Technology

Fashionable Belts and Clutches Personalized with 3D Printed Hardware

DESIGNERS. Here’s a fresh example of how entrepreneurial creatives are incorporating 3D-printed designs into customized products.

Bow & Drape, the fashion brand that lets women add their personal touch to every piece, has partnered with the 3D printing marketplace Shapeways to launch a line of 3D printed, jewelry-grade metal accessories for Fall 2013.

The line includes leather belts and clutches with 3D printed hardware. The adjustable 100% leather or twill belt comes in 4 colors (black leather, tan leather, natural twill and black twill), and each customer can choose among different brass and metal buckle designs brought to life by Shapeways.

On the Bow & Drape website (www.bowanddrape.com) you can customize each Galaxy Belt with 3D printed hardware from Shapeways.
On the Bow & Drape website (www.bowanddrape.com) you can customize each Galaxy Belt with 3D printed hardware from Shapeways.

Each piece is also interchangeable so the belts function more like a collection. “They were inspired by a vintage 1970s belt from Paris,” says Creative Director and CEO, Aubrie Pagano. “We hope that our customers invest in our hardware over time. That way, women can interchange designs just as their mood changes.” 

Bow & Drape’s clutches don 3D printed zipper pulls in an assortment of animals and miscellaneous shapes. .

“The decision to incorporate 3D printing technology was a natural choice for us,” says Pagano, “we are standing at the forefront of fashion and technology, so this brand of me- commerce rings true to our ethos.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Bow & Drape on their new line of 3D printed accessories,” said Carine Carmy, Director of Marketing at Shapeways. “This partnership is a natural extension of our vision at Shapeways, which aims to enable anyone to turn an idea into reality. Shapeways and Bow & Drape share the goal of helping individuals create meaningful, personalized products, and we’re inspired to see how designers are using 3D printing to bring innovation and custom design to the fashion industry.”

Bow & Drape creates modern elegant womenswear and wants women to add their personal touch to each piece. “We believe style is as unique as a fingerprint,” says Pagano, “and so we want to equip women to really own their style and choose if they would like something a little extra special. It’s a reinvention of the private client model; everyone knows designers’ most loyal and successful customers are the ones that they work with privately to create totally personalized fashions. We are simply allowing more customers access to this service model.”

How It Works

Bow & Drape works closely with CAD designers, artisans and independent printers such as Shapeways to create designs that are a strong representation of the collection. Each design is meticulously constructed to be both aesthetically beautiful and structurally sound.

Through the Bow & Drape website, women can choose the design of their 3D printed hardware from a curated selection of vintage-inspired shapes including: geometric bows, elephants, lions, carousel horses, beetles, and even lipstick. New designs will be added each season.

Shapeways will then print each belt buckle or clutch pull to order, and Bow & Drape will attach the finished metal pieces to the customer’s selected material for delivery. The customer should receive her printed accessory within two weeks.

The Fall 2013 Collection is just the beginning. Bow & Drape is exploring new ways to allow  customers to place their marks on the design process. Other uses for 3D printing technology, the company believes, will open doors to new customer interaction models, new manufacturing processes and new product delivery channels.

Imagine in five years, being able to license a Bow & Drape design, modify it in CAD, and print it out in your home. “This is not a so distant reality,” Pagano says,” and we are excited to help usher in the future of fashion.”

The Fall 3D printed line is currently available and retails between $48 and $148.

About Bow & Drape

Launched in late 2012, Bow & Drape is an e-clothier and innovative womenswear brand bringing a custom-made approach to the hands of every female shopper. Recently named as one of Teen Vogue’s “10 Fashion Start Ups That Will Change the Way You Shop,” Bow & Drape merges high tech with high fashion. From hemlines to buttons to necklines to colors, Bow & Drape’s personalization technology encourages women to bring their personal touch to every detail of their wardrobe.

