MA Musings

Transitions2 Huddersfield University April 2018 The culmination of all the work! The conference was absolutely fascinating, I attended on both days to assist the management and organisational team. The talks were extremely varied in subject matter as was to be expected from the breadth of conference themes. I engaged particularly with the academic papers, noting not only the content but how each was structured and presented. It was of great value to have so many different styles in a short period of time and to note what was particularly engaging in the power points (short video clips, vibrant images) and what I found hard to maintain focus for (extensive text that simply repeated the speakers words) Sign posting the content at the beginning of the talk and also keeping to time.   Transitions2 Posters Huddersfield University April 2018 I was slightly surprised at how badly over time many of the speakers went, especially considering people tend to talk faste...

The evolution of visual cohesion. Team robot has worked very successfully as a machine that is greater than the sum of it's parts. We have seen many different colourschemes/layouts and concepts for the look of the website and the posters cycle through, and through each iteration we have blended everyones strongest ideas to create something that is definitely a group design rather than one persons vision. Often I have suggested an initial concept in a group meeting, and sketched it out roughly using readily available clip art, but this has then been enhanced and embellished further by B and R as the skilled graphic artists and software practitioners, evolving along the way as they developed logo's and backgrounds to create a cohesive style. M has kept us on track with making sure the information is clear, as English is her second language and she also comes from industry, her priorities for legible typefaces and clear headings has been invaluable for keeping us comi...

Sketchy Robots picture of Alice (2018) As it was national Science week, I took a young friend to enjoy Robot Day at the Quad in Derby. There were many interesting innovations and projects in development being demonstrated as well as a variety of lectures on Robotics, AI and related themes. I was particularly pleased to meet "Sketchy" the drawing robot who drew a likeness using an android phone picture taken at the time to create and then execute a line drawing. Whilst not as sophisticated as Aaron , the pictures created were definitely unique and recognisable as sketchy's work. Also of particular interest was an R&D company investigating nano skin. During the Netrologix lecture, the possibilities of a new type of skin, capable of immense data capture via nanotechnology was demonstrated. The company was initially formed as part of a student project investigating an alternative drug/needle method of administrating medicines, and is now engaged in exciting R...

Pitch Presentation created by Team Robot in Google Slides 2017 Our Vir-Toile Pitch Presentation had lots of great research, (Following my Pitch Plan, we each undertook to research one company and one aspect of the project, make a slide, write a paragraph and then compile everything together) but the pitch did not contain as many facts and figures as we felt the project could do with, so Team Robot sat down, brainstormed and wrote a list of questions we wanted real figures for These included.... How much water does it take to grow the cotton to make 1m of calico? How much calico does a design studio use for toiles each week? how much of that is thrown away? How many VR headsets were sold last year? in the 5 years before that? and in the 5 years before that? How much energy does it take to run a VR headset for a day? M was delegated to find the answers to these questions as her task of the week.... I also did a quick personal poll in a closed costume-studio group on Facebook to see h...

New exciting Visual AI development....

  Team Robot  Hewitt, J. 2017   What is your evaluation of the project and the project idea to date? Who does it benefit? This has been a very interesting experience for me, coming from industry I am used to working with specialists to perform specific tasks relevant to their expertise. My expertise is obviously making costumes, which has not been an obvious relevancy for this project which needed a website and a graphic poster and a presentation......so it has been a steep learning curve to dive out of my comfort zones and have a go at writing voice overs, mocking up posters, organise schedules and plan presentations. I have enjoyed working with the team very much, we have complimented each others skills I think, and keeping the dialogue going almost constantly in WhatsApp has led to a very tight focused and supportive group. The research elements have obviously been fascinating and I have added considerably to my knowledge of digital technologies in the textile...

My initial sketch of the glove sensors and positions (2018) One of the key senses involved in draping a toile is touch. being able to feel and tweak the texture of a fabric, put it into place with accuracy and emotional creativity are essential to the success of a draper. At the moment common devices for interacting with VR are fairly large and clunky hand held devices with buttons and triggers. These can be very intuitive to use, or very not, depending on the manufacturer. I am experimenting with creating a design prototype for a lightweight glove that would enable both finger tip precision and control - enabling sensors to read exactly where in space the hand was for accurate recreation in VR, but also with return sensors of the fingertips that would allow the exact feeling of fingers on cloth, pins etc to be felt by the wearer. The prototype design will be 3D printed directly onto Power-mesh fabric with PLA  using autodesk sketchup as the design tool The p...