Kenji Kawakami

I recently saw a post on pinktentacle.com about a Master Kenji Kawakami. At first i thought it was a joke the sort of thing you would see in a youtube style viral video. As i watched on i did notice that there was a level of ingenious invention behind the objects Kawakami made. So i did some very rough Internet digging and found out that this inventor is actually a living legend a sort of famous mad professor. Kawakami has hundreds of inventions under his belt and he even coined a phrase which is —– Chindōgu.

wikipedia Chindōgu

Chindōgu (珍道具, Chindōgu^?) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions, would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. Thus, Chindōgu are sometimes described as ‘unuseless’ – that is, they cannot be regarded as ‘useless’ in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called ‘useful’.

This notion makes me smile and so Master Kenji Kawakami i salute you. I’d like to think that having seen Kawakami’s stuff i can lace some of the fun, humour and ingeniousness into my own work.

here are a few examples of his work:

Optron

Despite sounding like a transformer this ‘Optron’ makes an awesome sound. The Optron was the brain child of Atsuhiro Ito who is actual gigging with this instrument of mayhem! On other SITES the optron has been described as a flickering noise making device which makes sense due to the nature of a fluorescent light. This is not advised as it involves mains electric but when i was younger i linked the starter motor for a fluorescent light into a set of plain old Christmas lights it made them flash quite rapidly.

subconscious tapping

Ever woken up from a day dream and found that you had been subconsciously tapping the beat of the last song you heard frantically on to the nearest available surface? I think people inherently have rhythm obviously some more than others. Recently this weird beat thing that we all seem to have seeping sneakily through our subconscious has been trying to surface in the design and hacking world. I alone have found 3 very blatant examples in a space of hours. Check these examples out and if  you are aware of the inner beat surfacing in any other shape or form i would love to know. cheers and gone (its ridiculous how asleep i should be right now).

complete solenoid orchestra:

Yuri Suzuki and Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad “tip tap”:

and the creme de la creme of automated tapping – Automated drum kit by Resonance studio and Arcattack:

Links:

Yuri Suzuki: http://www.yurisuzuki.com

Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad: http://www.bh-n.com/

Arcattack: http://www.arcattack.com/

Resonance Studio: http://www.resonancestudio.com/

Drawdio

Making sound using the graphite from a pencil to continue the flow of electricity. The video is all a bit cheesy but the idea is very cool.  There is a nice bit where the current flows between two people each holding a drawdio. The Drawdio is based on a 555timer though by the name i thought it was another arduino project ( read the comments )

check out how to make the Drawdio and where to buy the kits HERE

Body navigation

I have recently been looking for the best way to visualise data and make it come to life. I came across an amazing piece of software. processing 1.0 (BETA) has a very simple interface which is so similar to the arduino interface that it must have something to do with arduino. As soon as i realised the similarities i felt very at home with processing. There are so many good examples of how to use the software that i know the learning experience should be smooth and exciting. I really liked this example.

I also found some really nice examples of processing being used in the design world. Ole Kristensen produced a video entitled ‘Body Navigation’  which has some brilliant examples of how processing can manipulate what a camera sees and then project a reaction on any surface. Check out the video HERE

can you draw a perfect circle?

Recently i have been pondering over how the hell CNC milling machines get such precision based vector lines. I was hoping to find some tutorials for arduino that would explain the theory behind this technology. All i found out so far is that the whole thing is fairly confusing. Despite my confusion i am very happy to have found this CNC controlled etch a sketch. Its not a toy its a precision engineers dream.

A couple of people have acheived etch a scetch prefection:

http://axis.unpy.net/etchcnc

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2004/jml66/EAS_final.htm

and last but not least (check out the retro main image):

http://neil.fraser.name/hardware/etch/