About Shapeways

Shapeways is one of the world’s leading 3D-printing marketplaces and online communities. The NY startup harnesses 3D printing to help anyone turn ideas into reality, making product design more accessible, personal, and inspiring.

Shapeways prints everything on-demand, which means that every order is customized and personalized.

LINKS

Bow & Drape

3D Printed Hardware on Belts and Clutches

Shapeways

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Digital Book World Webcast to Discuss Multi-Platform Storytelling

DBWLogoWRITERS. Digital Book World is a year-round platform for consumer publishing professionals and their partners, including agents, booksellers, and technology vendors. Digital Book World offers a range of educational resources and networking opportunities — online and in person.

On Tuesday, August 13, Digital Book World is hosting a webcast entitled, “Think Outside the Book: Multi-Platform Storytelling and Digital Publishing.” Scheduled for 12 pm ET (9 am PT and 5 pm GMT), the webcast will explain why digital publishing is the perfect format for transmedia storytelling.

The content is designed to appeal to:

  • book publishers (large and small)
  • book app developers
  • authors
  • booksellers
  • artists
  • people who embrace technology
  • people who hate technology

Transmedia experts Connie Watts and Jen Olson will discuss how book enhancements such as video, music, narration, pop-ups, games, interactive maps, and 3D objects can be strategically used to give readers more context or provide multiple entry points into a story, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. For examples, enhancements can be use to add more context around a fictional Elizabethan kingdom or liven up a golf book with local news clips from a golf tournament from the 1970s. 

Watts and Olson will explain how to use transmedia as a marketing tool, highlight strategies for collaborating with authors, and suggest techniques for connecting with children and other readers with short attention spans. They will point out that whether we like it not, digital book enhancements are here to stay.

Connie Watts and Jen Olson are the principals of WiredBallyWho, a transmedia publishing company that helps authors, business leaders, and non-profit organizations rethink their approach to traditional book publishing. They also work with artists, photographers, and musicians who want to share their talents through transmedia projects.

Tuition for the webcast is $27 for Digital Book World members and $45 for non-members.

An individual membership to DBW costs $99. Along with discounts on webcasts, online courses, and books, members get on-demand access to all webcast archives and featured audio and video and downloadable resources such an e-book formatting checklist and SEO best practices guide.

Future webcasts and courses include:

  • Webcast: Print to Digital, Digital First, Simultaneous First: What’s Your Strategy? (August 22)
  • 4-Week Course: Metadata Best Practices and Industry Certification (Begins August 19)
  • 4-Week Course: Metadata and the Future of Publishing (Begins September 16)

LINKS

Webcast: Think Outside the Book: Multi-Platform Storytelling and Digital Publishing

About Digital Book World

About WiredBallyWho

 

Canon’s Mixed Reality System Brings Images to Life in Virtual World

Creative pros know that Canon cameras, printers, copiers, and digital presses help bring high-quality images to life on screen and paper. But did you know that Canon also makes systems that bring images to life in the virtual world?

At the SIGGRAPH 2013 Conference July 21-25 in Anaheim, Canon USA is showcasing the Mixed-Reality (MREAL) System they launched in the U.S. last February. The MREAL system simultaneously merges virtual objects created through computer-generated imaging (CGI) with the real world, at full scale and in three dimensions.

The MREAL System provides an interactive, immersive experience that can support product and building design, training simulations, or interactive museum displays, building tours, or theme-park attractions.

CanonUSAMixedReality

With the MREAL System, designs can be examined, modified, manipulated, analyzed, and presented with enough realism to allow complicated ideas and plans to come to fruition more quickly. During pre-production, filmmakers can use the MREAL system to pre-visualize and set up scenes. Architects can use MREAL Systems to help clients visualize how interior or exterior building designs will look in real life at full size. MREAL systems enable experts around the world to collaborate on designing factories, refineries, and water-treatment plants in specific geographic locations.

At SIGGRAPH, Canon is previewing a new handheld display that is currently being developed as an additional option for experiencing mixed reality. The handheld display can be used in showrooms, exhibitions, and meeting rooms where it’s impractical to use MREAL’s head-mounted display.

