LilyPads and Wearable Electronics

This evening I accidentally came across the website of one Leah Buechley, a woman who may change the face of clothing as we know it.

Long ago, I got a BA in Art, with dual emphases in Conceptual Design (read: early computer graphics and concept follow-through) and textiles. I tried, in every way I knew how, to combine the two: I made weavings out of wires, adding LEDs and plugs; I learned about their new computerized loom, I thought long and hard about how to get computerized technology into fabric. But it was too early, the technology was too clunky, and everyone was looking at me like I was a lunatic, so eventually I gave up.

Imagine my pleasure at coming across Ms. Buechley's wonderful DIY site, where she shows you how you, too, can create amazing interactive clothing with the LilyPad Arduino, a washable, flexible fabric circuit system you sew together with conductive thread, so that your whole body becomes circuitry, and, for example, if you move your arm quickly it sets off LEDs in your clothes. Or: if you put your coat on, your clothes go dark. Take it off, your clothes light up. Best of all, you can use things like snaps to keep the circuitry going when you attach things together.

The RGB LED chages color in response to motion and tilt from the accelerometer which is sewn to the right wrist.

I'm telling you: this woman is smart.

The Arduino is "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators" (See more here).

It's hard to describe how this is different from previous interactive clothing. For one thing, she has come at it from a textile person's perspective, redesigning the whole circuitry thing to look like...well, parts of clothes. For another thing, all the pieces in the group of items (she calls it a "kit", but they are all sold separately) seem to be made as patches, with iron-on circuitry; and there are no wires or weird bits that you have to hide or otherwise deal with (Though the picture of the LilyPad for sale seems harder than the one above. I'll have to find out about that - still, it's not much bigger than a quarter).

Ms. Buechley helps you access the materials, and shows, in clear step-by-step instructions, not only how to use the LilyPad and attendant bits, but things like how to use needle-nosed pliers to turn a regular LED into a decorative sew-on bead, so you can have as many LEDs flashing across your clothing as you want. And she has lots of Flickr pics to look at, too.

She says:

"I am interested in integrating "feminine" activities like sewing with computer science, mathematics and technology. I think that social issues more often than lack of talent discourage women from entering math, technology and science related fields, and I hope to help create environments where women's interests are explored and represented."

Her kits for kids are available for only $15 to make little wearable LED items for themselves (with a little help). I have been trying very hard to find ways to make the robotics curriculum I teach at the local school into something more exciting for girls; their interest, always fickle, waxes and wanes depending on the personality of the students. Not only could we do the kids' kit, but then we could move on to real programming, using the LilyPad itself. This is a sure-fire technological way to get girls' attention, for those of you out there with smart daughters or sisters. In fact, this is a sure-fire way to get my attention. I can't wait to start making stuff.

Finally, after all these years.


Buy the LilyPad development kit from SparkFun

Call for Wunderkammern: an UnContest

My kitchen Cabinet: a taxonomy of food?

I'm looking into people who have their own Wunderkammern, or Cabinets of Wonder, with the view of featuring a select few on the blog. Send me pictures (up to four of them) and an explanation of how you started it and why you did it.

I am particularly interested in hearing what you think about what it takes to create a Wunderkammer. What is the most important feature in making one? The taxonomy? The size? The labels? Or is it the exquisiteness of what is displayed? Or perhaps it is simply that it matters to the person making it? How is a Wunderkammer different from a museum display? Tell me about it.

Email me at the address under the "About Me" header, below. I will answer everyone, and if I am particularly taken with yours I may email you asking more questions.

Looking forward to seeing the results!

The Unknown Museum

Years ago, my college friends and I used to take trips up to Mill Valley to visit the Unknown Museum, an amazing collection of stuff arranged in a house which looked, from the outside, like a typical Mill Valley home...except there was a bunch of stuff in the yard. Stuff like stacked TVs, bowling balls, and baby dolls transformed the outdoor space, so that walking by, you had a peep of something amazing.

Going inside on one of the few days it was open was overwhelming to the eye: an aquarium full of Mr. Potato Heads, stacks and stacks of old lunch boxes, rooms and rooms of toys, dolls, plastic bits; mannequins and glitter-balls and every kind of thing from fake food to electronic parts. Nothing seemed to be single. It all came in multiples, sometimes in the hundreds: this Museum was a Wunderkammer of post-consumer detritus. Things were not only displayed in tanks, towers, and piles but in fascinating tableaus where mannequins sat down with TV dinner trays full of vacuum tubes, or a bride-mannequin crawled across a landscape of tiny bridal figures who seem to be tying her down, Gulliver-style.

