diy

Only Alexander du Preez, Peter Krige and Hannes Harms know what the consumer electronics industry will be like in 2025, but if some risky VCs are willing to put some good money into their ideas then the O.System and their many more DIY projects could become a reality much sooner.

wall speaker system with printed wall interface

Imagine that if in 2025 we all have a 3D printer and an electronic board printer (or a combo!) @ home then all we’ll need is to design our home appliances and look for the electronic board documentation on-line, send it to your O@Home printer kit and voilà! “Cheap”, replaceable and recyclable devices made with love from your sofa.

The trio propose developing a “local consumer electronics industry”. Maybe printing shops aren’t dead after all!

In this system, people select their electronic products online. They can then visit their local O.Store to talk to the technician about the purchase and add personal touches. O.Products can constantly evolve through update cards in the post, while old electronic cards are sent back for re-manufacture or recycling.

update card for wall mounted electronics

Designed @ home, manufactured @ home with a little bit of help from some great technologists who will post the documentation on-line and voilà! More info on the project page.

MaKey MaKey

15 May 2012

news

When someone like Jared Tarbell supports a project on the mini-on-line VC program “Kickstarter”… and you receive the notification in your inbox, the first thing you do is try and remember if you gave KS permission to send you those kind of e-mails on top of their weekly newsletter. And then you may think… wait… Mr Tarbell supporting a project by MIT Media Lab PhD students? We have to check this one out!

While we’ve already seen a quite a few conductive adaptive projects we hadn’t come across an affordable DIY kit like Makey Makey (which they call “Invention kit”), this is where all the merit goes to: creating a plug&play 30€ kit for creatives and educators.

The Kit (as a good open-sourced hardware device) is based on Arduino … but it’s aimed precisely at those of us who haven’t learned or don’t have time to enter the platform world; everything courtesy of Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum who’ve been working on their little baby for over a year and who’re now looking for generous funders to design & build the 4th version of MM.

The project, as it usually happens with these sort of “open” ideas, it’s been funded pretty much instantly after being posted, so as they usually say… more $$$ can only make the Kit v4 look cooler. 28 days left to go… and 28 days left to grab 1, 5 or 30 MakeyMakeys… up to you. More info this way.

Oh and as a quick reminder for those living around the San Francisco area… they Makey Makey will make it into the Maker Faire next Saturday & Sunday.

Portals

17 January 2012

news

Two months ago when knowing Altered Zones was no-more we panicked. Where are we going to get our amazing news from besides label newsletters, pr agencies and artists themselves? AZ and it’s great galaxy of indie music blogs (gorillavsbear, internationaltapes, yourstruly….) was considered by many the best agglomeration of quality music discovery. 15 sites, each with its very own identity and even radically different music styles, but a great exercise of rootless music coverage.

We know AZ is not entirely dead, at least 2 of its editors: editors Ric Leichtung and Emilie Friedlander will continue this mission by opening adhoc.fm later on this year. But they’re facing some competition in the indie-blog associative movement: Portals.

If AZ was 15, Portals will be 16 (we’re big fans of Pasta Primavera ourselves!). If AZ was an international collective, Portals will be a “transcontinental intersection”… but does bigger mean better?

Besides the international coverage of the DIY movement in all its forms Portals aims to “change the way music is discussed online”, it will also include a traveling showcase that will begin in the USA initially and a monthly mixtape where each blogger provides an exclusive track from one of their favorite artists. Here goes the first one…

Let’s see where this collaborative futuristic adventure takes us to, we shall embrace it without complaints.

Retard Riot

3 January 2012

news

And while diving through the crazy and excessively baroque art of Paper Rad it’s always nice to discover not so well-known artists such as Noah Lyon, one of those characters you’ll only discover if you happen to frequent zine symposium… or comic cons…. or the internet!

Take your job and shove it by Noah Lyon

With an amazing taste for badge designing Noah and the rest of the crew @ RetardRiot have become a synonym of the NY DYI art scene producing from zines & radio broadcasts, to cassettes, stickers, flyers, collaborative tape music and those widely successful homemade buttons (sold btw at places like the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art….).

Noah Lyon- True value sucks-Courtesy Stene Projects- Stockholm

With art exhibited in places like Tate or Art Basel, his anti-establishment (many times criticized for being easily controversial) touches pretty much any political and philosophical subject you can imagine, new DYI pop art for the new generation… and like pretty much any other artist whose pop pieces go famous, his (their) Unhappy Meals now even have their very own replicas in Thailand! Who knows… maybe they’ll be come a modern version of the Maneki Neko?

Ronald McHitler - The Great Dictator- 2010- installation view- Stene Projects 3_800 — Ronald McHitler - The Great Dictator- 2010- installation view

An Interview with Taco Leg.

Molecule Synth

O.update

MaKey MaKey

Portals

Retard Riot