Hasta La Ideas

Animals roar to life in an educational app designed for kids

A new app for iPads or iPhones, Critteroos brings stock images of animals to life in an interactive game for kids (aged three-eight). The brainchild of renowned designer Clement Mok, Critteroos is the first in an imaginative series of iPad education software for children that draws on the CMCD Visual Symbols library.

Backed by a consistent beat of insect hums, the app erupts in an attention-grabbing cacophony of real animal sounds, including the occasional whinny of a horse, snort of a pig and bird’s chirp. While the sounds entertain, children delight over the app’s vibrant animal imagery. In “Flashcard” mode, each image is paired with the animal’s name, which is recited aloud for vocabulary building.

As memory develops, users can switch from the primarily educational “Flashcard” mode to test their skills in “Mix and Match.” Flipping through animals’ top and bottom halves, kids can rack up points by finding the corresponding half, tapping twice on the screen to confirm a match. An encouraging ding sound accompanies each correct pair.

For pure fun, kids can let their imaginations run free by creating their own “Critteroos” (mismatched animals). These humorous and dazzling animals can be given fun names (like the Rooztera) and saved to the iPhoto library for printing.

Critteroos sells for $2 on iTunes, as well as other related education applications and add-ons (like Critteroos II for additional animal sets) by CMCD.

How an experimental art collective turned a field into a puppy opera, lawnmower symphony and more

Chiefly interested in the “intersections between different fields of knowledge,” like all good art collectives, Machine Project’s objectives are sometimes frustratingly vague. Loose definitions on their site span “informal educational institution” to host of “scientific talks, poetry readings and group naps.” But if one thing is consistent about the L.A. nonprofit, it’s that every undertaking is steeped in radical creativity.

With seemingly unfiltered conceptual thinking, founder Mark Allen’s wide-reaching collaborations manage to translate the group’s raw ideas into crowd-pleasing installations. Most recently Machine Project took up a two-week residency at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center during the museum’s Open Field series of outdoor art events, resulting in a collection of site-specific performance pieces.

Set to a live singing performance, Elizabeth Cline’s 10-minute operetta “Tragedy on the Sea Nymph” featured an all-dog cast acting as lovers shipwrecked at sea.

Another project involving animals, “The American Lawn, and Ways To Cut It” explored the sonic nature of the grass at Walker, using “sheep, choreographed gasoline-powered ride-on mowers with mounted oscillators tuned to the drone of their engines, and push mowers,” which were strung with tinkling bells.

Influenced by architecture, Machine Project’s Curator of Sound Chris Kallmyer was the driving force behind the lawn event and another experimental study in sound called “Music For Parking Garages.” The talented trumpeter and fellow musicians tested the limits of sound in a cavernous parking garage, playing to whoever pulled up a bean bag chair for a listen.

Sound artist Kamau Patton adapted solar panels and a light-to-frequency converter to measure the sun’s rays on the Open Field, turning them into a beautiful arrangement of tunes in his “Composition for Photoelectric Array and Ambient Light Open Field.”

Whether teaching kids to break into cars, amplifying melons, generating songs through algorithms, reading poetry over the phone or pickling through lacto-fermentation, there was no shortage of inventive activities on hand at the Walker in July thanks to Machine Project. Always testing new ideas, hosting events and teaching classes at their Echo Park storefront, subscribe to their newsletter to keep on top of this industrious group’s latest happenings.

The Walker’s “Open Field” events continue through 4 September 2011, check the site for listings.

All images from Walker Open Field

Good product design ideas once came in the form of simple, discrete objects. You would invent, say, a hammer with a claw on one side to remove nails, or one of those apple-peeling contraptions, or a piece of material that you’d place around a bare lightbulb to shield your eyes from the glare. And those objects provided an experience superior to what came before them—carrying a second nail-pulling tool, peeling an apple with your fingernails, squinting to avoid glare.

Increasingly our better experiences aren’t coming from new, simple objects, but the interconnectedness of technology. The iPod is a single object, yes, but it’s really a perfect storm of things—plastic molding, metalworking, hard drive storage, software, a small LCD, interface design—that was wrangled into a rectangle. All of those things except the interface design and exact form factor existed independently for years, but it was that masterful blending, coupled to the interface, that made it a hit.

(more…)

The better iPad solution for the classroom and beyond

If you find yourself balancing your iPad on top of folders and notebooks, the BinderPad is for you. The latest from tablet case specialists ZooGue, the case fits neatly inside of a three-ring binder. It’s the first to secure an iPad this way, designed for students to keep papers, folders and other accessories all in one place, or use the reinforced holes to easily hang it nearly anywhere.

The accessory has a lightweight yet durable frame and, at only half an inch thick with an iPad, won’t take up precious space in your Trapper Keeper. The only loss is plot lines about dropping your books.

Available in dark grey and black, buy the BinderPad on ZooGue for $30.

As ID’ers we’re privy to technologies that seem mundane to us through familiarity, but it’s interesting to see how people that have never heard of RP react when it’s demonstrated for them. That goes for people as highly educated as the theoretical physicist David Kaplan, featured in this NatGeo video, who travels to Z Corporation to see if they can scan and 3D-print a working model of his crescent wrench.

It’s kind of cool to watch Kaplan pull the finished part out of the powder. I know most of us have already seen things similar to this, but you get the sense Kaplan’s head would explode if he looked inside your average industrial design department.

(more…)