The Unknown Museum, as it was called, lived in an old radiator shop in Mill Valley from 1974 to 1985; its founder, Mickey McGowan, believes in having lots of stuff. "I always thought that if your mom threw it away, the Unknown Museum was the place to come. Once I tried to create a sort of Zen space there, a room that was spare and austere, but when I'd go in there I'd go nuts wondering what I should put in. Gor me the perfect Zen space is jammed with all kinds of stuff. Zen is all one, isn't it? Well this is all one, the purity of allness." (thanks to Image Magazine for the quote).

After twelve years, the Museum lost its lease, and Mr. McGowan moved the whole museum to the residential neighborhood that I remembered visiting, a place he felt was perfect for the Museum, having a sort of Beaver Cleaver/Ozzie Nelson flavor to it. The different rooms of the house became theme rooms: a boy's room "crammed with chemistry sets, sports equipment, war toys and insect collections; the girl's room had stacks of Nancy Drew mysteries, worn ballet shoes, jump ropes, wedding dress dolls and Katy Keene comics..."

Trapped on the way to the wedding, while everyone watches in anticipation: the landscape around the Bride is made of heaps of rice

Yet the art of the place was not simply in its sheer collecting madness, but in the way that McGowan placed everything. Nothing was overlooked. He used volumes of stuff as a kind of space-painting, creating awesome displays that overwhelmed with their numbers - but he also paid attention to theme and worked asthetically to arrange things so that they had humor and looked...well, artistic. It's rare for someone with Mr. McGowan's bent to really put so much thought and artistry into their collection of stuff, really treat it as a Wunderkammer - in how it is arranged, how it is displayed. The whole art of crafting a proper Cabinet is to be found, not only in the asthetic presentation of things, but in the personal quality of the taxonomy. So often people who love collecting tend to file their stuff away in boxes, or stack them up like Scrooge McDuck all around their room or in some kind of storage, following some external taxonomy of value or meaning; but to put it all together, to present it in a personal, whimsical, commentative style, so that people can gasp and wonder at the sheer awe of it, is really something.

And to do so with objects that most of us do not admire or feel have value is especially impressive. I would not, if you told me of this place, think that it sounded very inspiring; but the care and order of it, the gimcrack-ish depths of our own associations with what some would call junk, makes us pause, makes us wonder.

Which is the point, isn't it? Plus, making it funny is always a bonus.

The Mill Valley house was a great place, with a wonderful garden, but eventually Mr. McGowan had to move again. He put most of his stuff in storage and moved into a railway car (still decorated, of course) in Mill Valley for awhile. When I talked to him recently, he was living in a house at an undisclosed location in Marin, which he said was done up much the same as before but which he no longer opened to the public. It's a shame, because it was truly a service for people, saying to us: "Here is your unwanted, your discarded: it is your past, your childhood - and see how it can be made wonderous?"

Which is something everyone in modern consumer society needs to hear. And see.

Rosamond Purcell: Goddess of Wunderkammern

Peter the Great's collection of pulled teeth, probably the most influential picture, for me, ever.

Just found this slide show/article, courtesy of Slate, about my absolutely favorite artist of all time, Rosamond Purcell, a few of whose books I mention in the Christmas list, but who is also the extraordinary contributor to Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors, and the amazing Illuminations: a Bestiary, both incredible books.


Check it out - it's worth reading and looking at! And if you want to put the above two books on your list, well, I won't stop you.


Link

Also, a marvelous review by John Crowley of Purcell's work.

The Cabinet of Wonders Gift Guide

This is an unusual idea for me, but after looking at Make Magazine's Steampunk Gift Guide (which is pretty great, courtesy of Jake von Slatt of the Steampunk Workshop) I thought I'd come up with a list of my own. If I were to look for some really unusual things for a gift list, these would be but a few:

- Owl's Head: On the Nature of Lost Things or Swift As a Shadow: Extinct and Endangered Species, or particularly Bookworm, all by Rosamund Purcell, the goddess of museum photography. The first of these is a meditation (with, of course, photos) on her relationship with an amazing junk collector and how he influenced her life; the second, photographs of taxidermied animals; and the third, works made by Purcell herself using books that have been destroyed in interesting ways - very reflective of the Picturesque aesthetic, making them look like ancient remains - to reveal astonishing loveliness and interesting truths.

- If you're in London or thereabouts, go visit Get Stuffed, one of my favorite stores. A taxidermical paradise.


- On this same note, Van Dyke is the Wunderkammer of all taxidermy supplies. You can get any kind of eyes, including some that don't exist in the real world (see picture above, custom ordered), as well as animal forms and every kind of chemical, etc. They even have a gift certificate option for that special taxidermist in your life.


