MichaelGLove.com

Belfast pecha kucha?

MichaelGLove — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:47:18 +0000

My technology and design course has finished with a group pecha kucha of our each different topics. It was a great afternoon and was a very fitting way to end the subject. It has now been a good 3 weeks from that afternoon, I am now currently back in Belfast and I got thinking. Let’s see if there is a pecha kucha night I could go to in Belfast. Well after a quick google I am sad to report the last one i can find, was held over a year ago.

So I now have two thoughts, why? and could I put one on? The reason why is, Belfast doesn’t seem to have to same culture going on compared to Glasgow. Yes Glasgow has a vastly larger population and does have a culturally rich past in comparison. But in this Internet age does that really change things? Well it clearly does, but maybe this creative culture could be grown and developed, by holding such a night. But I will be frank, I am a product design engineer therefore I don’t have to arty opinion all the time, I would be considering doing this to make some money, we have to realistic.

But I really think this could be nice idea, something different for a night out in Belfast, rather than going out and getting s**t faced. Also with the new Mac building opening, I think Belfast’s arty/creative culture is growing slowly. This post has noted my idea for future reference and I mean future as I couldn’t do such a night without living here and that still could be some time away yet.

The aesthetics of technology and design

MichaelGLove — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:53:43 +0000

This week was the final technology and design lecture ever. It came from the one and only, Hugh Pizey. The man who has been our lecturer for our 4th year of Uni at the GSA. He talked about the aesthetics of technology and design. He briefly discussed some possible influences on design such as form, function, branding, fashion and decade. He then showed a scene of the film 2001 (the one were the large black box appears to all the monkeys) From this, he then lead into talking about other boxes in technology and design, he showed many examples but one company I had never heard of was LaCie. So I decided to do a little research into this company and show you some examples.

LaCie is the ”premier manufacture of high quality digital storage”. The stuff they make is cracking, if you weren’t told what it was you wouldn’t know by the look of it. But the sort of products LaCie manufacture do you really need to know what its function is? Just as long as it’s doing it correctly.

LaCie 4big Quadra - 4 to 12 TB Hard drive

LaCie Network Space 2 - 1 TB to 2 TB Network Hard drive

LaCie Brick Desktop Hard Drive – 1TB

LaCie XtremKey – 8GB to 64GB

LaCie Bobourg USB Speakers

Good video on biomimicry (again)

MichaelGLove — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:28:52 +0000

Every time he says architecture think he saying products. Architecture design is very similar to product design… it is all design.
Video similar to one I posted before, this one is more detailed.

How might biomimicry save the world?

MichaelGLove — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:16:44 +0000

Hopefully without sounding like an eco warrior, we all know that we are on the tipping point in terms of how the future of the world in very uncertain. I’m talking about when we have used up over 1/2 of the world fossil fuel resources. Now this is a very gloomy topic and if you’re a pessimist you will see very little hope, as we really need the oil to innovate are way out of this recourse crises. This is true, but if it does all go down the pan, which it probably will. Society has a whole will have to change, be more efficient with energy, products will have to perform to a higher standard like never seen before. It will push people to think in new ways to develop, to change, to evolve, into a new way of living. This is where I think biomimicry is here to help, nature has been here for 3.8 billion years. It technically has all the answers, it has works out to survive anything the world has thrown at it. How does it do it? Well that what we are trying to learn. In our short 3 million years we have only really learned the basics of nature, how to burn bash and bury things. We burn fuel to change and bash materials to manufacture products and then what do we do with the products, we bury them. But nature doesn’t burn or bash but does bury, so we one-third of the way there. Really biomimicry is a tool help save the world, we still need to come up with innovation. But will this be enough?

Check this video, by Janine Benyus, the sexy poster girl of biomimicry!

Business Innovations Inspired by Nature

MichaelGLove — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:42:56 +0000

Just watched this rather boring video on biomimicry by Jakki Mohr a Professor of Marketing at the University of Montana-Missoula. A lot of the stuff is pretty generic, but there is a bit I found interesting. Which is that big business like Nike and IDEO do biomimicry too (see image below has full list). I’m going to do some research on this and follow this post up, stay tuned!

Biomimicry Gone Bad!

MichaelGLove — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:23:20 +0000

Found a wired article that lists things in nature that we should never mimic, pretty funny.

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around.

2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this “pseudopenis,” which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit.

3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom’s torso and into her pouch for a nipple.

4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby’s entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack.

5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait — it can’t!

6 Shark-fetus teeth. A few shark species have live births (instead of laying eggs). The Jaws juniors grow teeth in the womb. The first sibling or two to mature sometimes eat their siblings in utero. Mmm … siblings.

7 Human stomach. People can digest a lot — except for cellulose, the primary component of plant matter. Why don’t we have commensal bacteria in our guts to do it? They’re busy helping termites.

8 Slug genitalia. Some hermaphroditic species breed by wrapping their sex organs around each other. If one of said members gets stuck, the slug simply chews it off. What. The. Hell?

9 Quadrupeds. Let’s say you’re a four-footed animal. Now let’s say you get a wound on your back, or an itch, or a bug wandering up there. Tough luck, kid. You probably can’t do much about it. Hope there’s a low branch around.

10 Narwhal tusk. The unicorn-like protuberance on a male narwhal’s head is actually a tooth that erupts through the front of the jaw and keeps on growing, up to 9 feet. Narwhal: “Doc, I have a toothache.” Dentist: “Indeed.”

