I WANT...

to live in the southwest this summer

to pay zero rent in a fantasy destination

to plan this sooner rather than later

Using a Gecko to improve Robots :: Josh Ritenour

Gecko in Freefall

In an experiment that could only have come out of California, UC Berkeley researchers decided to see what would happen if they chucked a gecko into a wind tunnel. Who says science can't be fun?

Looking for inspiration for building more maneuverable robots, the researchers pointed a powerful fan straight up to simulate freefall conditions and used a high-speed camera to watch the gecko's in-flight acrobatics. What they discovered is that the gecko hardly moves its feet at all in the air. Instead, it uses its fat-filled tail to control its pitch and yaw, which leaves its bulbous toes to act as drag shoots, letting it precisely navigate its way to a perch at the bottom.

I Want

To get a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts

I need to get my references set, my letter of intent written, and the school to pay my application fee. Then, we'll see.

Would you turn down 1 million dollars for something you believed in?

I want

I want to be involved in making upcoming art movements known while also showing the important effects on society and culture they depict.

Pretty Polish!

Questions

1. Do you think the name should be "pretty polish" "pretty paint" "pretty pattern" or anything else?

2. What kind of stores/ places would you see this product in?

3. If the pattern could be applied to nails would it repeat or should the person be allowed to have more freedom? (have the ability to skew, warp, change it)

Scrubby Glove

I made a few adjustments to the sponge fingered glove.  I used actual dish-washing gloves instead of the more medical glove I've been using.  I've tried to shape the sponges to the fingers better as well as added Velcro for fastening the sponges the glove so they could be changed.  I also made some different colored sponges soaked in different kinds of dish soap in case orange isn't your thing.

Questions:
1. Would you be more likely to use these than regular rubber gloves to wash dishes?
2. What changes would you recommend for the gloves to make them more usable?
3. How would you like to see this product marketed?

NOISE-Cancelling Alarm-Phones

Questions:

-Would you use this product?

-Should there be a special clock or an attachment for your existing clock?

-What adjustments should be featured on the clock and on the headphones?

I want...

I want to headline a CD release show of my own.

Ask Nature

Imagine 3.8 billion years of design brilliance available for free, at the moment of creation, to any sustainability innovator in the world. Imagine nature's most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you enter "filter salt from water" and see how mangroves, penguines, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels. Now imagine you can meet the people who have studies these organisms, and together you can create the next great bio-inspired solutution. That's the idea behind AskNature, the online inspiration source for the biomimicry community. Think of it as your home habitat–whether you're a biologist who wants to share what you know about an amazing organism, or a designer, architext, engineer, or chemist looking for planet-friendly solutions. AskNature is where biology and desin cross-polinate, so bio-inspired breakthroughs can be born.

So I made:

which was my "C" project, it's an optical theremin that was based on that wire that I had.

The I did:

because I was starting to think about vision and think about seeing things, like the theremin does.

Finally, almost completely unrelatedly, I made:

which was keeping with the whole paper thing that was in the last image. It's a set of notes to an ex of mine.

Lastly:

Because I love lasers. A lot. And that sort of has something to do with the wire that I picked as my object, I suppose.

variations.

Variations -carabiner

Kobayashi color chart! (and examples)

Variations

Here are my Variations of my object.

Variation on a Theme: Toothbrush and Orange, Language and Emotion

This is my first one, exploring language and emotion. This "C" project pretty much ignores the emotional side, as well as real words, creating an alphabet from the three basic toothbrush noises.



This is my left brained one, focusing on using stark language and facts, lack of emotion.



This is my third one, starting to add emotion, and telling poetically the experience of drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth.



This is my last one. Its a lot more emotional, at least for me. Its about the experiences I had growing up with my sister's eating disorder, which I've had these crazy connections happening with. Once I made the connections during the orange activity of oranges, chewing gum, brushing teeth, with my sister's past, I couldn't really get it out of my head.

variations

bakery branding... gone mad.

So I made a fractal of a circuit board,
Then I made a sound thing based on the values presented in the image, and so this ended up happening:

Creative and Critical Thinking movies... "optional reading"

when ever I am grading Chris's work i think of movies... and since he has been so good about sharing ideas for others on the blog, i thought I'd do the same.

these are amazing creatively stimulating movies that if we had a studio class - we'd be
watching...