The SIGGRAPH conference and expo attracts thousands of computer graphics and interactive technology professionals who want to learn about research and emerging technologies for animation, music, gaming, interactivity, education, art, and the web.

LINKS

Canon Mixed Reality System

Video about Canon’s Mixed Reality System

You Tube: SIGGRAPH 2013 Videos

SIGGRAPH 2013

About Canon USA

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Art Gallery at Computer Graphics Conference Merges Science and Art

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art Gallery at Computer Graphics Conference Merges Science and Art

ARTISTS. Some excellent examples of how art is merging with science and technology will be on display in the art gallery at the SIGGRAPH 2013 Conference, July 21-25 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.

Siggraph2013Thousands of computer graphics and interactive technology professionals will attend the conference and exhibition to learn about emerging technologies and attend programs on research, science, art, animation, music, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web.

The theme of exhibition in the Art Gallery at SIGGRAPH 2013 is “XYZN: Scale.” The theme reminds us that a key advantage of computer-based art is the ability to iteratively scale digital representations at will –in-out-up-down, back and forth, + and -.

Exhibits in the SIGGRAPH 2013 art gallery will explore how artists take advantage of these capabilities in the construction or aesthetic effects of their work.

Here are just three of the exhibitions you can see in this year’s gallery.

InterweavingDigitalBasketsIn an exhibit of “Hybrid Basketry,” Amit Zoran of MIT Media Research Lab merges contemporary 3D printing and traditional craft. 3D printed structures are shaped to allow the growth and development of hand-woven patterns. While the 3D printed plastic elements contribute to the aesthetics of the digital curvatures and manifolds, the hand-woven reed, jute, and canvas fibers give the baskets a unique organic appeal.

VisualizingFederalSpendingIn the exhibit “Visualizing Federal Spending,” Rebecca Ruige Xu of Missouri State University and Sean Hongsheng Zhai of Red Dot Blue Square have created 3D photorealistic compositions that provide a more aesthetically interesting view of government spending. The project uses procedural modeling with Python programming and Maya API to form organic flows of intermingled geometrical units to represent the profile of federal spending for each state. Total expenditures are scaled to a per capita basis to make different states comparable, while the overall surface area or volume occupied by each type of geometrical pattern represents its associated spending data.

DrawingMachineInterdisciplinary artist and engineer Robert Twomey of the University of Washington will be showing a Drawing Machine.Laboring in place of the artist, the precision-controlled CNC device will work with unfaltering patience and inhuman precision to fill a sketchbook with images over the course of the exhibition.

On the SIGGRAPH website, you can find descriptions and links related to all 15 exhibits that will be featured in the Art Gallery. The creators of the works will be talking about the works during two “Art Talks” panel discussions on Wednesday, July 24. A reception for the artists, designers, and authors of the works selected for SIGGRAPH 2013 will be held Tuesday, July 23 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm in the art gallery.

LINKS

SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Gallery

SIGGRAPH 2013 Conference

 

New Art E-Book Uses InnovativeTechnology to Show Full-Resolution Images

A new type of art e-book by Israeli photographer Angelika Sher can be downloaded free from Apple’s app store. Because innovative hipix® technology was used to create the ebook, iPad users can view and navigate the 65 images in the book at the highest possible resolution.

AngelikaSher

Developed by Pervasent Consulting, the photo art book includes two gigapixels of full-resolution images. Single images that exceed 100 megapixels are displayed in fraction of a second.

Created by Human Monitoring Ltd., hipix® is a compression and rich image format technology that uses ubiquitous video support to create and display still images. It alleviates some of the challenges associated with publishing image-rich content in a compact app.

By compressing files far more effectively than prevailing technology, hipix keeps app sizes reasonable while enabling highly responsive and immaculate display of ultra-high image resolutions. The download size of the Angelika Sher art book is about 25 MB.

