V2_ Knowledgebase

knitPro is a free web application that translates digital images into knit, crochet, needlepoint and cross-stitch patterns. Simply upload jpeg, gif or png images and knitPro will generate a graph sizable for any fiber project. knitPro digitally mimics the tradition of pre-industrial craft circles who freely shared patterns and passed them down from generation to generation.

LoVid is an interdisciplinary artist duo composed of Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. Our work includes live video installations, sculptures, digital prints, patchworks, media projects, performances, and video recordings. We combine many opposing elements in our work, contrasting hard electronics with soft patchworks, analog and digital, or handmade and machine produced objects. This multidirectional approach is also reflected in the content of our work: romantic and aggressive, wireless and wire-full. We are interested in the ways in which the human body and mind observe, process, and respond to both natural and technological environments, and in the preservation of data, signals, and memory.

In Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett argues that through making things, people engage with the world and create connections with each other. Both online and offline, we see that people want to make their mark on the world, and to make connections. During the previous century, the production of culture became dominated by professional elite producers. But today, a vast array of people are making and sharing their own ideas, videos, and other creative material online, as well as engaging in real-world crafts, art projects, and hands-on experiences. Gauntlett argues that we are seeing a shift from a 'sit-back-and-be-told culture' to a 'making-and-doing culture'. People are rejecting traditional teaching and television, and making their own learning and entertainment instead. Drawing on evidence from psychology, politics, philosophy, and economics, he shows how this shift is necessary and essential for the happiness and survival of modern societies.

Through a series of simple projects, this book teaches you how to get your creations to communicate with one another by forming networks of smart devices that carry on conversations with you and your environment. Whether you need to plug some sensors in your home to the Internet or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other creations, Making Things Talk explains exactly what you need.

Material Sense is a dynamic organisation linking designers, researchers and cutting-edge companies in an active network. By sharing expertise and collaborating in the exploration of the properties of materials, new products and new ways of utilizing materials are created. Material Sense lobbies for a materials-oriented design and development of products.

We are interested in the cultural developments that go hand in hand with new technologies and in new technologies that cause cultural development. We organize exhibitions, salons, lectures, workshops, screenings in public space and develop software and art projects, and we used to publish the magazine Mediamatic Off-Line.

The MIT Media Lab applies an unorthodox research approach to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday lifeótechnologies that promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities. Unconstrained by traditional disciplines, Lab designers, engineers, artists, and scientists work atelier-style in close to 30 research groups conducting more than 400 projects that range from neuroengineering, to how children learn, to developing the city car of the future. Lab researchers foster a unique culture of learning by doing, developing technologies that empower people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

In 1998 Sabine found Moondial Inc in New York, which resulted from her research and role as an educator, and her previous engagements with Razorfish, R/GA, and Hewlett-Packard. Projects focus on fashion, design, branding, and technology. They include prototypes for intelligent clothing, concepts and creative direction for online or networked environments, strategies for the integration of wireless technologies in clothing and equipment, go-to-market strategies for wearable products, and trend scouting. Since 2005 Moondial is based in Vienna with an office in New York

NOMADIC YOOFF allows effortless transport between different homes, and also provides a comfotable chill-out zone for an individual or a group of friends. Most importantly of all, NOMADIC YOOFF stops the user feeling like they live out of a suitcase, and provides an opportunity to make a territorial claim wherever they go.

OSLOOM (short for OPEN SOURCE LOOM) is a project aimed at creating an open source electromechanical thread-controlled floor loom that will be computer controlled. A loom is a device used to weave fabric. The loom itself will be a Jacquard style loom. Jacquard looms allow for the individual control of each thread which in turn allows for photographic imagery to be woven. Jacquard looms like this exist commercially but they are very expensive (upwards of $30,000) which puts them out of reach for individuals and small educational facilities.

Platforms, the latest series of work in the ongoing Aphrodite Project, is a social sculpture: an interactive, wearable device that is a conceptual homage to the cult of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, a practical object for contemporary sex workers, and a vehicle for public dialogue. An integrated system of shoes and online services, Platforms draws on innovations made by venerated courtesans from antiquity to improve conditions of 21st century women. Despite advances in culture and technology, sex workers are now perceived to be outlaws by trade and are vulnerable to surveillance and violence. Platforms empowers people by providing tools they need to stay safe.

Robot Clothes is an art and commercial research and development partnership, specializing in robotic systems, interaction design and product prototyping. This partnership, formed in 2002 by Michelle Kempner and James Powderly, utilizes a hybrid fine art and commercial design and engineering approach to support innovative science and technology development efforts for clients including fortune 100 companies, NASA and internationally renowned artists, such as Diller + Scofidio and Miranda July. In addition to contracted research and development efforts, Robot Clothes internally supports fine art projects ranging from a robotic public sculpture for Central Park to an animatronic opera about Crohnís Disease.

seamless is a fashion event featuring innovative and experimental works in computational apparel design, interactive clothing, and technology-based fashion. each project [re]interprets the conceptual goal of a seamless relationship between technology and fashion. these are real clothes that inspire and provoke.

self_passage is a brand and research project that explores how fashion can be used for empowerment, self-development and personal growth instead of being a phenomenon of top-down decrees and collective anxiety. The selfpassage projects try to bend the power of fashion into a force to achieve a positive personal and social condition with which the Everyperson is free to grow to his/her full potential by means of engaged fashion practices.

The project SEVEN MILE BOOTS is a pair of interactive shoes with audio. One can wear the boots, walk around as a flaneur simultaneousy in the physical world and in the literal world of the internet. By walking in the physical world one may suddenly encounter a group of people chatting in real time in the virtual world. The chats are heard as a spoken text coming from the boots. Wherever you are with the boots, the physical and the virtual worlds will merge together.