Sticky Tape That’s Inspired by Beetles

MichaelGLove — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:02:42 +0000

Over at the University of Kiel a man called Professor Gorb working German technology firm Binder have development a sticky tape that was inspired by observing how beetles and other insects stick to surfaces. A beetle can easily carry up to 30 times its’ own weight while walking upside down. It does this amazing feet (pun intended) the beetle has thousands of tiny hairs called setae that cover their feet and legs. The sheer abundance of these hairs, coupled with flattened tips that can splay out to maximize contact on even rough surface areas. Below is a close up of the beetles tiny hair of the left and on the right is the developed silicon material.

I seen this in a BBC4 documentary called how it works below is video of Mark Miodownik testing the tape out.

Rise and fall of manufacturing in Scotland

MichaelGLove — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:19:26 +0000

This week technology & design lecture, came from a man called Ian Johnston. He gave an interesting overview, yep you guessed it, on the rise and fall of manufacturing in Scotland. He covered Glasgow’s history from about 1800 – 2000 detailing how originally Glasgow made heavy engineering products like boats and trains that then changed to lighter engineering products like cars, to finally very little to no products at all.

Aside from all the details he give, he brought up an interesting point that he thinks the manufacturing decline was majorly down to the relationship between the workers and management. He thinking this was a key tipping point for companies outsourcing to other counties. Yes cost of labour was an issue and it was cheaper in the east, but Scotland had all the factories and skilled workforce already in place. But this bad relationship, which give rise to many strikes, made manufacturing in Scotland unreliable. This give the other countries in the east time to learn, catchup and improve production methods. So this relationship between worker and management is vital, you can’t manufacture with no makers.

I find this point compelling, as in a resent channel 4 program Mary’s bottom Line. Where Mary Portas wants to energize the UK clothing industry by starting her own production line to manufacture a staple in any woman’s wardrobe – 100% British knickers. A playful program but with a serous point. You get to see the relationship between management and the workers and it is a very good one. They want to work and are happy to work. As a result a great product is produced, which gives people jobs and on the whole boosts the British economy.

The question is, is this relationship only existing now as we are in a period of austerity? Where people want to work, as they really need the money. If there was an abundant of jobs again would this lead to more strikes over pay? Is the gap between workers pay and managements pay too big?
Michael x

GSA Digital Design Studio

MichaelGLove — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:48:20 +0000

This weeks technology and design talk came from The Glasgow School of Art Digital Design Studio. I had never heard of the studio, I didn’t even knew it existed. But for a relatively small studio they do, some pretty cool stuff. Offering research activities revolving around 3D visualisation and a years masters education in animation.

To kick of the afternoon off we got a taste of some of the work, the animation students had produced. Interesting that a fair few of them were ex Product Design Engineering students. I am not going to show all the work shown, but if I had to be honest, some of it I didn’t really see the point in it. I understand that animation is very labour intensive. But if your going to do animation and try to use cartoon figures to convey emotion, personally I think your wasting your time. We were shown countless examples were I was impressed by the obvious amount of work put in, but could not help but think this could have been done in half the time, still partly animated and look twice as better, with the use of human actors.

The video below explains my point, the studio refereed to this type of animation as special effects… enjoy.

Michael x

Video : David Hempstead
Image : Philippe Baudelocque

What is sustainability? What objects are sustainable?

MichaelGLove — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:23:01 +0000

What is sustainability? What objects are sustainable?

Ian Grout gave this week T&D talk, he is interested in sustainability and what it is? It does sound like a very simple question. What if we just looked in a dictionary?

From Oxford dictionaries.com -

Sustainable -

adjective
1 able to be maintained at a certain rate or level:
sustainable economic growth
conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources:
our fundamental commitment to sustainable development
2 able to be upheld or defended:
sustainable definitions of good educational practice

So sustainability encompasses environmental, economic, and social dimensions, but what does that actually mean to us. To highlight our different view points of the meaning of sustainably, Ian asked us to each bring in an object that we believed was sustainable.

I bought in a 3D printer, well an image of one. Shown below:-

Objet30 Desktop 3D Printer

Why do I think it is sustainable? In the future I believe manufacturing of everyday objects and more will come to the home! Yes in your house! Cutting out manufacturing, transport and labour cost of products and in doing so help the environment. Yes it is a technological solution and would need resources to manufacture. But the possibilities in 3D printing are bigger that you think.

3D Printed Lamp

3D printed Skullplate

3D Printed Food

The 3 images above where all made on 3D printers. First being a lamp, second food and third body parts, all pretty exciting stuff. Another reason I think this a sustainable product, as it feeds our cultures desire for consumption of useless guff and makes that bit more greener. The consumption problem is how we got the world into this mess. I believe that people aren’t just going to stop consuming over night, but a 3D printer could help in the short-term or in the transition period into a future, were less consumption is the norm.

My other class mates pick things like, biodegradable bags, energy-efficient light bulbs and a jet engine that is super efficient. All fair examples and I got there thinking. But one that stood out was by Rob Hanson. He brought in the humble condom. For a simple reason an over populated world is unsustainable, so a condom, can stop people being born, therefore decreasing the population, decreasing consumerism, pollution, and every bad thing we humans do to mother nature. You can’t drink till your 18, you can’t drive till your 17, but you can legally bring consuming polluting smelly kids into this world at 16… this doesn’t seem quite right does it.

So what product do you think is sustainable? Go on have a think.

Ian Grout answer to this question was nothing. He thought it is impossible to select one object that is sustainable. As it is all relative, it is contextual. Maybe making more clean energy isn’t the right idea, maybe living with energy differently is the answer. I’ll stop now, till next time.

Michael x

Cover image : Shepard Fairey & Jamie Reid