Tap any of the images in the book to get a full resolution view. Tap again to return to album view.

“For the first time, I could wholeheartedly share pictures over the digital medium, knowing that the full level of detail is available to the viewer”, said photographic artist Angelika Sher. “The production of hipix® based books or magazines is a fast and simple, low-cost process of enhancing existing PDF based material with the original high resolution images, bypassing the need for a costly redesign.”

In addition to art books, the process is well suited for digital photo albums, catalogues and brochures.

HippixViews

“The resulting application is powerful, yet compact, bringing out the true quality of the original material without the penalties of a large download.” says Ira Dvir, co-inventor of hipix®.

The app development company Pervasent Consulting has delivered hundreds of mobile applications to Apple’s App Store, including custom consumer apps and apps for restaurants, mobile publishing, and enterprises. They also have expertise in mobile application development for Android devices.

LINKS

EBook: Angelika Sher

About hipix

Pervasent Consulting

Cyberart Exhibit Features Digital Projections and iPad Art

Visitors to The Boston Cybertarts Gallery this spring can experience “Poetic Codings,” a new-media art exhibition that juxtaposes wall-based flatscreen displays, projections, and interactive installations with iPad apps on mobile devices. The exhibition runs April 27 to June 2, 2013, with an opening  reception on Friday, April 26.

PoeticCodingsWallArt3Curated by new-media artist Jody Zellen, “Poetic Codings” first appeared at the Fellows of Contemporary Art gallery in Los Angeles.

The exhibition includes computer projections by John Carpenter, Jeremy Rotsztain, and Casey Reas and 20 original, interactive iPad artworks by eight artists (John Baldessari, Jason Lewis, Lia, Erik Loyer, Jeremy Rotsztain, Rafaël Rozendaal, Scott Snibbe, and Jody Zellen).

More information about the artists and their work can be found in the 68-page “Poetic Codings” catalog that can be ordered as print-on-demand book from Lulu.com or downloaded as a PDF from Jody Zellen’s website. Scanning the QR codes published next to the art will take you to a webpage where you can download the app the artist used.

In the catalog’s introduction, Zellen says interacting with a digital work in public isn’t the same experience as sitting back and navigating a work on a mobile device: “Apps are contained, and fill a small screen. Installations are often immersive environments. While the graphic elements and animations can be similar in both formats, how the viewer interacts with the artwork is very different.”

Computer Projections

“Dandelion Clock” by John Carpenter. In this interactive work, the seeds of a digitally created dandelion float away with the viewer’s proximity to the wall.

Jeremy Rotsztain’s Action Painting is a video projection transferred onto a large canvas in the style of Jackson Pollock. It is composed using data from action movies as material.

Casey Reas, one of the inventors of the Processing computer language for artists, presents Signal to Noise (Software 1). Using television signals as a raw material, this piece distorts contemporary information into new abstract data structures.

Art on Mobile Devices

Since the introduction of the iPhone, new-media artists have been using low-cost or free apps to produce a wealth of interactive art for both iOS and Android systems.

“These are some of the most inventive and interactive art works available today,” observes George Fifield of Boston Cyberarts Gallery. “Even though several of these apps have become wildly popular, it is clear that neither the art world nor the computer industry knows what to make of these art apps.”

For example, instead of using drawing and painting apps that appear in the “art” category of the iTunes store, the “Poetic Codings” artists created works with interactive digital-art apps that can be found in the Entertainment or Lifestyle categories on iTunes.

PoeticCodingsApps

Fifield hopes the art world will begin to take notice of what’s possible with some of these new apps. He believes the 20 apps used in “Poetic Codings” signal the beginning of a revolution that will bring interactive digital art to millions through the mobile devices. The apps also connect artists directly to an audience through an app store.

About The Cyberarts Gallery

Located in the Green Street station on the MBTA’s Orange line in Jamaica Plain, the Boston Cyberarts Gallery is an independent art organization that focuses on new and experimental “cyberart.” Cyberart encompasses any artistic endeavor in which computer technology is used to expand artistic possibilities.

