Don’t forget to vote for the Anywhere Organ before it’s too late! http://bit.ly/anywhere-organ

The Fun Theory Group was founded to gently change people’s behavior through fun and play. They seek to create a public dialog of interaction with open art installations. I’ve been nominated for a grant to help me create something called the Anywhere Organ.

I’ve designed a pipe organ that can be installed into any space, a fire escape, an abandoned warehouse, a drawbridge, turning the entire space into an aspect of the larger instrument. Pipe organs have always fascinated me and it will become a tremendous instrument for getting people to play with space and sound. I’ll be collaborating with Brooklyn musicians to record the sound it makes and put on interactive shows with the organ. Still, I need you to vote for the project to make it happen. Take a look here http://bit.ly/6CDc08 and rate the project.

Thanks for looking. Thanks for reading.

-M@

I’ve discovered a few sources for MRI images and the software to turn them into editable 3d meshes. You should check out my process on Thingiverse!

Of course you want to be part of the world’s greatest experiment. You know, the one where a man is shot into space and forced to watch bad movies. Well you’re most fortunately in luck.

Download the files from Thingiverse here.

I’d like to extend a fond thank you to MAKE for putting out the word on my Functional 3d Printed Handcuff design. Plus if you already caught it here take a look at the new photos.

See the whole set on Flickr.

See the full writeup here.

A few months ago I published some experiments I’d been doing emulating MIT’s Bokode technology at home. For those of you who don’t know Bokode is a method developed in the Camera Culture Group at the Media Lab that tucks huge amounts of readable graphic information into a space as small as a LED. This is done by using tiny printed info just behind a lens and just in front of a strong light. When you point a camera at the lens and pull out of focus the lens projects a blown up image of the microprint on your camera’s film plane.

You might have noticed the blurry blobs that show up on film when you take a picture of distant lights or pinpoint bright spots that aren’t quite in focus. This effect is called Bokeh, after the Japanese word for blurry. You can find details on how it works here, and details on how MIT used this effect and turned it into a way to create passive, unobtrusive tagging with Bokode here.

I love the new set of home fabrication 3d printers that are emerging. RepRap is a pretty fascinating project. Makerbot is amazing, affordable, and the folks who operate the company are the salt of the earth (though they don’t cause crops to wither.)  At the moment the machines are pretty basic. They’re not very well suited to jobs that require strength or precision. However, the quality of their output is improving daily and given how easy they are to modify and how open the projects are people come along regularly, releasing their experiments and improving the designs by leaps and bounds.  I thought I’d create a design that creates a working mechanism using only printed parts from these machines. This pair of handcuffs is downloadable, printable, and functional. If you print a copy of your own please let me know.

Ferret7 fabricated his own set! Hot!

Jake Appelbaum posted some incredibly hispeed film of himself on twitter. I just had to do a cut.

On YouTube and Vimeo.

See Ming Lee (talented photographer, designer, programmer, and all around badass) found my little spaceman lamps online and came to Eyebeam’s open house to chat. Did I mention that he’s a videographer, composer, and webdesigner?

Cool. I spoke with Irina Slutsky about Steampunk, corsets, and codpieces at Maker Faire ‘09. Do watch, won’t you?

This guy has been a recurrent sketch hanging around in notebooks and receipts for a while. It’s nice to have him all finished and photographed. Possibly there will be a short run of duplicates. I’d love to have him in metal.

I sculpted this in polymer clay over a few days. I’m still debating how to go about making a mold, casting some duplicates, and options for casting in steel or bronze.

Apparently there’s been a curse on the DNA lounge these past fifteen years. The curse stipulates that anyone commissioned to make a sign for the DNA disappears under mysterious circumstances, rescinds on the offer, or becomes a gigantic douchebag. Jabs against my character aside I believe I have broken this curse for… BEHOLD!

We made one negative sign (a sheet with letters cut out) and one positive (what you see here.) This means I got two signs out of one cutting procedure. This is all part of a clever scheme of mine to do less work for more money at all times.

Since the plasma cutter is a bit of a wonky invention we welded the sign down to the bed to keep it from bending due to the heat of cutting. We actually had a sheet of plywood on the cutting table to kneel on and adjust the head to keep it from crashing up into the warping metal and welding itself in place.

See the whole set here.

Here’s a small little puzzle done at Techshop on one of their laser cutters. The image on this one came from Skulladay.com.

Enjoy a googly eye skull puzzle.

