Hasta La Ideas

The 3d printing industry has been transformed from a handful of manufacturers producing costly machines, to hundreds of individuals creating their own machines and sharing the instructions on how to make them. The incredible accessibility to this technology has the potential to affect many aspects of our daily lives, including how we think about food. What if instead of street hot dog stands we had 3D food printer carts?! This twist on the classic food cart sheds light on the future of this awesome tech.

The printer here creates what I’m guessing are simple chocolate confections, but this just scrapes the surface of what these machines might be capable of in the way of food!

Designer: Green Geometries Laboratory

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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
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(3D Food Printing?! was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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1. Printing My Food By The Molecule
2. Printing A Road
3. Printing With Ballpen

Images by Francis Dzikowski/ Esto

Since we visited UM Project’s Brooklyn studio, earlier this year, founder François Chambard has produced an impressive amount of work. It seems that we can’t go brunch and boutique-hopping without coming across a couple of his best-selling Milking Stools in an array of bright colors, but he created a staggering number of Craft System Lamps for NY Design Week. If you went to Wanted Design you no doubt saw his small army of whimsical lighting units that are equal parts functional and playful, with lamps that double as theremins, greenhouses and friendly robots.

Chambard’s signature technocraft approach is also evident in his latest project, a custom hybrid analog-digital mixing console for Brian Bender’s Brooklyn recording studio, Motherbrain. Few recording studios feature both analog and digital sound equipment and even fewer go to the lengths of commissioning one-of-a-kind, custom made consoles that offer sound quality as stunning as their physical aesthetic.

Chambard and Bender began their 15 month-long collaboration by repurposing a very rare, late-60s recording console by Wiener Schwachstromwerke (WSW), Siemen’s Austrian sister company. The unit is divided into three main parts. One third is made up of four different types of rebuilt WSW mixing channels, one third is comprised mainly of a modular, modern line mixer by Tonelux, which forms “the backbone of the audio signals for the entire console,” and one third is dedicated to digital integration with Pro Tools and includes “a touch sensitive digital controller as well as an Apple display.”

Aside from repurposing outdated recording equipment and integrating them with modern technologies, the other major feat is the console’s relatively lightweight appearance. Chambard designed four corner legs so that even though the unit weighs a whopping 1,400 pounds it can be disassembled for transport and, moreover, doesn’t look like a typical, heavy piece of equipment, but speaks to “the language of furniture” and “reinforces the impression of levitation and accessibility.”

Images by Francis Dzikowski/ Esto

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The Zipper is a flying indoor camera and recording device that can be used in a number of scenarios. The device uses the principle of gas balloons and combines it with the wit of propellers driven by a precision electric motor. Basically the hovering camera moves around a room very fast and silently and doesn’t consume much energy.

Application fields:

• Film productions: unrestricted camera work
• Surveillance: flexible monitoring of public locations like department stores, train stations, etc.
• Security: video inspection in hard to access places like cable chutes and sewers
• Private: webcam, babysitting, etc. or as a toy
• Further recording options (sound, heat and radio activity) are possible with the matching sensors

Two precision electric motors with propellers that are controlled via a processor allow horizontal movements. The alignment angle of the electric motors can also be controlled magnetically via the processor so that the Zipper is able to change its height flexibly and fast with these motors. The camera can be panned by 270 degrees, which allows different perspective also in standstill. Zipper can design recordings through different camera perspectives very dynamically and flexibly, which results in completely new possibilities in camera work. This means that the director can determine the motion path and speed of the camera beforehand three-dimensionally without having to deal with any restrictions or obstacles in the room. This allows novel and free design when changing scenes and perspectives. The motion path and speed can be set either beforehand in a 3D program or in realtime and interactively via joystick or remote control. The recorded images and further information are transmitted parallel, directly and wireless to other devices like computers or smartphones.

Function mode:

Zipper uses hydrogen as gas in order to float in the air like a balloon. The required gas quantity is controlled exactly via a processor using measurement and control technology so that the Zipper is always located at the desired height.

Water Electrolysis:

A charging station supplies the Zipper with energy and hydrogen. In doing so, water molecules are split into oxygen and hydrogen by means of electrolysis. The additionally generated oxygen is released into the air and ensures a good room climate. The charging station is supplied via low-voltage direct current and must only be refilled with water occasionally.

Zipper is a 2012 red dot award: design concept winner.

Designer: Emami Design

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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!
(New Kinda Spy Cam was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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3. New Kinda Treasure Hunt

As of this weekend, the big story in the Tri-State Area is gas. Whether you’re in Jersey or the five boroughs, petrol is scarce, lines are long and tempers are running short. So I was extra astonished to read, in the Telegraph, that a UK-based energy company has made a novel breakthrough: They can now create synthetic gasoline—out of air.

The company, Air Fuel Synthesis, explains it as follows:

Air Fuel Synthesis uses renewable energy to do what nature does with photosynthesis and time, converting carbon dioxide into oil. Put simply, Air Fuel Synthesis converts carbon dioxide and water into synthetic hydrocarbon liquids from which sustainable fuels or other oil based products can be made.

…Oil is basically made from carbon and hydrogen. Carbon is in the air in the form of carbon dioxide and hydrogen can be found in water.

In this manner, AFS was able to produce five liters of gasoline in less than three months. Obviously that’s not quick enough by conventional standards, but the fact that it can be done at all is amazing. They’re aiming to scale up to “a large plant, which could produce more than a tonne of petrol every day, within two years and a refinery size operation within the next 15 years.”

While the synthetic fuel presumably gives off the same emissions as regular petrol when run through an engine, harvesting it is a carbon-neutral affair, as AFS uses renewable energy sources for the electricity required during the conversion. “But the best news,” the company writes, “is that (once the capital investment is covered) the manufacture of sustainable, carbon-neutral AFS fuels is unrestricted by the price of raw materials, geo or local politics and avoids the land use or food availability issues that affect biofuels. Thus fuel production costs are low and predictable for the life of the plant.”

You can learn more about the technology here.

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Découverte de « Unidisplay », une nouvelle installation audiovisuelle conçue par l’artiste allemand Carsten Nicolai. Utilisant des écrans et miroirs pour créer cette superbe oeuvres avec des projections en temps réel, ce dernier propose d’afficher une interprétation visuelle du son et du temps très originale.