prosthetic knowledge

Polaroid Cacher 

Student project from Adrià Navarro and DI Shin turns an old Polaroid camera into desktop printer, designed to capture special moments in your online life - video embedded below:

Polaroid Cacher from Adrià Navarro on Vimeo.

The Polaroid Cacher is a camera that allows you to take traditional instant pictures of your digital experiences. It’s an ambient device, part physical and part digital, meant to address the fleeting nature of online interactions.

We believe that our daily online activity –conversations, discoveries, games– is as meaningful as our activity in the physical world and, as such, should be preserved the same way we try to capture every important moment in our life. Especially because most of this experiences will be soon forgotten, lost under layers of information, databases and outdated services.

Given the powerful association of instant photography with memories, people and nostalgia –rather than with photographic quality– we designed our camera as a fictional Polaroid product. One that captures digital media in a traditional analog format, as means to create tangible, durable mementos of our digital life.

More Here

Distorter: Making of silkscreen

Short film documenting the process of making an Op Art screenprint designed with Processing code:

Distorter: Making of silkscreen from Sebastian Sikora on Vimeo.

Documentation of my recent project.
I had programmed custom distortion editor (in Processing) which I used to design silkscreen graphics.
More details: blog.sebastiansikora.pl/post/distorter

Photografting Shapes with Laser Light and Molecules

Similar to 3D printing, but using laser light to create forms at a molecular level - via Science Daily:

With laser beams, molecules can be fixed at exactly the right position in a three dimensional material. The new method developed at the Vienna University of Technology can be used to grow biological tissue or to create micro sensors.

There are many ways to create three dimensional objects on a micrometer scale. But how can the chemical properties of a material be tuned at micrometer precision? Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology developed a method to attach molecules at exactly the right place. When biological tissue is grown, this method can allow the positioning of chemical signals, telling living cells where to attach. The new technique also holds promise for sensor technology: A tiny three dimensional “lab on a chip” could be created, in which accurately positioned molecules react with substances from the environment.

“3-D-photografting” is the name of the new method.

More Here

Beautiful Failures 

Cunicode examines the beauty in errors and accidents of objects created with a 3D printer:

On the path to get the perfect 3D-Print, many meters of filament get piled up as discarded disappointments,
as bastard objects that never were,
as unborn half-things…

… and they are beautiful …

More Here

Intricate Japanese Movable Type Sets 

Dark Roasted Blend provides some history and great photos on the subject of early Japanese (and Asia) printing:

Craft letterpress companies are experiencing a revival in recent times, and nowhere it is more evident than in Japan. Most of you will be familiar with the ancient Chinese and Japanese art of woodblock printing, but masterpieces created with wood and metal movable type are somewhat lesser known, although they show craftsmanship and attention to detail similar to fine woodblock prints. 

The first movable type and printing presses were invented in Asia, not Europe.

…but their development stalled because of the extreme complexity and sheer number of Chinese and Korean characters (the same problem that the Asian cultures faced with the transition to typewriters and the internet). We can thank the simplicity of Western alphabets for the rapid development and adoption of the printed word in Europe, which quickly lead to the Renaissance and further advances in culture and education.

It is a widespread misconception that Johannes Gutenberg created the first movable type system and the printing press, around 1450 A.D. It’s true, Gutenberg was the first to make his movable type from a certain alloy of lead, tin, and antimony (which was more efficient than iron, used in Asia) - but movable type itself was originally invented in China around 1040 A.D. by Bi Seng (during the Song Dynasty). The new system was badly needed to replace the labor-intensive woodblock printing technique, where a single wooden block was carved to represent a single page.

More interesting information and great photos on the subject can be found at Dark Roasted Blend here

Cell Cycle 

Online jewelry designer made with WebGL, which can create bracelets, rings (or with custom sizes) with cellular designs based on your custom settings.The object is rendered in 3D, which can be interacted with the mouse to see the design at various angles.

Items can then be 3D printed and dispatched, and come in coloured nylon or silver (as you design the item, you will notice the price at the bottom change based on the size and intricacy).

You can try out Cell Cycle here

Print by Jan Vantomme

Image was generated with Processing coding, engraved with a lasercutter onto a polyester plate, printed by hand.

ASCII Art from 1740 (via Notes For Bibliophiles)

Taken from ‘Analog ASCII’:

… the idea of building up an image from individual letters and other characters is much older than the computer …

Christian Gessner’s Die so nöthig als nützliche Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiessery (1740-1745) is a manual of printing, copiously illustrated with copperplate engravings (including an impressive depiction of a printing shop) and other images, like this fold-out depiction of cathedral spires (with apologies for the poor scan) [Image 1]

If you look closely, you’ll notice that in this case the method of illustration is not engraving; instead the image is composed (literally) entirely of typographical ornaments. That means that every section of every line is probably the imprint of a single piece of type.

This Spanish broadside, printed in Valencia [Image 2], dates from slightly later in the century but it follows the same principle. The most clever touch, in my opinion, is the use of two “O”s for windows in the upper area of the tower.

More information, including high definition photographs of the images above where you really see each individual character, can be seen at the Notes For Bibliophiles post.

The Art of Solar Printing via Yanko Design

Design concept piece for a solar-powered printer that doesn’t use ink cartridges, instead uses sunlight to ‘tan’ information onto paper:

It’s here in concept and I simply love it! The Tanning Printer is a solar powered printer that doesn’t use cartridges. Instead it uses the process of sun-tanning the paper! You got that right sir…sun tan! It seems outlandish right now, but trust me the idea is worth exploring… the design is here, it looks neat and sleek; now let the engineers figure it out!

Designers: Hosung Jung, Junsang Kim, Seungin Lee & Yonggu Do

More information here

Time Print Machine by Paul Ferragut via Triangulation Blog

Paul Ferragutit’s Time Printing Machine uses felt pen, blotting paper, and a time based algorythm to create an amazing “pixelated” aesthetic.

“The time print device uses blotting paper with Letraset felt-pen. The felt-pen ink bleed in the paper for a duration relative to the grey value of a pixel. Every “time stain” gradually recreates any images in a pointilist style. This device was made for my MA project more info at www.convivialtool.com” - Paul Ferragutit.

More can be found here, including a video demonstrating the process.

Just in Time, or A Short History of Production by Xavier Antin (via Ministry of Type)

… a book made by printing each of the four colours on different eras of desktop printing technology in succession. It’s just fun. The results are pretty much what you expect, but still rather attractive and made more interesting by knowing how they were printed, using technology spanning nearly a hundred years.

[Link]

LEGO + Letterpress printing (via designworklife)

Check out the link for more photos featuring some interesting prints

retrogasm:

Printing dirty pictures for Mao…

Via

Custom LEGOs with laser-cutting and 3D-printing via Ponoko

More images of examples and details can be found here