Hacks

Kinect 3D Modeler

Kinect 3D Modeler

Austrian Kinect hacker Sebastian Pirch from 3rD-EYE in Salzburg has built a 3D modeling system using a Microsoft Kinect controller and an Arduino. Using a pair of custom soft circuit gloves to provide a mouse click, Sebastian is able to model objects in mid air, in 3D, using gestures captured by the Kinect, which are then rendered with an LCD projector. It’s a little crude now, but he’ll probably be designing flying armored suits by this time next year.

Dramatic Gestures With Kinect

Dramatic Gestures With Kinect

I’m indebted to a commenter on yesterday’s Kinect + Tesla Coils post for pointing me to the website of artist, engineer, and interaction designer Gerry Chu. Among the many treasures in Gerry’s online portfolio is this short video showing his use of a hacked Kinect to instantaneously correlate a dramatic gesture with a dramatic sound. He calls it Motion Emotions. [Thanks, Josh Kopel!]

Rerooting Blythe Doll Hair – CRAFT Video Podcast

Rerooting Blythe Doll Hair – CRAFT Video Podcast

I started getting interested in Blythe when I wanted to make a three-dimensional self portrait, and was dumbfounded by the enormous community of customizers working with the Blythe Doll. One of the main online sources for customization is Puchi Collective, which houses oodles of tops for changing her eyechips, face makeup, and clothes. I was mainly interested in rerooting her hair, as the doll I acquired from co-blogger Jenny Ryan had blonde hair, and I wanted to use my own wavy red hair from a recent haircut. I made this video to illustrate the process, based on text-and-image tutorials I found on Puchi and Flickr. View on craftzine: http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/01/rerooting_blythe_doll_hair_video.html

Music is Yellow Cactus by I, Cactus: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/artist/i_cactus

Arcophone Mark II Debuts

Arcophone Mark II Debuts

Members of the Perth Artifactory hackerspace in Western Australia built a Arcophone, an instrument that uses Jacob’s Ladders to make music. However, they had a need to build a quick Version Two one and it looks great! Owing to the Arcophone Mk I being stuck somewhere on the Nullabor owing to damage to train tracks […]