4th and Final Iteration:

For our final iteration, we had our 3D-printed sole with the louvers bolted into the holes and the felt draped on the top.

The main idea of our "pores" shoe is to allow for both breathability and the cooling down of your foot. Although most running sneakers use moisture-wicking material (mesh), we found that many peoples' feet are still very much heat-induced while wearing them. Our goal is to naturally "cool down" your feet with louvers that manually open and close like window shutters. Also, our triangulated design soles allow for more breathability of your foot. 

We created a breathable shoe that changes as you walk and cools your foot down in the process. It is composed of three main parts; the heel, the sole, and the outer shoe.

The sole is 3D printed and works like a bellow. There is a hinge in the shoe that allows the heel to expand and contract. When the heel contracts it pushes air through your shoe and cools your foot down. The sole has origami around it that expands and contracts as you walk, creating the air-tight bellow.

The upper part of the shoe is 3D printed and is meant to camouflage the origami in the heel and add cohesiveness to the design. It uses the same pattern as the origami sole, but doesn’t expand and contract.

The heel is made of fabric and is laser cut. It is made of layers of fabric stacked on top of each other to look like a sneaker. The layers are all sewn together. The outer shoe is what holds all the parts together and makes it look like a shoe. 

My project is a stop motion video showing a small wooden robot being built. The design moves through the different steps of creation and eventually becomes a fully functional model. I was inspired by range of stop motion movies and videos. 

My first decision was that I wanted my video to include real objects instead of just drawings or just computer animations (though my final product included drawn animation.) I also decided I wanted to show the process of making something by following the basic steps a student takes to complete a project. It starts with an idea, turns into to a thought-out design, and eventually gets put together with physical material. I thought I could show these stages while also adding a little bit of surrealism using stop motion. 

My first shoot was of the drawing animation. This shoot did not go well for many reasons, including a shaky tripod, drastic changes in lighting, and unintentional moving objects. For my second shoot I changed to a metal tripod, moved to the shop, and cleared everything out of the frame before shooting. This resulted in a better product. 

After shooting each scene I strung them together in after affects and added music. 

Our inspiration was based off of two previous projects.  One of them being Humans of Cambridge and the other one being reflections.  Humans of Cambridge cinemagraphs displays a wide variety of Cambridge life.

People have a hard time connecting to plants, trees and most nature because they don't have the same level of consciousness and life as humans do. That lack of connection causes people to treat them as if they are unimportant. But, in reality, plants and trees are one of the most important parts of sustaining life on earth and are crucial to the survival of humans. 

In an effort to help raise awarness for this problem and help people feel another demention of connection with nature, we (Graeme, Weliton, and Matt) created a device that, when someone hugs it, it plays a certain bird call which attracts that bird to the tree. This creates a cooperative connection between a person and nature and it creates a natural and interactive environment that makes it easier for people to have a connection with nature. 

Using a pressure sensor to detect if someone is hugging the tree or not, a red LED that acts as the heart of the tree, a buzzer (or speaker) that plays bird noises, an arduino board and arduino programming skills, we were able to make a device that gives trees and nature another dimention of life. We also used Rhino, a CAD software, and a laser cutter, to build the physical model.

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During the past two weeks, Pablo and Sophie joined me (Graeme) on continuing this project. We noticed that there were some problems with our design if we actually wanted to make it a real art instalation in Cambridge. We needed to make the Feeling Tree attachment waterproof so that it would last as an installation. We also had to make it look more huggable. The previous model would get wet and it would potentially ruin the electronics as well as the physical model.

We used the first week to find, test, and prototype different ways of making the Feeling Tree look and feel huggable. We tested many different types of foam, such as soft foam, pink foam (hard and brittle), and spray foam. The soft foam would technically work but we wanted to test other options because the yellow color of that foam didn't really fit with the asthetic of our prject. The pink foam was simply too hard to uses as a huggable material. We tried making an array of balloons which would theoretically look huggable but it just ended up looking really weird. We also tested the spray foam in many different ways but the main problem is that you couldn't really mold the foam, if it didnt have enough air around it to expand it would return to its condensed liquid state. 

We also changed the electronics to make it unique from the previous model. We changed the bird call, we added a vibration motor that beat like a heart, and we made the light green instead of red.

Then, we brainstormed ways to make our device huggable that didnt use foam. We thought of ideas like filling our devide with lemons so it would make lemonade, filling it with water, and other different ideas. We settled on using feathers to fill a waterproof bag of vinyl. This way we our design would complete the conceptual asthetic of birds and nature.

Continuing from the Mark I mask we made in the Uno Space studio, there were two main goals in mind going into the IPP session: To make a functional, wearable, glove; and to make a well crafted, organized second version of the Mask. From this there were two main processes: The glove building, and the Mask Building. In the end, we finished with a fully functional, and wearable glove, and a fragile, yet beautiful Mask Mark II. Just because I gave Mark I the nickname "yeti," I'll name this Mark II version "Guy" mask because it reminds me of Guy Manuel of Daft Punk.

Glove:

Starting this studio, the glove had a 1st gen version of the wristband, pressure sensors, and rings that worked, but weren't perfect. 

First, we made better rings, with holes that were not too small, and not too big either. There was minimal protrusion from the hole on this version. 

We also made a better version of the wristband, this time with a battery slot, and a hole for the wires to feed through.

Next, we made a pinky ring because the regular sized rings were not fitting on the pinky's first knuckle; the hole's diameter was too big. 

From there, we decided the rings were finalized, and started to play around with conductivity to incorporate the switch in a more seamless way than just having two male connectors to touch each other. 

Next, we organize all the wires and use electric tape to separate them in an organized way, and connect them to the arduino on the Wristband, and the Glove is complete.

Mask:

The mask design was started a little late in the two weeks. We started with Rhino, and make difference arches based on approximate measurements of my face. From there we designed a model and laid out the pieces for the laser cutter. There were a few design changes along the way, such as the addition of the ear pieces, or the shape of the tiles, but none of those were physically iterated because of material conservation. After everything was cut out, everything was assembled to make the mask. Because of how small we made the Ear Pieces, the mask itself is a little fragile, but is still strong enough to be worn. The holes for the LED's didn't line up properly, so the LED strip ended up being hot glued in a last minute effort to have the mask presentable that Thursday. The mask is near perfect, and if I ever have the opportunity to make another one, I already know which issues need fixing, and how to fix them.

Going off of where the last studio left off, there were two main goals for our independent session: to make a functional "control glove," and to make a more organize, well constructed mask. 

The glove was made well, although I wish there could've been better wire organization, and maybe some color coordination for aesthetics. The rings housed the pressure sensors, and all had wires tha converged to the wristband pretty nicely. 

We made the mask construction 100% intentional this time, as opposed to the random scale placement of the Mark I, "Yeti" mask. For the Mark II, everything was designed in Rhino, and specifically made to fit together. Because everything had to be so exact, there were some small mistakes and things that didn't work out as anticipated, but overall it came out looking good.