WizBang

Experience

2010-05-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

This collaborative experience has been a tremendous learning curve for me and I'm sure claire and michelle. I've learnt an incredible amount and it's been not an insignificant amount of work! At times I've been elated, frustrated, stressed, upset and mostly all feelings one can feel. The benefits of a collaborative approach do outway the drawbacks. You are afforded a view of your work from a different set of eyes, provided you don't clash you also have 2 sets of mechanical thinking centers! The best thing is when you arrive at a conclusion through an evolution of an idea together; which is what I think me and michelle have achieved and what I think myself and claire are capable of with more time. I say this because I think claire has a stubborness which although is not a bad thing ( it's actually useful) in this case meant that it took too long to develope a different approach to her project than the one we were on at the time.

website

2010-04-28T21:19:00.001+01:00

Made my Portfolio website. Its basic but quite nice. Still a few things that need doing, a few placeholders and links which need doing. Did it all in HTML using some java. heres a link:

WizBang.

Meetings

2010-04-28T21:18:00.000+01:00

Over the course of the rhosynn project, claire and myself have sought funding from within and outside the university. After trying several avenues including the cystic fibrosis trust and after many meetings with marketing and pr departments of the university we came to the conclusion that we can't waste any more time looking for fictional money and that we should just bite the bullet and accept that we have to fund the project ourselves; this was the largest factor in making us scale back the dress to a hat. Overall I think we should of stopped looking for funding earlier because I think we wasted too much time that could of been spent better developing the hat or shoulder piece. Or we should of focused our pitch even further but I think that it was still wishful thinking. Also it's a terrible amount of stress and work!

Evaluations

2010-04-28T21:17:00.001+01:00

Evaluations of all 3 pieces including commentary on the future.

Exhibition

2010-04-28T21:16:00.001+01:00

The show went smoothly i thought, for me more than others (mikes urinals needed some maintenance). Had some nice responses to my work even though they were not 100% complete. so overall im pleased but the ultimate finale will be the fashion show in a week.

The following abstracts have been posted on the Imagine shows website :

Myles Leadbeatter has spent the last 2 years pioneering new techniques and concepts for wearable electronics, focusing on creating new ways to interact via our clothing. Myles describes clothing as "a social and cultural epidermis" thats "is our most promising tool for interfacing with each other as well as information networks".
Myles' first exhibition piece 'Electrified Nature' was concerned with the idea of Telepresence and it has since become a major theme within his artistic works. Telepresence is the notion of translating ourselves to a place or situation that is remote to our actual vicinity and is explored in his new work 'Touch Me'; 'Touch Me" is a soft technology experiment designed to allow two people the ability to experience each others presence hapticly,regardless of their seperation.
Myles is a major supporter of collaborative design practices and has recently been working with two fashion designers to create interactive garments that express themselves using lights and through movement achieved using smart materials.
Myles' work is inspired by Eduardo Kacs telepresence experiments and Mark Weissers theory of 'Calm Technology' and seeks to use technology to inform our lives passively, allowing us to leave our computer screens behind and distribute information to our environment.

Rhosyn is an amalgamation of cutting edge technology and haute Couture created through innovation and multidisciplinary collaboration. Rhosyn is a pioneering Avent Garde dress, designed to gracefully unfurl into a rose on the wearer in a haunting yet beautiful juxtaposition of technology and biology. The design of Rhosyn mimics a real rose, with a multitude of petals, created using smart materials and fine silks and controlled via wearable electronics.

Touchy is a soft technology project that allows 2 users to hapticly interact with each other indiscriminately over distance. Designed to explore our relationships with and without presence, Touchy is created using smart materials and custom electronics and allows us to extend our grasp beyond our actual location and being, connecting us physically to the remote.

Emulating the bioluminescent relationships between predator and prey, this collaborative project captures the aesthetic look and behavior of the Creatures of the Abyss in a collection of three garments that are a fusion of Haute Couture and Haute Tech. Created by using an ancient japanese method of manipulating fabric called "Shibori", and innovative electronic techniques and lighting, these dresses create an amazing light show and become almost creatures in themselves as they interact dynamically with each other.

For the exhibition itself I need minimal equipment as all my pieces are self contained. However I do require 3 manequin stands from the fashion department aswell as a bust. Also for TouchME I need 2 leather seats that are in the riverfront already.

Abyss Wearables

2010-04-28T21:15:00.006+01:00

A conceptual mood board for the film of Michelle's collection.

Its going to be shot in wookie hole caves and Puzzle wood by the director of Iron Clad and Michelles Boyfriend (simon), we have camera men from Doctor Who on board and people from Merlin and a special FX guy. Should be really amazing.

We're hoping to show the film at festivals and generate some publicity for ourselves.

Abyss Wearables

2010-04-28T21:15:00.005+01:00

In the future Michelle and i would like to work together further and perhaps make our own company. The ElWire dress is getting published in the mail on sunday as well as being shown at Graduate Fashion week in London so that will generate some publicity i hope. I have some more functional ideas in my head and im certain Michelle has some more beautiful ideas also, so it would be excellent to collaborate again. Once the film is finished, it should generate some interest. Myles is excited about the future!