Short Order *Life is a Buffet*



Perfume - The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum)



Issac Newton: The Dark Heretic part 1



And my favorite film about - well living young...even when you are old. We are where we are at - and it's all about how you see life.
Harold and Maude

Variation on a Theme

This is the first week I am not using my object, as a poster project for my type class seemed to align beautifully with this assignment. I am using 6 variations rather than 4 because I feel like my "in between" stages became the most successful. 

variation on a theme

From Science Friday (click here for their site) - Creative Thinking for the Healing Arts

This was taken from the Science Friday Website:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/arts/2009/11/creative-thinking-in-the-healing-arts/

 this is being replicated for educational purposes - intended to share with my students and introduce them to some of the fantastic things found on Science Friday's Art's page

Creative Thinking for the Healing Arts

by Lynn Fellman, Nov 21, 2009

It’s mid-November in Minnesota and 60 degrees. A golden day for one more ride before the snow and ice descend. I keep my bike in my Minneapolis Warehouse District art studio, three blocks from the 45th parallel and the mighty Mississippi River. An amazing biking path follows the river for miles and miles and I’m on it heading downstream to an interesting part of town.

Designing a better healing environment
My destination is Dr. Jon Hallberg’s new Mill City Clinic across from the nationally known Guthrie Theater. As physician on call for visiting performers at the theater, the clinic is in the historic Milling District near the Stone Arch Bridge that crosses the big river. A beautiful part of town recently revitalized to highlight the arts.

Shown above is a view from my favorite bike path along the Mississippi River with a view of the old Mills and the Weisman Museum. Does it look like a watercolor painting? It’s not. I created the image with my digital drawing tools with many transparent layers to get the effect.

You may know Jon Hallberg from his radio show. He’s a medical analyst for Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), on the air every week discussing the art of science and medicine. As a GP physician, Jon says he needs to think creatively to find solutions for his patients’ health but also to design a better healing environment. I step into the clinic and wow… take a breath… decompress. Ah! Chopin is being played on a piano, as it turns out, by a young student from the music school down the street. The waiting area is light and open like the music in the air, reflecting the aesthetic of the outside view.

Shown above on the left is The Guthrie Theater and on the right, a view of Mill Ruins Park and the Stone Arch Bridge crossing the Mississippi River.

Music and science are in his DNA
Jon has thought a lot about creating a soothing place to enable healing. His ideas began in his first year of medical school where he played alto sax in the college orchestra. While reading an article about an injured violinist trying to play in a restrictive neck brace, he wondered if medicine could focus on the needs of creative people. Now years later, he’s known for his medical specialty for actors, musicians, and opera singers.
Jon has found that caring for creative types and respecting medicine as an art compliment each other. Of course, all kinds of regular people attend the clinic and respond to the serenity and beauty of the space. From the art on the walls to music in the air, Jon’s Mill City Clinic is a healthy convergence of art and medicine.

Shown above is the waiting room of Dr. Hallberg’s clinic.

Linking theater and medicine in innovative ways
Another way Jon connects the arts to healing is through his new endeavor, the Hippocrates Cafe. Working with professional actors from the Guthrie Theater, Jon explores medical themes through spoken word and music. The very first Cafe at the clinic will preview this week to an already signed-up audience. The hour-long event is about influenza in its historical and social contexts. I’m one of the lucky ones to see the first presentation. I’ll leave my bike at my studio and bring my sketch book instead to better enjoy an innovative evening of science and art. More about the Hippocrates Cafe, upcoming events and a link to Cafe’s new web site coming soon.

About Lynn Fellman: Lynn Fellman creates art inspired by evolution and genetics, and design and Flash animation for organizations. E-mail Lynn, or check our her work on http://www.fellmanstudio.com.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Blogs, Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Just found my new hero! :: Josh Ritenour

Don't think, just do! :: Josh Ritenour

This piece is a commentary on the evolution of technology in our society. It portrays the origins of technology in its rudimentary, purely functional form and how it evolved into a replication of human form and knowledge, changing how we humans interact as a society and redefining the meaning of contact. What does it mean to be human, if all that separates us from machine is emotion and the human touch? And what implications does it have if machines evolve further and become sentient? Some people argue technology has already become such a part of our identity that our phones and computers function as a fifth limb or sixth sense. We walk down a street in one world but are not truly present, as we are existing in another dimension through a portal held in our hands.

