Post by Carli Jaff Imagine, if you will, a place where you can create your own superhero and decide everything they wear. Can you picture it? If you are, you are most likely thinking about the Super Fashion studio at NuVu. For the past week and a half, 8 creative-minded and ambitious students, have, with the help of coach Jennifer Jacobs, been working diligently to put together at least one article of clothing from scratch. From disease-ridden vests to American flag pants, there is an eclectic mix of clothing being programmed, stitched, and sewn in our Super Fashion studio.



Yalie and Klara are working together on creating a tunic dress and a headpiece. Klara is working mainly on the dress, which acts as more of a cover slip. The dress is made out of yellow and black geometric shapes. Currently, Klara is thinking about putting a leotard underneath the dress because it is the least obtrusive. Yalie is making a headpiece that compliments the dress, and she intends for it to have many abstract shapes and colors. Her last step will be to attach a veil to the front of the headpiece. Yalie and Klara found their inspiration from a shirt for a man. However, when they translated it to a womans body, they found that it showed too much skin, and that is why the two girls decided to put something underneath the dress. So far, Klara and Yalie have created their design on Processing and Illustrator, printed their fabric with an iron, and sewed it all together. Their next step is to keep putting pieces together and finalizing the look.


Max has been working hard on making a pair of American flag pants. His process so far has contained a large amount of intricate work: once Max bought his test pants from Goodwill on Friday, he had to cut up the stitches on the seams. Once all the seams were cut apart and the pants in four pieces, he pinned the parts down, traced them onto another fabric, and cut out the shapes on that fabric. Maxs next step is to make a pattern on processing to put on the real pants. Max says that his favorite part was brainstorming about ideas and learning how people make clothes!


For the past week and a half, Sam has been making a blazer that has embroidered designs on the seams. This week, he bought a blazer from Goodwill, cut it up, translated the images to Photoshop, and made a pattern on the blazer using Photoshop. Sam is currently working on perfecting the measurements of the blazer in order to make it trim and tailored to a persons body. So far, Sams favorite part has been seeing his ideas and digital images come to life and become tangible. Sam has learned that making clothing is challenging because hes never seen anyone make clothes before and he has never done it himself. But, Sam also says that this experience is teaching him not to take clothes for granted; hes realizing that clothes are very difficult to make, and its a part of our lives that we dont know much about. So far, Sam is doing a great job on his blazer!


John and Eli have been working extremely hard on a dress made entirely out of wood. They have been making rows of wood and fabric cutouts for their dress. They created their design entirely on Processing, and their coach, Jennifer, made a program that took the outline of their dress and made all the cutouts to make the dress. So far, the hardest part for the two has been setting up the wood panels on the computer, and they think the hardest part will be to put everything together. Their final step will be to sew all the cutouts onto the dress. John and Eli got their idea for this dress from an image of Samurai armor. So far, their favorite part has been creating the pattern on Photoshop! We look forward to seeing John and Elis final result.


Lastly, Patrick and Oliver are creating a vest and jacket set that is inspired by disease. The pattern on the clothing looks like it is coming up from the sides and engulfing the rest of the outfit. What is unique about this project is that the two boys have been using solely technology for their article of clothing. They have been using just the laser cutter and programming for the past week and a half. The inspiration for this virus jacket comes from the juxtaposition of good vs. evil. Both Patrick and Oliver are hoping that the final result has a big contrast in order to accomplish their original idea.
We are starting to see things come together, and everything looks great! The students will continue to iterate, adjust, and sew until their clothing is exactly how they want it. Keep checking back for more updates on the Super Fashion studio!

Project by: Mackenzie Mills, Edward Orazem, Gabriel Snyder Studio:

Final wrapper design with QR Code and phone app wireframes:

For the past two week, students participating in our NuVu "Superheroes" Summer Program in Lakeland, Florida, have been busy building their crazy SuperGizmos and imagining how their superheroes could use these fantastic gizmos. After many, many trips to Home Depot and other electronic stores, here are the students' superhero gizmos: This is Catbell giving a demo of her powerful tail and ears which she uses to fight crime. Both the ears and tail are controlled with a little joystick to the side of her belt.

This RC-controlled Dog can move fast, wag its tail, and bite, warding off any threatening person, animal or object!

This device uses a net to capture criminals.

The circular Glowing Shield can protect its superhero by deflecting bullets. It comes equipped with three rings of LEDs that change color constantly. The shield also has a secret pocket inside in which the superhero can store a Nerf gun and an automatic water (poison) dispenser.

This Grappling Hook is equipped with a strong winch that can lift around 400 pounds.

The Magic Watch, besides operating as a normal watch, has the capacity to distract criminals by producing an irritating noise. It also has a rader system that detects aliens!

NuVu's own Saba Ghole was a Speaker at the Innovation and Knowledge (INK) Conference  in November 2013. The INK Conference is an annual event in India, organized in association with TED.