The computer’s unique capabilities are integral elements of the creative process in the same way that paint, photographic film, musical instruments, and other materials have always been used to express an artist’s vision. The Boston Cyberarts Gallery brings together members of the new media community, reaches out to the general public, and supports emerging and established artists alike.

LINKS

Boston Cyberarts

Poetic Codings

Exhibition Essay and Catalog: Poetic Codings

 

 

Google Expands Art Project Globally

As part of a major global expansion of its Art Project, Google has signed new partnerships with 151 art institutions in 40 countries. More than 30,000 objects are now available to view online in high resolution, up from 1,000 in the first version of the Art Project. Street View images now cover 46 museums, with more on the way.

With a few simple clicks, art lovers can discover not just paintings, but also sculpture, street art, photographs, historic and religious artifacts, and important manuscripts.Creations from a wide variety of cultures and civilizations are represented, including Brazilian street graffiti, Islamic decorative arts and ancient African rock art.

Imaging experts photograph paintings at the Chateau De Fountainbleau in France.
Imaging experts photograph paintings at the Chateau De Fountainbleau in France.

The expanded Art Project includes a wide range of institutions, including large and small traditional art museums as well as less traditional settings for great art, including the White House in Washington D.C.

Some of the new partners in the U.S. include the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina.

New partners worldwide include: the Musée d’Orsay in Paris; the Museo del Oro in Bogotá, Colombia; The Rock Art Ressearch Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa; The Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar; the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil; the Tokyo National Museum in Japan; the Hong Kong Museum of Art in China; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Australia.

According to Art Project head Amit Sood, the project was expanded worldwide because “It’s no longer just about the Indian student wanting to visit Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is now also about the American student wanting to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi.”

How the Google Art Project Works

If you want to explore museums around the world without leaving home, you can enjoy either a “museum view” of various galleries within selected museums or get a “microscopic view” of selected artwork from each institution.

For the museum views, a specially designed Street View ‘trolley’ took 360 degree images of the interiors of selected galleries. These images were then stitched together to enable smooth navigation within each room. The gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps.

Some of the 30,000+ high-resolution artworks were photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or ‘gigapixel’ photo capturing technology. Gigapixel imaging technology can create files containing more than 7 billion pixels (about 1000 times more detailed than the average camera). With these super-high-resolution images, you can study details of the brushwork and patina beyond what is possible with the naked eye.

Discovering, Learning, and Sharing

You can browse the content of Google’s Art Project by the artist’s name, the artwork, the type of art, the museum, the country, the city and the collection. Using new Explore and Discover tools, you can find artworks by period, artist, or type of artwork from different museums around the world.

To help you learn more about the items each museum chose to display on Art Project, you can enjoy expertly narrated videos, audio guides, viewing notes, and other resources provided by the museums.

With the My Gallery feature, you can select any of the 30,000 artworks (along with favorite details) and build your own personalized gallery. You can add comments to each painting and share the whole collection with friends, family, and study groups. Google+ and video hangouts are integrated on the site to make it easy to share and talk about your galleries. You can upload and share audio and video content to your collections.

Some teachers have already begun using the Art Project in their classrooms. A dedicated Education section has been created for teachers and students.

For the next phase of the project, Google is considering developing an experimental section to show how artists are using new emerging technologies to showcase their art.  

Bringing Culture Online

“Google is committed to bringing all types of culture online and making it accessible,” says Nelson Mattos, VP of Engineering for Google. “The Art Project demonstrates how the Internet helps spread knowledge.”

Under the auspices of its Cultural Institute, Google is producing high resolution images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, digitizing the archives of famous figures such as Nelson Mandela, and creating 3D models of 18th century French cities.

LINKS

Google Art Project

Art Project YouTube Channel

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Google Art Project Lets You Visit Museums in Nine Countries