Brain image from the book

You have to check this out! :: Josh Ritenour

Most amazing sculpture I have ever seen!

www.samjinks.com

Bird-Glove

The peaceful Bird-glove lives only in this vibrant green and blue landscape of your computer screen.

Blind soldier now 'sees' through tongue :: Josh Ritenour

more for christina!

back to the brain

http://www.alwayswithhonor.com/#8724/Brain-Cardio

Orange Exercise - Progression :: Josh Ritenour

This is the progression of my 3D project. I developed the idea from the orange exercise.

conversation

i made a valuable business contact last week...

being mistaken for "brittany who works downtown" on nicolette by an african american man in a jeep - usually i would play dumb, deaf and bitchy. but i shook his hand, introduced myself as "cassie" and though refusing to give him my number asked him for his card.

hey! he said he could hook me up with a car. right...

clns homme

perfume size comparison, counter samples and faux ad.

The Orange #2 - Universal Forms

The more I learn about string theory, quantum mechanics, and the logical systems of the universe, the more epiphanic connections I make about the parallels in form between the monumentally large and the infinitesimally small. This piece explores my mounting understanding of the perfect organization of the cosmos and my hope for the future use of science as a scripture for fulfillment.

I chose an orange to echo these elemental, congruent, divisible forms. It glows with primordial fire and the ferocity of a living organ. Its segmented cells mirror both the microscopic and the astronomical. Placing the orange between the iconic symbols of the hands of Adam and God, I aim to paint science as a current and future harbinger of consummate Truth.

bigger - smaller quite literally.

Some students were asking me why do we sometimes have days of just conversation?

Good question!

I found this article at   http://www.betterxdesign.org/

in a conversation in how RISD is working creativity into their curriculum.  I skipped the bit about RISD and who they are - because that's not the part that matters.

you can find the whole article at:  http://www.betterxdesign.org/?q=node/92

RISD CIRCUS: New ways of learning/teaching By tino on March 2nd, 2009

"We have to begin to challenge the role of the student and the teacher, especially at the college level, where it is common for students and faculty to exchange ideas. Changing our titles and re-evaluating our roles could better reflect us as learners and advisers. This could be a way to break the mold and encourage conversation that otherwise will not happen. This model of shared learning and teaching will allow students to gain authority and help bring new ideas to the table.

Creativity cannot be taught, but it wouldn't just happen, so what should we do as educators? An interesting point brought up by Chris Rose is that "instead, we can mange the circumstances for creativity." This creates an unique opportunity for endless possibility to innovate and learn. Some of the ideas that was spawned out of this notion is; to have students learn through witnessing an "intellectual argument", where they eavesdrop on the conversation and come to their own conclusions; and to use unconventional, even guerrilla tactics, to lure students out of their departments to engage in cross-disciplinary conversations.

Chris Rose explaining his ideas for teaching and learning

It is great to have these conversations but the real dilemma is how can we do up against the established framework and implement these radical ideas. We have a tangible plan, where we have broken up our task to small, medium and large scale; small task that can be implemented now, medium task that can be implemented within the year and large task as our ultimate goal.

An implementable goal is to create a more interdisciplinary environment where different classes would intersect at various points in the semester through a symposium where the classes would be informed and influenced by each other's work. A successful experiment called the "recess" that could be reproduced was conducted on campus last year successfully brought people together where students were encourage to interact through games.

Our ultimate goal is not to simply change our education system now, but to create a framework in which we are able to constantly challenge and change our teaching and learning methods to best prepare the students of the future."   - Taken from the site:  http://www.betterxdesign.org/?q=node/92

Personal Project :: Josh Ritenour

3D Mock Ups :: Josh Ritenour

Cool free program from google. I am using it for assistance with my 3D ideas.

Kind of a neat tool for visualization.

Carabiner Inspired by the Orange