Abyss Wearables

2010-04-28T21:14:00.006+01:00

The newest dress. Nearly finished; just needs a fabric switch and shibori. This dress is meant to be the prey in the relationship between the dresses. It was much simpler to produce once we created the first dress and made all the mistakes first time round (I'm looking at you metallic silk organdi!).

we did a sample using the conductive thread in a sewing machine - it works but needs a thicker needle to be optimal, plus our fabric is extremely thin and kept on getting jammed. However it is possible as you can see and would save lots and lots of man hours hand sewing.

To make the TLC5940 led driver chip sewable, i soldered it onto some perfboad and attached wires with crimps on the end to all of the necessary inputs and outputs. Michelle created a pocket out of the same material as the dress, with eyelet holes for all the wires, this was then sewn onto the dress.

Annoyingly there is not a universal connector for Elwire and the connection sockets on the El Sequencer board did not fit the preinstalled connections on the Elwire strands. You can solder directly to the board, but after experiencing a nasty electric shock from my apparently shoddy job i decided a more secure connection was necessary. Unfotunately because Maplins is the only accessible electronics component store, and they're stock, shops and knowledge are rubbish, i had to plow through a farnell catalogue looking for a specific JST connector; this is a very difficult task. An easier route is to just buy the exact ones from sparkfun... a little more expensive but much easier.

Abyss Wearables

2010-04-28T21:11:00.003+01:00

Shows LED's through different fabric shibori. It has a nice refractive quality for the light.

Soldering up the El Escudo Board- bit of a nightmare.

Because the TLC5940 works by pulling all the leds to ground, and not pulling them up to to voltage. This has an annoying repercussion because the Full colour LED's i was going to buy share a common cathode not anode. This means i wouldnt be able to use them as full color led's but single colour led's, without some logic gates or something which i didnt have time for. So instead of this or buying common anode full colour led's (which is nigh on impossible) i glued two led's together, red and blue, and joined their anodes but kept their cathodes seperate. This is a bit cruder than i would of liked but it worked, and the glue acts as a very nice diffuser for the light to mix the colours.

YouTube Video

This is the RFID reader being used in one of the dresses to register the other. It is an ID-12 and is quite well documented.

This interfacing works as a brilliant diffuser also.

The glued LED'S.

Michelle covered the ElWire in Fabric Tubes to disguise the acrylic and also diffuse the lights.

A glued LED with red and blue on - creating a pinky purple.

These are a few prototypes i made using a lilypad and lilypad accelerometer attached to an RGB LED. Originally we we're going to use acceleration to control the light patterns and colours, mapping specific movements to the lights. This was achieved on a small scale but Michelle said that we might not be able to organise a dance for the fashion show so we went in a different direction but i want to work acceleration into a future wearable project.

Abyss Wearables

2010-04-28T21:10:00.005+01:00

Finalisation of designs and relationship design.

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:10:00.001+01:00

Plans for future

.... it being published etc

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:09:00.002+01:00

Plans for filming,

dom and frankie,

penarth pier,

brewery

zero degress

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:09:00.001+01:00

Final creation (including process)

YouTube Video

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:08:00.001+01:00

Scaling back of idea

and eventual reimagining... explain why, heat, gravity, time etc.

Increasingly Claire and I found ourselves banging our heads against various firm surfaces because nitinol is just such a pain to work with; especially when trying to make an entire dress move naturally like a rose using meter upon meter of the stuff. We had varying degrees of succuss but nothing that worked on the scale that we wanted.
We had 3 factors working against us;
Price : nitinol is expensive stuff and the quantity we needed would cost us £400. short of outside funding this was not a happy number.

Availability: the thickest nitinol we could buy in the uk is only 375um. This does not exert large amounts of force, and trying to move half meter tall petals with it In a satisfactory way is extremely difficult! In America you can obtain many more variations of nitinol, thicker , thinner, superelastic etc

Time: the ultimate limiting factor!

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:07:00.002+01:00

Due to the potential Health and safety risk posed by the nitinol we have decided that we shall create the piece just for then stand and will not have it worn by a human model. This is because we dont have time to test thoroughly enough to be absolutely sure that it will be safe.

To stop the fabric catching fire we ordered samples of various fire resistant fabric, however upon testing it appears they will still scorch and probably catch fire. Although they may be flame resistant, because flexinols heat is lost on such a small surface area, it seems that the material will still burn.

We used foil to dissipate the heat from the nitinol and this works. The drawback is that because foil also conducts electricity, the risk of short circuit is very high and occurs often. If you ground the foil to the same ground as the nitinol then, where the nitinol touches the foil, the current sinks - stopping any voltage passing beyond that point.

We talked about using heat shrinks but we feel that this would restrict the movement of nitinol this thin.

We eventually decided to just use smaller amounts of nitinol that required smalled voltages eg 2 volts; This greatly reduces the temperature and the hottest point is actually situated at the crimp base. This is easily countered using foil on the rows of crimps, but not on the nitinol itself.