*Edit! Got picked up by Skulladay.com! Hoorays! Lookatit here.*

Information is much more significant if conveyed in a clear, concise manner.

So, I was in an IHOP (Ihop? I.H.O.P?) in Wisconsin a few weeks back talking with international exchange pancaketeers and eating an enormous cheap fried steak. At the time it didn’t strike me exactly how fitting it was that the people taking my order and bussing and pouring drinks and such were all foreign exchange students… unless that’s part of IHOP’s image. If it’s standard for an International house of pancakes to truly be international please tell me. I might be blending two IHOP incidents in the midwest but I believe a song came on whose general demeanor was “let’s turn some music on and screw.” I thought that the strangest thing was it was the kind of slow country music you could picture people shagging to. Thus the chart.

Just a quick bit of illustrator faffing about. Nothing incredibly special.

This is a project that has been revolving about the mill wheel of my brains for so long I’ve worn a path through the neurons where I keep coming back to it. I made a bracelet out of python vertebrae over a year ago and since then have been stalling on actually making a series out of the idea.

Cast in wax from actual Ball Python vertebrae and then sent out to be poured in bronze.

I think these would make good fastenings for corsets.

With a cunning use of glove molds and horns from the Bone Room I’ve created these fantacular candles. If you’d like one, there are a few for sale on Etsy.

Made with a simple glove mold and some bleached beeswax. Simple, but slightly messy. There will be photos.

The beeswax is actually a lot more pleasant to work with and smells better than I'd feared. I was afraid I'd smell like the perfume section of Macy's.

*Update. My advice to you: Compressed air is a fantastic tool for loosing stuck molds. Among its many good properties are nestled several strategic issues that one must address if one isn’t absolutely certain that one’s mold isn’t completely set and cooled.*

I recommend that you explore your nearest Chinatown until you find an apothecary. They may just have some dried geckos. Buy some. I implore you to then take your antique Swiss goggles and wrap them up in a lizard and a bow. At least, that’s what I did.

They wear pretty well, save a bit of the smell of dead geckos.

A friend of mine, Carter Stokum, is starting up a brewcraft class at TechShop. This is conveniently aligning with the series of brews we’ve been crafting under the heading of “H.P. Brewcraft”

I just finished making some logos for same. Am pleased. Tentacles shine. All’s well.

There's also logos for Dark Heart and Dunwich Extra Stout in the works.

*Update. This represents a very plausible future.*

I just finished another project in machined wax. Being both a fan of victoriana and Bioshock (related afflictions) I contrived to create for myself a belt buckle of the Bioshock logo. It was milled out on the Tormach over at TechShop and then cast, as per usual, at JR Casting.

Ready for another day of carving up fellow geniuses, scientists, playwrights, and artists to harvest their genetic humors to fuel the rearrangement of my DNA.

This is the wax, as it came off the machine. It was carved with a 1/8" 15deg inc. profile bit.

This is a silicone mold made from the machined wax, the next step is to make some duplicates and send them to the caster's.

Here's the raw bronze as it came back from the caster's.

View the whole set on Flickr.

*Update. You should check out the process on Instructables here.*

I just finished fabricating these industrial looking steampunky goggles down at TechShop. I teach the CNC classes there and end up having some spare cycles to plan out projects to mill. I’ve wanted some big, bulky, industrial goggles a while. I’ve been getting pieces cast from JR Casting in Bayview, San Francisco for a while (ie this and this) and it was the perfect next step.

The lenses are laser cut 2way mirror acrylic from Tap Plastics

A SolidWorks rendering plus some Photoshop wizardry.

You're looking at freshly machined Ferris Machinist Wax from Progress Tool

It's a new hat too. Squee.

Check them all out on Flickr

I’m very pleased to have had a couple of business card designs featured in a recent article of Smashing Magazine.

The crucifix pops out for pocket-sized stabbing.

Several years ago I made these embossed business cards using brass plates and ferric chloride.

You can find some more pictures of said cards here and here.

Howdy. My name’s Matthew Borgatti. Maybe you’ve seen my illustrations or projects around, and then again perhaps you haven’t. I’ve gone by Rainman, Bofthem, M@, and GiantEye over the course of my long and mildly illustrious internet career.

If you’d like to check out some of my work, you can find it at:
http://breakfastofthemind.com
http://instructables.com/member/bofthem
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21138021@N06/
and http://whatwilli.be