Like The Noonday Sun

Saturday, 15 September 2012

Wimpy Braille Burgers

Wimpy wanted to let visually impaired people know that they offered braille menus in all of their restaurants. To spread the word we built braille burgers that blind people could actually read. With the help of skilled chefs we took sesame seeds and meticulously placed them on burger buns so that the seeds formed braille.

Tackle Design Inc.

With clients ranging from major research universities to artists, from industrialists to inventors, Tackle Design Inc is unified by the pursuit of elegant solutions and a commitment to quality workmanship.

Our areas of accomplishment range from solutions for improving cardiovascular surgery to refinement of aerospace manufacturing processes to concept development and prototyping for consumer electronics devices.

Tools for Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery (MIRS)

Robotic systems have become the state of the art in many types of surgical procedures, allowing the surgeon to perform complex operations through small, fast healing incisions. Tackle is a member of an interdisciplinary team of NIH funded researchers at NCSU developing retraction and fixation tools for MIRS procedures. Our involvement has included creativity training for team members, concept development and prototyping work as well as participation in surgical trials.

The Open Prosthetics Project

Tackle has launched The Open Prosthetics Project to create useful and innovative prosthetic devices and fully publish our designs for anyone to use, customize, or improve on. By substituting public good for profits, we believe that we can generate far more societal benefit than if we commercialized and sold our ideas. We are currently developing several novel prosthetic concepts and seeking funding from donations and grants.

MaaP Studio

Handmade Porcelain Jewellery by Monika Skrzypkowska of MaaP Studio

Becky Pilditch

Experiment 1: Wooden Hand

Super Prosthetics Project is about exploring armwear as an object of empowerment, choice and identity. The purpose was to conduct a series of creative experiments to challenge current ideas of prosthetics and explore what a wearer might choose to create in that space if he or she could have any functionality or aesthetic.

The project has been conducted at the Royal Collage of Art in London by Becky Pilditch and with the help of Holly Franklin. It has been developed in conversation with individuals who wear and make prosthetics limbs and the blog has been created to make the process visible for those who wish to share ideas and continue dialogue on the subject.

Each experiment took the form of an object, created for Holly to wear and critique in a public space. The final result was a repertoire of objects that explored the relationship between Holly, her hands and her peers, for the purposes of positive social interaction.

Experiment 2: Ceramic Hand

Experiment 3: Bejewelled Hook; rhinestone and silver

Experiment 4: Leather Palm

Experiment 5: Glass hand; resin

Experiment 6: Transparent Fingertips; cherry wood and resin

Experiment 7: Hand Puppetry; wood, nylon and steel

Experiment 8: Gestural Hand Series; maple, balsa, nylon and steel (final hand)

Jonathan Kuniholm

Jonathan Kuniholm, an Iraq veteran who lost his arm in 2005, is one of 300 engineers working on DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, which was created to solve the thorny interdisciplinary problems that stand in the way of creating truly functional prosthetic arms.

An international team led by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., has developed a prototype of the first fully integrated prosthetic arm that can be controlled naturally, provide sensory feedback and allows for eight degrees of freedom—a level of control far beyond the current state of the art for prosthetic limbs. Proto 1, developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, is a complete limb system that also includes a virtual environment used for patient training, clinical configuration, and to record limb movements and control signals during clinical investigations.

Jesse Sullivan, a former high-power lineman, lost both arms in 2001 after being electrocuted on the job. In these three photos, he demonstrates the capabilities of the Proto 1 prosthetic arm system during clinical tests at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Pilar Cotter

Des-nudo, by Pilar Cotter

Musings about transit in communication.

I understand transit as the distance allowed to an emitter between thought and verb, this fictitious hallway where thoughts are filtered, will always be affected by the emotional context enveloping the emitter.

I suppose there are no fixed formulas to activate or facilitate the sorting of this series of emotional complexities which will give rise to either contention or fluidity. Words such as baring or untying come to my head from the collective imaginarium. Words directly related to comunication. Baring implies an act of transparency, untying, the decision to overcome any conflict to transmit what one wishes.

This is how we tie and untie, show and hide, this is how we retain and let go.