For now this is safe, but without more time for testing we will not risk putting it on a human model. This means that the headpiece cannot be worn at the fashion show, which is dissapointing but is necessary. We can always test further after our deadlines and refine the system so its wearable.

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:06:00.004+01:00

Better Prototypes: since January claire and I have been wracking our brains ceaselessly trying to develope a more accomplished prototype for the rhosynn project that would better illustrate the final garment. This has been challenging on all fronts due to the cost of materials for the project, namely the cost of the nitinol. Nitinol is only distributed through 3rd parties in the uk which makes it very expensive relative to America, it is also only available in select states.

YouTube Video

Rhosynn

2010-04-28T21:05:00.005+01:00

This is my method for casting nitinol in desired shapes. I have heard people struggling to shape it using a gas flame and other methods so i made up my own. By drilling holes into sheet metal and using bolts, you can make any shape you want within reason. Also using a kiln ensures a reliable and steady temperature. I found 400 - 500 degrees celsius for 20-30 minutes worked very well. The benefit of this system is that you can make multiple wires in one go by wrapping them around the bolts and securing with nuts.

This was my first design , it allowed for experimenting with various shapes without having to cut a new piece of sheet metal each time.

Thicker flexinol and Kiln techniques.....

YouTube Video

TouchME

2010-04-28T21:05:00.004+01:00

People responded extremely well to TouchME, in some cases a little too well, and squeezed them too hard and actually broke one of the pair on 2 occasions (i'll work on it). They required a bit of on the fly maintenance but they went down well despite the lack of connectivity.

Id like to not use the wires, but for the time being i need to as the WiFi module is an arduino shield. Id like to just use the atmega chip and solder the wireless module itself to it, on perf board but time did not allow for this.

Turning a popper in to the power button for the arduino

TouchME

2010-04-28T21:04:00.001+01:00

To sense the embrace of a user , the TouchME cushions use fabric pressure sensors. These are made from conductive fabric called electrolycra sold by mutr. Aswell as electrolycra (which is stretchy), an anti-static plastic called velostat is used as a variable conductor. Velostat is sold under a different name in the EU but is very cheap and is commonly used in the packaging for many sensitive electrical components; not all anti-static plastic works however, we tried several before resorting to order in from overseas.

TouchME

2010-04-28T21:03:00.001+01:00

TouchME will use WiFi to connect to each other via the Internet. Input for the cushions will be detected withpressure sensitive pads inside the cushion and the output will be distributed between heating elements and vibration. Wifi is only just becoming available in tinker friendly states and most are still difficult to use. Being new to radio technologies and incorporating it into projects, I decided to use an embedded module in the form of an Arduino shield! I've detailed the shield in particular in a previous post on another blog so I won't describe it. What I will say though is that while the wifi arduino library provided had some accomplished example sketches, the literature for programming it otherwise is very bare bones and if you really want to get to grips with it you will need to know some C language- which is no fun whatsoever. Spintf and atoi will be useful to you!!

TouchME

2010-04-28T21:02:00.000+01:00

through the various academic writing modules set on my course i have been examining the concept of telepresence . Telepresence is the not new at least the fundamental idea and speculation. The idea is that you can translate your thoughts and actions to a place entirely remote to yourself. Ive explored this prospect in my previous project 'electrified nature' . Continuing this theme in my work is TouchME; TouchME are a pair of networked cushions designed to link two users together sensationaly, regardless of their relative distance from each other. We can already interact with one another remotely bur this interaction process is limited to a an aurol/ oral plain. TouchME hopes to let two people experience the feeling of an embrace by diminishing the availabilty of absense. The way we interact currently over a network is a very noisy process, in many senses. The medium for the interaction eg a computer assaults a user with the interaction. Mark weissers papers 'the coming age of calm' discusses the idea of calm technology, that informs our senses by working from our periphery, allowing us to bring it to the center of our focus without enforcing itself on us. TouchME will use this ethos to make a more native interaction medium.

List

2010-04-28T14:28:00.000+01:00

TouchME:

Concept
Overview of Tech (wifi arduino, vibration maplins heaters) new models..
Prototypes
Creation of fabric buttons
Creation of cushions ( materials etc)
Exhibiting needs etc (sofa chairs, space)

Abyss Wearables:

Finalisation of designs by Michelle etc (drawings)
Finalisation of relationships (eg removal of accelerometer)
Prototypes - Lilypad stuff, accelerometer, sewing leds, power supplies, RFID etc
Fabric Buttons and pressure pads.
Tech- ElWire, RFID, ElEscudo, TLC5940 and its library
published
Problems - common cathodes with tlc etc
Exhibition needs - manequins etc

Rhosynn:

Health and safety - foil, fireproof fabrics etc
Thicker Flexinol - videos of petal
Better prototypes
Scaling down of idea - twice
Only going on stand until its really safe
Kiln procedures and tools
crimping etc

Fresh Start

2010-04-28T11:06:00.001+01:00

This blog is an extension of other blogs thats prior to this i was working on. I wish to centralise the research that i do into one place and for that reason i have decided to start anew. On this blog i will show the development of all projects that i undertake. The projects i am working on at time of posting are TouchME, Rhosynn, and Abyss Wearables.