I’ve begun learning Grasshopper, a plugin for Rhino that allows for the creation of 3D models through algorithms and data stream manipulation. It’s awesome.

This is my first intense model… It’s two spherical point clouds with a proximity algorithm to connect their nearest points together; the two spheres connect to each other at every similar vertex. It is totally asymmetrical.

hypershot rendering:

printed, support material still intact:

finished print:

In February I posted an instructable on basic wood whittling technique. I noticed instructables was lacking a basic how-to on tools, grain, and carving strategies; I took a wood carving class last year and I thought myself qualified to explain it. Click the picture to check it out:

I’m proud to report that as of this post it has 17,353 views. It was featured a half hour after I posted it, which gave it some real estate on the front page for a few hours, and then it became popular, again appearing on the front page. Four days after the posting it was included in the weekly Instructables newsletter along with 9 or 10 other how-tos.

People seem to like it. It was passed around on a few blogs, including manmadediy.com. My bragging rights, however, come from the fact that (as of this posting) it shows up on the first page of Google when you search wood whittling.

A few people subscribed to me on Instructables… I have to figure out what to do next!

I don’t normally focus on graphic design, nor am I a web type of guy, but the studio project I am working on right now required a website (fast) so I had to make one. I relied on the Slices function included in Adobe software… I am fairly pleased with the result:

http://phillyrack.org

I’ll spare a description of the project itself, which I’ll post soon. The site isn’t fully functional yet, but that is the layout (the blog section has a matching wordpress theme!).

My influence came largely from wordpress themes I have seen recently, but I keep coming back to a site I found a while back:

http://www.minimalsites.com/

It has some great stuff and can serve as an outline of the important principles of interface design.

This project was created with Meg Talley.

The brief for the project, which went from early November to mid-December 2009, was to create “wearable technology.” The only things required were that we work with some electronic technology and that it be worn on the body.

We asked how technology can be worn and how it can integrate into human situations. We arrived at hand puppets within the first week. Our big question became: What would happen if a hand puppet had a mind of its own? Would there be a struggle for power? Companionship?

This question would drive the entire project. So we got prototyping… Meg is a master seamstress so she started figuring out a pattern for a hand puppet, and I got out my electronic junk box and wrote a simple arduino program.

The first circuit, with arduino and four buttons that control lights and servos:

Tell me more… »

A final project for one of my classes in the fall of 2009 was to pick a classmate’s name out of a hat and design a reproducible gift for him/her in secret. For the critique, the gifter and giftee sat in the middle of the classroom and the gift was opened in front of everyone. Our grade was based on the genuine reaction of the person receiving the gift.

I lucked out and got Meg Talley, a good friend who I was working in a group with at the time. She likes to complain about how she doesn’t have time to paint, so…

I laser cut the box from birch plywood and made the paintbrush stand from beech wood. The inside of the box is 6 x 4 x 2 inches.

She liked it. At least she said she liked it…!

Modeled+3d printed a bracelet…

hypershot (click to enlarge):

This project ran from mid-September to early November 2009.

Each year a group associated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art hosts an award and adjacent student design contest entitled Collab. The award is given to a “design professional who has made a significant contribution to the field,” and the contest focuses on some aspect of this designer’s work. This year it was Marcel Wanders; the contest was to make a “tabletop luminaire” in the spirit of Marcel which included a reference to “pre-20th Century form.” The Junior ID class traditionally enters the contest as part of the curriculum. This is my entry in the contest.

Decoding Marcel was a long process. His stuff is beautiful and dynamic, but I wanted to avoid producing something that looked like a Wanders product. Sparing you the details, here are some important things I gleaned from his work: he references his own cultural history, which seems to facilitate emotional connection; he uses technological innovation, often employing new and experimental materials and processes; and his work is exuberant, celebratory, flamboyant, quirky…

My initial concept development focused around the juxtaposition of different cultures. I was trying to mash up different iconic products, hoping to create some odd unity… However one of my sketches, initially a joke, ended up containing a lot more than anything else I drew up.

Tell me more… »

I have a few projects I’ve been meaning to link to this site. The first is the independent study I completed in the fall of 2009 on rapid prototyping.

kylestetzrp.wordpress.com

I started by researching common rapid prototyping technologies (3D printers) and worked my way out to more obscure techniques. I covered eleven in all. That phase came to a close as I secured a MakerBot, which is a do-it-yourself 3D printer. I built it in order to better understand the open-source technology available today, and because I wanted to geek out.

reflection/refraction

galaxies

These are two of my musical endeavors. reflection/refraction is my personal alias when making music (the page is informal, I upload things as I make them). Galaxies is myself and my partner-in-crime Corey Regensburg. The album on our myspace was recorded in the summer of 2008 at Sound Surgeon Studios in Long Island, NY. It is an 11-minute musical theater-inspired adventure; Corey played piano and sang and I programmed the electronics. It’s a bit artsy-fartsy (which is awesome).

Eventually I will put up a section for the Processing sketches I mess around with. That’ll be fun.

Got down some object oriented programming in Processing recently. I wrote a program that simulates gravity and friction:

The main draw loop tracks mouse position and does the math to determine the velocity after you flick the ball; it also updates all of the objects present in the program. The balls are generated from a Ball class, which allows there to be an infinite number of balls at any given time, all keeping track of their own position and speed. The walls are governed by a Wall class, which allows them to be moved and communicate with the ball objects in real time.

I have a Seagull messenger bag which I love dearly. I had some problems with a little clip that comes with it, so I redesigned it.

The end of the strap has a D-ring, which I assume is there to make it easier to adjust. It comes with a small black clip, and when I first got the bag I spent an hour trying to figure out if that D-ring was supposed to do anything special. I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t, and have been using the small black clip to hold the strap in place while I am wearing the bag.

The black clip has always annoyed me for two reasons: one, there is a large gap on the back of it which causes it to come off of the strap quite frequently; two, the part that I use to hold the extraneous strap is open at the top, which causes it to fall out as well. Basically the thing is just popping out all over the place.

My girlfriend also has a Seagull bag, but I noticed that she uses her clip differently. She puts the D-ring in the clip, which doesn’t really fit at all.

So I opened rhino, drew up a new one, and shot it over to our lovely 3d printer.

new+old

The space in the back of the clip was reduced so that it won’t come off of the strap, and I added a little hook that allows you to snap the D-ring in (it doesn’t come out unless you want it to, but it still has a little room to rotate). The part that holds extraneous strap has a U shape at the top which holds the strap in place.

Its working pretty well so far. neatooooo