SML Pro Blog = See-ming Lee 李思明 + Professional Blog 專業博客; See-ming Lee 李思明 SML is a designer, photographer, technologist and a Linux-loving gay geek in NYC; http://seeminglee.com
PREF Magazine, a french, bimonthly gay oriented magazine publishes photos from the Kiss series in their March/April 2010 issue (No. 37).
Cover
Contributors: pp 6-7
Goodies. Now I have a bio in French!
Spread: pp 92-93
Kiss: Ryan Gilbert + Michael Correntte / 20100117.7D.02106.P1.L1.SQ.BW / SML
Spread: pp 94-95
Kiss: Matthew Ossenfort + Jeffrey Denke / 20100117.7D.02081.P1.L1.SQ.BW / SML
Special thanks to Ryan Gilbert + Michael Correntte + Matthew Ossenfort + Jeffrey Denke who were so kind to kiss in front of my camera! Also much thanks to the editor in chief at PREF for this wonderful opportunity.
The Fairytale Fashion Collection uses technology to create magical clothing in real life. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are used to create clothing with blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes.
I first learned about this project by Diana Eng (Twitter / Wikipedia) at Eyebeam's Open Studios last year. As a designer + technologist, I actively seek out people working on things that infuses art + science. And so when Diana told me that her collection's debut at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York, I was more than delighted to check her out.
The Collection
Research and development for the Fairytale Fashion collection are shared online at FairytaleFashion.org as an educational tool that teaches about science, math, and technology through fashion. Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States.
A total of nine looks were showcased on the runway on February 24th, 2010, and some of them will be available for purchase on March 1st at DianaEng.com.
1. EL Wire Dress. Aqua silk chiffon organically draped dress edge with electroluminescent wire controlled by an accelerometer. Circuit boards are housed in 3-D printed neck piece.
2. Deployable Hoodie. Red wood silk hoodie with Miura Ori structure pleat pattern to help the hood collapse small and open big.
3. Twinkle Dress and Twinkle Cardigan. LED circuits are hand embroidered with silverized thread and a custom sewable circuit board Twinkle Pad, developed specially for the Fairytale Fashion Collection. Twinkle Dress's removable grey silk chiffon twinkle pad circuit overlays washable black cotton American Apparel dreww. Twinkle Cardigan's removable black wool melton shoulder patches overlay a cotton sweater.
4. Cameo. Peach silk organza edged with electroluminescent wire. Circuit boards are housed in 3-D printed Cameo.
5. Twinkle Skirt. LED circuits are hand embroidered with silverized thread and a custom sewable circuit board Twinkle Pad, developed specially for the Fairytale Fashion Collection.
7. Inflatable Dress. Cream silk chiffon, draped over plastic inflatables and white silk flowers.
8. EL Wire Coat. White silk organza illuminated by EL wire patterns beneath which are controlled by an accelerometer.
9. Floating Dreams Dress.
Circuit Bending Orchestra
In typical geek fashion, the music accompanying the show was no other than a circuit-bending orchestra made up of team members: Lara Grant, Sarah Grant, Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau.
In fact here's a video of Lara Grant explaining to me how this all works:
Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by mechanical engineering. She is a designer from Bravo’s Emmy nominated TV show, Project Runway season 2 and author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Diana is cofounder of NYC Resistor hacker group. Diana is currently a resident artist at Eyebeam.
Extra, Extra!
Hilary Mason (Facebook / Twitter), a computer science professor with a background in machine learning, data mining, and web applications, tends the lighting control. She is currently on sabbatical to explore real-world implementations of these technologies.
Gadget Galore at the press section:
Twinkling Backstage. The backstage literally lights up because of all the electroluminescent wires and Twinkle Pads.
SoundCloud is a social network startup for musicians based in Berlin. Originally from Stockholm, the founders created the site after they have grown "tired of getting emails with YouSentIt links or FTP log-ins just to be able to check out [their] friends latest soon-to-be released tracks."
Just a couple of years ago, when you mention music and social networks, the first site that came to mind is MySpace. Yes, MySpace is a social network and they do put much weight on music and musicians, but MySpace fails to innovate beyond implementing comments + music player, and that is barely social. In this blog post I will go through the many innovations SoundCloud brought to the music scene and explain why I like it so much.
Commenting is the backbone of every social network, but what SoundCloud provides which no one else did was time-based commenting. Each track on SoundCloud is displayed as a waveform, so you can visually see how the music looks like. You can leave a comment to the entire track, but most useful is to get feedback on a specific time segment on the track. Best of all, the UI automatically displays those comments when the playhead hits the time code, which is uber cool.
Innovation 2: Continuous playback of recent tracks from people you follow
A really useful feature on SoundCloud is the ability to play all the tracks from people you follow. Most social networks for musicians tend to treat the musician as a social media object, and if you want to hear what's new, you need to browse the musician's page to hear his/her new songs. SoundCloud, on the other hand, treats each track as a social media object, and places all the tracks on the same page. Best of all, whenever you are on a page with multiple tracks, hitting the play button will play all the tracks on the same page one after another. Want to be forever entertained by great original music? Sign up an account, follow a bunch of people you like and voila!
