwork-page/dialogues-in-motion-2/#sthash.U8ingqJZ.dpuf
Quilting and Geometry/Penrose Quilt
Designed for Featured Artist talk/ demo at the Exploratorium
2012, Fabric
Laser cut, hand sewn quilt using non-periodic kite-and-dart penrose tiling patterns. Exploring the intersection of traditional quilting, patterns such as Islamic Girih and Penrose with modern laser cutting. Precision cutting allows for a new set of quilting to be possible where hand cutting would not produce the exact angles needed to form a quilt.
What impact does rapid prototyping and fabrication have on traditional crafts? How does the removal of hand cutting and sewing remove intent or the traditional human aspect? I’m interested in using CNC machines in conjunction with traditional crafts in such a way that the project could not have been done only by man, or only by machine. The Laser cutter can cut much more precise angles than a human, and the human can take those and create a work of craft and imbue it with tradition. Beyond that, a non-periodic quilt tiling set does not contain arbitrarily large periodic patches that can be created in advance and then sewn together later, a new type of craft that is friendly neither to industrial creation or human creation. Also, it takes a really really long time. If you want to lose 2 years to a quilt, I suggest nonperiodic tiling.
reference
Flaming Lotus Girls
Tympani Lambada
BurningMan 2011
BurningMan 2011
Steel, plastic, electronics
I was contacted to design and build the ground aspects of major grant award recipients, Flaming Lotus Girls. The project chosen was ‘Tympani Lambada’, a 40’ high, 100’ diameter metal sculpture and interactive art piece, designed around the inner ear. The pieces I was tasked were to be both part of the interactive sculpture and a place for participants to rest inside the perimeter of the sculpture - interactive benches. The skeleton (nicknamed ‘pigeons’ by the crew) of the pieces were designed in Adobe Illustrator, and cut out of ⅜” steel plate on a CNC plasma jet cutter. Pieces were designed to look as if they were rising out of the flat playa- a skeletal serpent out of a dry lake bed.
Once cut out, I used a pipe bender to curve the 4’ pipe that made the ‘spine’ and curve of the pieces. The pipe was then cut to match the flat surfaces of the pigeons of which they joined, and welded. Once welded and sanded to remove sharp edges and burrs, the pieces were painted bone-white, given a textural coat, and painted again.
Lastly, the interactive aspect. I wanted to compliment the fire effects used on the rest of the piece- but no fire could be used at ground level. I also wanted to touch on the inner-ear design aspect of the whole piece, and decided on sound-reactive lighting. I used an open source project called Bliplace as the base, which was created as a small jewelry/toy kit. I built on that kit to power lighting all over the benches. The microphones sampled the ambient sound and reacted to the dominant wavelength- if it was quiet except for people, it would respond to higher pitches and pulse accordingly; if there was a loud, bass-y party vehicle nearby it would react to that.
In addition, I taught volunteers basic metalworking skills (hot and cold), CNC concepts, and shop etiquite.
2011
Awarded grant from The Awesome Foundation to hand-make a scarf a day, every day, for a month. Completed successful kickstarter campaign to supplement the same project. Scarves included a life-size fleece sousaphone, a soft circuit scarf, and a scarf woven out of hand-rolled pasta.
I have been drawn to time-restricted creation challenges, such as this or 24 hour comics day, for many years. It gets my mind to a place of near ego death; a creative trial in place of a physical or spiritual one. I also quite like the thought that comes once the project is done and I’ve finally had a nice sleep: did I do that?
2009
First project using StarBoards components. Handmade skirt with StarBoards and Arduino equipped with Magnetometer to detect magnetic north. Vertical rows of LEDs around the circumference of skirt; whichever row facing north would light. In addition to LED Starboards, created one off boards to interface between sewn/flexible elements and rigid traditional PCBs. Project led into the development of full production StarBoards in partnership with SparkFun.com.
I had been keeping an eye on the soft circuit movement and had been noticing that no project had what I considered a good blend of aesthetics and technology. Understandably- projects were created by someone who came from tech (functional, not pretty) or fashion (pretty, not very useful). I wanted to make something that merged those two in a better way. Using the conductive thread as a visual element allowed me to create patterns out of something normally hid; and the function of the magnetometer made it more than just ‘pretty lights, sparkles!’. If there’s any future in e-textiles I believe it will be this: data being displayed beautifully.
Photo to use as thumbnail: http://www.flickr.com/photos/satiredun/4643104045
Build photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/satiredun/sets/72157624025482055/
Featured on:
CRAFT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4jSASY-DCIo
CRAFT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4jSASY-DCIo
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/08/02/the-compass-skirt/
StarBoards
2009
Developed new style of flexible circuit specifically designed for wearable electronics projects. Long leader pads allow the boards to be sewn on using conductive thread; and the boards can be ironed on using interfacing. For prototypes I modified a laserjet printer to print onto copper-coated kapton (flexible PCB substrate). Successfully pitched and licenced product to SparkFun.
As featured on BoingBoing, Steampunkworkshop, MAKE:Blog
http://steampunkworkshop.com/flexi-pcbs-version-2-starboards
Stringamajig
Bicycle, guitar, steel
Interface show 2009, California College of the Arts
Ride-able, kinetic bicycle art piece in which, by riding, a guitar was strummed via a series of levers and springs. The gear shift levers had been repurposed to activate bicycle brakes that acted as clamps on the neck of the guitar, changing the chord. By sculpting and changing out the brake pads I could change the chords playable.
Players would ride the bicycle around the campus (and sometimes through the exhibit) and have to balance the bike and play the guitar. The combination of movement kinetics and musicality was mentally discordant; similar to rub-your-head-and-pat-your-belly. It went well. People crashed.