- Also in London there is Pollock's Toy Museum, where you can check out the amazing toy exhibits (mostly toy theatres from many different periods). Then, if you're feeling like a good person, you can help help the Museum's Trust by going to Pollock's and buying some of their lovely vintage greeting card reproductions. If I could make a massive neon hand pointing to this entry in the List, I would. Pollock's shop (not to mention the Museum) is one of my favorite places in the world. You can buy some of their most extraordinary collection of reproduction toy theatres (paper cutouts, of the most wonderful variety and complexity) at Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop, another amazing place, whose relationship with the museum is...well, it seems to be complicated(wiki). I do wish that the Museum Trust sold theatres, because they need help, and greeting cards may not be enough.

- On the matter of mechanical gewgaws, the Horology Source's page on How to Make Your Own Clocks and Watches, including kits and plans.

- John Gleave, Orrery maker (hope this website still leads to a real person and is not an artifact).


- The Brass Compass, purveyors of fine brass nautical instruments: compasses, astrolabes, sextants, and so on. Make sure to look through the mind-numbing list of links at the bottom of the page, which will take you places like this theodolite, which you can buy with hardwood case and teak tripod.

- For all things stereoscopic, including stereoscopic cameras and all sorts of vintage (read: 60's 70's and on) stereo/photographic items, check out 3D by Dr. T, a warehouse of everything of this sort, for true enthusiasts - no antiques offered, only modern supplies and devices. But if you ever wanted to make your own stereoscopic pictures, this would be the place to go. They even have how-to books.

- From Jeffrey D. Picka, a professor at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, here is a list of genuinely strange books which is not only interesting to peruse but, if you can find copies of them, might make for really unusual gifts.

The Secrets of Building Electrostatic Lightning Bolt Generators, an eccentric book by an eccentric man who has experimented with many different types of crazy electricity machines, who after writing about his trials and errors (complete with instructions and experiments), encourages you to improve upon them.

- Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl is a fascinating hypertext retelling of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Here's a description:

"What if Mary Shelley's Frankenstein were true?
What if Mary Shelley herself made the monster -- not the fictional Dr. Frankenstein?
And what if the monster was a woman, and fell in love with Mary Shelley, and travelled to America?
This is their story."

The work has gotten great reviews and sounds unusual and fascinating. I like Ms. Jackson's My Body: A Wunderkammer, a lively, down-to-earth hypertext work wherein clicking on parts of the beautifully-drawn body will get you bits and pieces of stories about her body and its life.

Outposts: A Catalog of Rare And Disturbing Alternative Information. I've heard this is an amazing book from before the Internet really took off, with "sections on drugs, sex, or other bizarre but interesting fringe culture interests." People seem to find it difficult to put down (Disclaimer: I have not read this book and cannot guarantee it would not offend some people).

- This is kind of weird: staples and eyelets to supply those who use, or would like to use, their antique paper-fastening devices.

- You can also go to eBay and type in "reliquary." There are all kinds of fascinating things that come up...


- Lastly, here is a site, entirely in Dutch (I think), showing off Jos de Vink's amazing collection of self-made Stirling hot-air engines, beautiful creations of brass and glass run entirely off small candles. I have no idea if the man is interested in selling these, but if you have enough cash, you could ask. It's worth looking at in any case. You can also see the "Kathedraal" machine, above, on Youtube.

Back on Track

Okay...

NaNoWriMo is over (I made it to 40,000 words, which is a great deal of novel, so I've only got a little more to go, and I'm pretty happy).

The chaos that is my life is calming somewhat, despite Christmas and so on.

Give me a couple of days. I'll be back.

Blood Tea and Red String: a Feast of Wonders

The other night I finally watched Blood Tea and Red String, a mind-boggling animation by Christiane Cegavske, and I must say, I was really impressed.


The movie has a home-made quality, in much the same way as many of Svankmejer's movies, meaning all the parts of it are lovingly crafted and beautifully-imagined. The "camerawork" (panning and focusing) is dizzyingly versatile, moving in and out and across in the same way that a camera moves in live-action movies.


Much of the plot is mysterious and odd, and to begin with takes a bit of deduction to work out; you find yourself having to let go of preconceptions and simply let it unfold. Ms. Cegavske, who is American, does a bang-up job supplying with body language and camera work what is lost through lack of dialogue.


Some of the images are so extraordinary, so iconic: like memories or dreams. I suppose this is the purview of art, that it makes us feel that completely new images are old, something with which we are already familiar. It feels, as in dreams, that you are meeting someone you already knew, but can't quite place.


And yet, the whole thing was so original, so inspired and strange, that I find myself thinking back on the images as I go through my day. Little glimpses of it come back in the grocery store, at school, in the car, and I find I can't share what I'm remembering with anyone - they would think me too strange.