SoundCloud has tight integration with other social networks. It currently supports integration with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. You can independently customize the message you want to send to push to the different networks, with the option to select whether or not to publish your own tracks and favorites. I push new tracks to Twitter + Facebook but to lower the noise level on my very active Twitter feed, I do not publish favorites to it. The customizable message is sweet as it allows me to hashtag my tweets more easily for data indexing and searching (which I now use extensively on Friendfeed).
Here's an official demo video so you can see this action:
One of the most frustrating experience working with musicians and sound designers is sending large audio files back and forth. Do you put it on the FTP? Do you RapidShare? Host your own extranet? Creating custom and secured solutions are often costly, but SoundCloud made it easy with their DropBox. The DropBox enables everybody, even people who are not on SoundCloud, to share their tracks with you. The DropBox supports a versatile range of audio formats: AIFF, WAVE, FLAC, OGG, MP3 and AAC. Best of all, there is no file size limit to your uploads!
The embeddable widgets is written completely in html + css, which means that you can style it anyway you want, but the minimally designed stock widgets in both white and black fits in perfectly on any graphic design you already have.
All in all I have had a very good experience on SoundCloud, and I have been recommending it to all my musician + sound designer friends. While SoundCloud intends to be a tool for musicians, it is also a really great way for music lovers who wish to discover indie music not found any where else. Because of the very active community and group participation, I am grateful to have met many great artists in Brooklyn as well as people around the world who are passionate about symphonic electronca.
The Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; sometimes simply referred to as Gewandhausorchester) is a famous German orchestra based in Leipzig, Germany. It is named after the concert hall in which it is based, the Gewandhaus ("Textiles Hall" - originally, a hall in the building that housed Leipzig's thriving textile trading floor). — Wikipedia
Eyebeam (http://eyebeam.org) is the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States. Founded in 1996 and incorporated in 1997, Eyebeam was conceived as a non-profit art and technology center dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production. Since its founding, Eyebeam has supported more than 130 fellowships and residencies for artists and creative technologists.
Eyebeam organizes open studios twice a year, and I had the pleasure to visit one of them by invitation of Matthew Borgatti, a designer + technologist I met on Flickr a few weeks before the opening. Here are some highlights from my collection of photographs and video interviews conducted during the show.
The spokesperson of littleBits, a friend of the artist, talks to See-ming Lee about the sculpture / mixed media painting: a birds eye view of a little over 3 years of violence, strife, and very bright lights rocking Lebanon, remembered and replayed in 45 minutes of proportionally timed light display.
Ayah Bdeir Les Années Lumière 22 x 30 inches Electronics on Canvas produced June 2008 in collaboration with Rouba Khalil
3. Fairytale Fashion
Fairytale Fashion (http://fairytalefashion) is a project created by Diana Eng (LinkedIn / Twitter / dianaeng.com), a fashion designer who works with science and technology. She is the co-founder of the NYC Resistor hacker group, and is popularly known as one of the designers in the Bravo TV series hit Project Runway.
Fairytale Fashion uses technology to create a collection of magical clothing in real life, and share their work in weekly research and development web videos. Here are some video interviews shot during the event:
3.1 Fairytale Fashion: Part 1: Overview (Diana Eng)
Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, two artists who have been collaborating on work together for over a decade in New York, chat with me regarding their new collectible sculptures limited-edition series Deadly Sins. The set of snowglobes are available individually, each of which contain one word from the seven deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride - and represented by a unique color.
Window Farms (Flickr / windowfarms.org) are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.
In February 2009, through a residency at Eyebeam, Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray began to build and test the first Window Farms prototype. Growing food inside NY apartments is a challenge, but within reach. The foundational knowledge base is emerging through working with agricultural, architectural and other specialists, collecting sensor data, and reinterpreting hydroponics research conducted by NASA scientists and marijuana farmers. They have been researching and developing hydroponic designs that are inexpensive and made from relatively inexpensive materials. The working prototype is a drip system made from recycled water bottles, holding 25 plants. Beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, basil, lettuce and kale are thriving.
I had to pleasure of talking to Maya Nayak, who explained to me how it works:
See-ming Lee 李思明 SML is an art director, designer, photographer and technologist in New York City.
See-ming combines his unique skill sets as both a designer and programmer to help international Fortune 500 companies with their websites, advertising campaigns, interactive installations and prototypes which has led to numerous industry recognitions.
Projects he worked on had been featured in The Associated Press, BBC, Business Week, CBC, CNet, CNN, Forbes, IHT, New York Times, Red Herring, ReadWriteWeb, Reuters, USA Today, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Web Designer Depot and Yahoo! They have also been recognized in multiple Omni Intermedia Awards, One Show Interactive awards, WWW Health Awards, WMA Web Awards and Graphis Interactive Annuals.
Notable clients in the past include Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, British Airways, David's Bridal, EMI Muisc Publishing, IBM, Prada, Regus Group, MasterCard International, McKinsey & Co, Morgan Stanley, WebMD, Yale University and Ziff Davis Media.
See-ming holds a B.A. in fine art with a concentration in graphic design from Yale University.
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