Although plants lack nervous systems, they can, much like animals, become electro-chemically stimulated by their surrounding environment. Measuring this, we begin to understand the stimulus-response mechanisms that make up their primitive intelligence. Networked together we’ve harnessed their collective intelligence, exploring new forms of bio-cooperative interaction. The result is half garden, half autonomous vehicle a cybernetic lifeform we’ve named Hortum machina, B.
HACKberry is an open-source 3D-printable bionic arm (i.e. motorized hand that a person missing a hand can control intuitively via muscle signals in their residual arm). All the technical data including 3D CAD file, software code, circuit diagram, and bill of materials are disclosed as open-source under Creative Commons license. In this way, private developers around the world can replicate and customize it for whoever it can help in their local area.
We present a method of rendering aerial and volumetric graphics using femtosecond lasers. A high-intensity laser excites physical matter to emit light at an arbitrary 3D position. Popular applications can then be explored especially since plasma induced by a femtosecond laser is safer than that generated by a nanosecond laser.
Floraform is a generative design system inspired by the biomechanics of growing leaves and blooming flowers which explores the development of surfaces through differential growth. We created a simulation of a differentially growing elastic surface that functions as a digital garden. Within the system, we can explore how biological systems create form by varying growth rates through space and time. Many of these experiments have been materialized as 3D-printed sculptures and wearable adornments.
Aurelia 1 + Hz / Proto viva Sonification is an interactive performance that explores the phenomena of interspecies communication, sonification of the environment, and underwater acoustic/bioacoustics, using jellyfish. Jellyfish are one of the rare organisms that seem perfectly suited for the Anthropocene era. The current 6th Mass Extinction may not apply to them, in fact, their numbers are growing. It is not established (yet) how they communicate. Do they feel vibration? Aurelia aurita’s gravity receptors (calcium crystals) are the same as in the human inner ear.
Environment Dress 2.0 is a smart dress that measures the aggressiveness of the environment to analyze how it affects people’s mood and behavior.
It is a wearable equipped with sensors that analyze issues such as variations in noise, temperature, atmospheric pressure, ultraviolet radiation, or the amount of carbon monoxide present in our daily lives. All of this geo-located information is connected to the user’s mood via an app.
Casa Jasmina is a two-year pilot project in the field of domestic electronic networking, or “the Internet of Things in the Home.” The aim is to integrate traditional Italian skills in furniture and interior design with emergent skills in open-source electronics. The project is a showplace inside a large industrial building already shared by Toolbox Co-Working, Fablab Torino, and Officine Arduino.
Apostroph is a prototype of a robot designed to study the intrinsic behaviors of living organisms. Standing up and counteracting gravity is characteristic of living organisms.
Inspired by aqueous material formation the Water-based Digital Fabrication Platform offers a new perspective on water-based manufacturing, combining an age-old crustacean-derived material with robotic fabrication and synthetic biology to form constructs that utilize graded material properties for hydration-guided self-assembly. The platform and its products demonstrate the Material Ecology approach to shape and property formation by design. It is a realization of the ancient biblical verse: from Earth to Earth, from water to water.
Verity Studios, ETH Zurich, and Cirque du Soleil have partnered to develop a short film featuring 10 quadcopters in a flying dance performance. The collaboration resulted in a unique, interactive choreography where humans and drones move in sync. Precise computer control allows for a large performance and movement vocabulary of the quadcopters and opens the door to many more applications in the future.
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