kiranwatt

[kiranwatt]

some views of a model I made for the final exercise in 4.022, my studio this semester

[kiranwatt]

So much has happened since my last update, but here’s a quick preview of one of the projects I was working on! Its an iridescent wave kinetic sculpture that resembles a sine wave, and another modulated sine wave wrapped around a cylinder. It was featured at the MIT List Visual Art Center last week!

[kiranwatt]

I have sooo much to update! Will get to it soon :)

[kiranwatt]

I recently went to an Inclusive Design workshop hosted by Microsoft! It was a great exercise in design thinking in the IDEO framework, towards inclusivity. Of course, such an event would have been incredibly aided by meeting individuals who often feel excluded by design but this was informative in generating a framework to approach these problems - the most interesting thing I encountered was the idea that disabilities are constructs. These are evidence of the mismatch between the needs and design of a product, process or system - design can be used to mindfully included all people. This is vital for removing stigma that people with different abilities are different or any less than others.

[kiranwatt]

my MAS.863 final project!

capacitive ukelele with an app that shows you the notes your playing, related chords, live sheet music from your playing session and a recorder to save your music!

comes with:

a 3D printed stand

a conductive pic

a tiny pic holder

usb compatibility

[kiranwatt]

progress pics from my final project in How to Make (Almost) Anything! a capacitive sensing ukelele with an app that gives you realtime information on related chords, can write sheet music in realtime and records your sessions

[kiranwatt]

sneak peak of my final project for How to Make Almost Anything!

its a cap. sensing uke with an interface that I built called “Ukebox.” The idea is that you can program this instrument to sound different and customize the playing experience by recording sessions, translating them to sheet music in realtime through the app and learning to play on a uke that tells you where all the notes are that is easier to hold and interact with.

[kiranwatt]

design to reality

[kiranwatt]

found this while at home last weekend! I was figuring out how to configure my room and what special projects to take on and it’s pretty cool how spot on part of this design turned out! Check out my next post to see what I mean :)

[kiranwatt]

featured in this as well! So glad to have been a part of Hacking Arts this year - I wish there were more hackathons and conferences like this. Design and fabrication are so incredibly important to all fields. Opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds to collaborate in a creativity-positive atmosphere is so powerful and something I want to experience more of.

[kiranwatt]

I’ve been mentioned in a TechCrunch article! This feels pretty awesome :)

[kiranwatt]

excited to welcome this 3D printed trophy into my room!

[kiranwatt]

a little glimpse of my winning project at Hacking Arts 2016 with Christina Sun

[kiranwatt]

capacitive piano on thermoformed and laser engraved acrylic

This was by far one of my coolest projects this semester. The assignment was to create an input device, so I worked on a board with 16 capacitive touchpads that I connected to even large copper piano keys. When someone presses a key, they complete the circuit and a signal is received as a serial input to a program I run on my computer (you plug the board that little extension from the board to a computer with the right dongle). I engraved my logo on both sides, heated and bent corners into the acrylic and laser cut small notches on the sides so wires can be tucked under the piano surface. I also was able to use a vinyl cutter for the copper on the acrylic.

I’m really happy with how this turned out! Can you believe this entire project costs under $7 to fabricate?

[kiranwatt]

composites

I made a pair of sandals for homework a few weeks ago in How to Make Almost Anything (4.140 / MAS.863)! The assignment was to make a flexible material stiffer so I used a combination of layers of linen and burlap with resin to create a skeleton for a pair of flats. I molded it around a pair of 3D printed feet in my size in a vacuum bag to make sure it would set in the right shape, and completed it by created rubber soles from Sorta Clear-37 in some foam that I cut with a CNC router (also in my size!). The final part was to stiffen the flexible soles and assemble the parts while the liquid rubber set, so I used cardboard to provide some stiffness. 

Here’s the result!

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Wax flakes!

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molding and casting!

This week in 4.140 (How to Make) we worked on rapid prototyping. We CNC’d blocks of wax and filled them with Oomoo, the light blue stuff, (and I also used moldmax for heat-resistant molding - the red goop). Then, those molds were used to make positives of some object (the hydrostone disk). I made a wax seal stamp with my first initial and will be doing aluminum casting soon!