Our Summer 2013 is going to be filled with lots of song, dance and robots! The Summer 2013 theme is "Interactive Music and Art," and we have lots of fun studios, including Futuristic Musical Instruments, Interactive Storybook, Brainwave Art & Music, Drawing Robots, Interactive Fashion and more! Registration is now open for Summer 2013 program and available online. Explore the program and studios at our new website! Image from our Dancing Robots studio.

Design-Build Team: Angelo Cabral, Trevor Hoffman, Stephen Phillips, Omari Spears In our DIY studio we first brainstormed many ideas for what to do. After narrowing down the list, we decided to make an accelerometer-controlled wah pedal. We thought this would be a good device to make, as we were taking an object that is usually used with a performer's foot, and instead would re-make it so that the performer would have to shake the guitar for the wah device to function.

The wah pedal (powered by an accelerometer) is used to produce the wah guitar effect when the user shakes the guitar. There is an on and off switch to change the guitars signal to clean (the sound you would get if it was directly plugged into the amp) and to the wah signal. The retrofitted device is attached to the guitar using bungee cords wherever the user chooses to put it, but the angles to produce the effect have to be modified depending on the location. Wah pedals normally use a potentiometer to produce the effect, but by replacing that with an accelerometer, the effect can be produced without using a foot. This allows the user more movement freedom when performing on a stage.

Adam Steinberg demonstrates how a musician can now manipulate the guitar to induce the "wah" effect by oscillating the guitar up and down:

Our Students are working closely with the founders of Rise Robotics to experiment with their new patend-pending linear actuator. Students are building robotic creatures on legs and catapults. The Rise Robotics team is hoping that their linear actuator can find its way into many educational envrionments. 

Our students are beginning to imagine the

Robotic Sandwich Maker:

Robotic Juicer:

Pancake Maker:

M&M team has been working hard on their stage and extras. This is their second attempt at shooting the same scene. This time, they paid much more attention to the location of cameras and how their extras are moving in the space.

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/lens-my-hometown/?best_200=true&page=25

This past September, NuVu's Superhero Collection premiered at the

Photo Credit:

The Honeycomb Dress is inspired by the concepts of negative space and pure geometry. The dress takes the idea of a simple, visually recognizable geometric shape - the octagon - and replicates it across the dress and other feature pieces (earrings, necklace, head piece), and theoretically across any object or material, in this way imbibing the piece with a super-hero like quality. The octagonal pattern remains distinguishable and personal to the hypothetical hero who would wear it. The dress is constructed of laser-cut octagonal felt pieces sewed together with interfacing ironed onto the back of the pieces to maintain the shape of the dress. There are a total of four pieces (plus two mesh sides) that make up the Honeycomb dress. It's bold, comfortable, cool, and meant for action!


The Batman Dress is inspired by The Caped Crusade and merges Batmans secret identity and alter-ego of a superhero into a single fashion. The billowing skirt of the dress is composed of large cut patterns of the Batman logo, and the shoulder cuffs are composed of similar yet smaller cut patterns.


The Samurai is inspired by the armors worn by Japanese Samurai, the all-male military nobility of pre-Industrial Japan, but translated into a modern everyday wear for females. The ancient Samurai armor was constructed from leather and metal and was much lighter than its medieval armor counterpart to provide ease of movement. While still keeping the lightness and agility of ancient Samurai armor, the Samurai transposes the powers and protective attributes to women. The Samurai includes a scale armor made of renewable wood veneers inspired by the ancient small steel scales (konaze), laced together with cotton cords (odoshige) and shoulder pads made of leather.


The design for the Super Max pants is inspired by Captain America, a comic book superhero created during WWII who wore a suit with an American flag motif. The goal for the pants is to subtly integrate the patterns and colors of the American flag in an original way. The American flag pattern was created using an algorithm in Processing, a programming platform, which randomly generated different combinations of striped patterns in red, white, and blue. The pants are assembled from laser-cut pieces of fabric with the striped American flag pattern ironed onto them. The Super Max shirt is inspired by the S-logo on Superman's chest. Using laser-cutting technology, the M letter is formed of small round perforated holes on the cotton shirt. The Super Max pants and shirt are designed to be comfortable for a modern-day superhero working or lounging in a casual setting.


The Lionfish dress takes its inspiration from the lionfish, or Pterois miles, a venomous fish that is found in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Best known for its venomous spines and long dragon-like fins, the Lionfish dress recreates these spines and fins out of laser-cut clear acrylic and lace fabric. The different textured lace was carefully spray-mounted onto the acrylic. Embedded inside the fins are LED lights that change colors with movement. The asymmetrical composition of the dress and the changing LED lights create the sense of evolution. The Design Team for The Superhero Collection includes: Honeycomb Dress Designers: Klara Ingersoll Yalie Serrano Batman Dress Designer: Amro Arida Samurai Designers: Eli Clark John Idrobo Super Max Designer: Max Ingersoll The Lionfish Designer: Sam Ingersoll Collection Directors: Saba Ghole Jennifer Jacobs Theressa Lee Collection Assistant Director: Ryan Wistort

PRESS: BostInno The Tufts Daily Blog The Daily Free Press The Fashion Hub Angela Christoforos

Yesterday we had our final review for the Balloon Studio.

Hayley and Jeff have been working on the RC plane for the past 5 days. We should have it running tomorrow.