I’m so very proud to say that we recently met our Kickstarter goal for “Rural Revival”, a 90 second film about Tesla Inc.
With director Adam Pray and a crew of 14 + cast of 5… The idea was to leverage Tesla’s Project Loveday to reach a million skeptical rural Americans with a powerful message of consequence and hope. Our particular spot is focused on Solar Power (as opposed to Tesla’s cars).
I’m speaking at Together Boston today at 4pm. If you don’t know me and want to meet me, come up and say hi! cheers.
http://togetherboston.com/
Found by typing in “robot” into kickstarter.
Successes:
telepresence: Romo, Oculus (our friend Colin in Vancouver), Botiful, Robodance,
hexapod: Hexy, Stompy (our friends Gui + crew at the Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville, MA)
multicopter: transforming multicopter
Other: troller hobby robot
Music: “Gamelatron” (NYC buddies)
Failures:
Telepresence: Oddwerx
Scanning robot: Gado
military: “paintball car”
Walking machine: Cheebot
arm: Baccus
Art bot: botspot
Major Failures (projects that I would have guessed would do great): “Shimi“, “HyQ walking machine“, “Melody Man“, “Muralizer”
Crowdfunding Papers:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2088298
Artistic Research
2012-2013:
0) Solar Ritual and Worship
1) Art From Scratch (aka Robots from Scratch)
2) Installations in Extreme Environments
3) Cohesive Art
4) The Role of Art in Product Development (beyond ID)
5) Nostalgia
6) Physical Virtual Reality (rapidly created physical surroundings)
7) How things exist and how they are valued.
8) Pushing Boundaries in Art using Technology (creating awe)
9) Physical Generative Art
2006-2011
-Sustainably
-Energy
-Progress and definition
A tidalwave of Pinterest has hit. What does this mean for product designers like myself? How does this affect me as an artist/engineer?
1) It’s an amazing source of inspiration.
2) It’s 97% women (out of 11 million users)
3) It’s a lot easier than Tumblr, and has a better layout and better grouping.
4) You can get instant feedback.
5) It integrates with facebook very nicely.
But you can’t really post photos (or at least I have not yet learned how). So my fathers photography will have to be posted here and then pinned my Pinterest inspiration board.
Robert Kearns – intermittent wiper blades.
Sir James Dyson – vacuum cleaners.
And while we are at it… a list of inventors who were first, but never really made much money:
Warren de la Rue – first lightbulb, didn’t last long enough. Edison succeeded roughly 60 years later!
Innocenzo Manzetti – Original inventor of the telephone (Italian).
Elisha Gray – second inventor of the telephone (American). He probably made lots of money off of other inventions.
Something to think about:
-Alexander Bell’s mother and wife were both deaf.
Several times a year, I stumble upon an issue, discovery, thought or idea that gives me shivers up my spine. Apparently this is caused by an epinephrine release… something to do with the hypothalamus and the fight or flight response. All I know is that it’s a pretty big source of motivation for me to learn and innovate.
Most recently, my mind was blown by the discovery of Kepler 22b. On the back of the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets, the recent discovery of this new earth-like planet nothing short of revolutionary. It’s probably too early to say, but this may prove to be one of the most important scientific discoveries since the invention of the transistor.
It would seem that ever since we landed on the moon, people have just been a little to “meh” about manned space flight. The idea that it’s totally possible for someone from our generation to send out a probe of somekind with in my lifetime is a huge motivator. This completely rejuvenates my state of wonder on a number of levels. And this is just the beginning.
This is the first in an what will probably turn into a series of posts called “Shivers Up my Spine”.