Today, we started our second round of studios. The two studios are space mining and film fiction. Here is a summary of day 1 at Space Mining by our student Kris Bronner: The gray, rainy morning in no way reflected the first half of the day of the Space Mining Studio. A colorful illustration started the studio as we went through The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. The reason, David explained, was to demonstrate that Ph.Ds., such as himself, are very knowledgeable in specific topics, but that they cannot answer everything! He noted, at least, that It was also very a very interesting perspective on the evolution of ones knowledge throughout their life. Following the demonstration, we dove right into a synopsis of the forthcoming studio. During the briefing we all researched ideas for which our space mission would accomplish (examples: which elements we wanted to bring back, which asteroids to visit, etc.). The overview subsequently led us into a focused discussion of the force known as gravity. We examined the gravity mathematically, visually (with

Propulsion led us to the black board and the introduction of the water-rocket project. Later this week, we are going to be launching our own water rockets, seeing how our knew knowledge will help us understand how to make a more efficient Space Mission. David illustrated the two phases of a spaceship propulsion (in this case, a water-rocket), being from the water/pressure, and then jettison of the remaining water. As a group, we put our physics knowledge together to create a set of equations to estimate the rockets final height and time (in phase two).

For the past two days, students have been obsessed with Final Cut. Alla showed us all the tricks and shortcuts which make it super fun to use the software. Although the students are expected to produce a three-minute movie, the sequences they have now are more than 20 minutes long. A lot of trimming needs to happen before our Friday's showdown.



Although students are mostly using footage from different online resources, they also using footage they shot themselves. Here is a clip of the swan and her babies captured by Nicky on Sunday morning (super cute!)

Our winter "Storytelling" trimester is just around the corner, and we are planning some imaginative studios where NuVu students will explore and create stories through music, film, dance, painting and technology. We are looking forward to some amazing coaches who will be joining us at NuVu for the winter session, including a leading musical instrument robotisict, a Grammy-winning music producer, as well as two hosts (and MIT Media Lab PhDs) from the Discovery Channel. One of our coaches for the Storytelling trimester will be Raghava KK. I first heard of Raghava KK after watching his TED Talk while high up in the clouds on-board my flight from San Francisco to Boston. The talk, entitled "Five Lives of an Artist," moved me to tears. Raghava's stories reminded me of the wonderfully emotional aspects of our lives that become intertwined within our art from the moment we use our hands to create a piece, whether as sketch, painting or collage. Raghava's stories capture in touching honesty his journey with art as it propelled him to new places and how his experiences, in turn, drove his multiple reincarnations as an artist. Raghava KK is a self-taught artist, born in Bangalore, India, whose reincarnations as an artist led him from cartoonist to painter, media darling to social outcast, and son to father. His work has spanned various genres including painting, sculpture, installation, film, cartooning and performance. Through each medium, Raghava's work has conveyed expressively his opinions on identity, conformity, gender, and celebrity. In his TED Talk, Raghava speaks frankly about the public's reaction that sits at the intersection of his work and opinions, and his own life course that remains directed within this air of acceptance and rejection. Raghava started his career in 1997, originally as a cartoonist with Indian national newspapers such as The Asian Age, The Indian Express, and The Times of India in Bangalore. Over the next 10 years, Raghava would reinvent himself to use several different mediums. In his reinvention after cartooning, Raghava went on to teach himself how to paint and began creating large watercolor on canvas paintings using his hands and feet. His shows cover a global audience in galleries and performance spaces around the world. His current projects continue to span across media. Among his latest published work is the childrens book A New Friend for Rudra. We look forward to having Raghava at NuVu this coming Winter!

We packed our stuff and headed to Julian's site to test his huge kite/balloon. Since the balloon was so big, we decided to attach two cameras, a canon powershot and a flip. In retrospect, that was a bad idea since we did not test the balloon before.

And here is the balloon in the sky

Apparently the string got cut at the 500 ft mark. Here is Jeff and Julian running after the balloon

Here you could see the balloon as a small black dot in the sky. Hopefully some lucky guy has our cameras.

For Monday, we are having the students do 2 short mini-exercises that involve doing some short research over the weekend. TED TALK Activity: Pick a TED Talk you find interesting and share your thoughts about the talk with the studio on Monday. Questions to think about, and possible things you could talk about on Monday: What did you find interesting about the talk? How does it relate to our daily life? What did you find inspiring about the talk? Did the talk change the way you look at something? If so, how did you think about it before and what new questions do you have after watching the talk? TED Talks IMAGE Activity: Find an image/photograph that says something about you and bring it to share with the studio on Monday. Questions to think about, and possible things you could talk about on Monday: Why is the image relevant to you? Why did you find the image meaningful? What details about the image relate or don't relate to things in your life? Why did you select this particular image verses any other image?

Film by Omari Spears, Trevor Hoffman, and Maggie Schneider "Kendall Square: Food Trucks" is a documentary that focuses on a local food truck in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA that is used as a focal point to understand the broader changes of Kendall Square through the recent years. On the first day of the film project, the production team goes out to explore Kendall Square not quite knowing where or how the story will develop. After wandering around the square taking shots of pedestrians, cars and landmark buildings, the team comes across a food truck called Momogoose. It's half an hour before the lunch rush, so the team quickly asks to interview one of the Momogoose employees about the food truck. After the interview, the team decides to focus the film on the food service business in the Kendall Square area as a central narrative in understanding the area's growth and change over the years. The film also documents different restaurants around the area and interviews the Executive Director of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority.