Mark Applebaum is a musician (and professor at Stanford) who makes incredibly complex sound sculptures from found objects. (Via DeepFun)

The instruments consist of threaded rods, nails, wire strings stretched through a series of pulleys and turnbuckles, plastic combs, bronze braising rod blow-torched and twisted, doorstops, shoehorns, ratchets, steel wheels, springs, lead and PVC pipe, corrugated copper plumbing tube, Astroturf, parts from a Volvo gearbox, a metal Schwinn bicycle logo, and, indeed, mousetraps. It was great fun to collect this stuff and particularly satisfying to cause anxiety and suspicion among the hardware clerks who nervously eyed me as I conducted investigations of the acoustical properties of their wares. It was a feeling of accomplishment when, weeks into my research, the same salesmen would excitedly welcome me into the store, giddy with their own myopia-shedding epiphanies: "Mark, listen to how this thing sounds when you hit it with this!" My project became an informal and unexpected arts outreach program.

Anachrotechnofetishism
artifacts by pioneers of american steampunk

This upcoming Seattle art show includes all of the usual suspects (many of those who were involved with the Contraptors Lounge) and a few folks that are new to me. If you're in Seattle during this time, you might want to check this out.

Anachrotechnofetishism

Forbes has a major package on the Maker/DIY movement with profiles of Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty, Saul Griffith (top photo) of Squid Labs, Neil Gershenfeld (middle photo) of Fab Lab, Reshma Shetty (bottom photo) of Ginkgo BioWorks, Jim Newton of TechShop, Peter Semmelhack of Bug Labs, and others, illustrated how-tos, how-to videos with Eric Wilhelm of Instructables, coverage of Maker Faire, kit makers, and lots more.

Inventing The Future

I recently did an email interview with blacksmith Louie Raffloer of Seattle's Black Dog Forge; I also visited the forge to see a demonstration of his induction forge. The shop is an amazing place, with a huge assortment of equipment, art, anvils, and racks bristling with tools - a collection that's obviously taken years to acquire. Blacksmiths make everything - forges are built with fire brick, tools are forged in the shop, everything is very hands-on. Black Dog Forge does commission and art pieces ranging from beds, tables, and other furniture to door hinges, gates, and masks. Louie also teaches classes in repoussé, a surprisingly delicate process that creates a raised design on sheet metal and uses no heat.

Working metal is a process that takes an eye for reading the heat in the metal and a lot of finesse. There's a certain amount of working time after you heat a section of metal that depends on a number of factors: the type of metal, the thickness of the piece, how hot it is, and your skill and speed. The act of hammering can sustain the heat - you can actually hammer a cold piece of metal and create enough heat to light a fire. Black Dog has traditionally used natural gas and propane for forging, but Louie demonstrated his electric induction forge - it can heat a metal rod to red hot working temperature within seconds. It's really a revolutionary tool for the blacksmith - it heats very specific points on your work without heating up the whole work area, it heats FAST, and it uses considerably less energy than traditional methods. The video above shows the heating (and subsequent breaking) of a piece of pipe - you can see how quickly the small section got red-hot.

Our pal Meredith Scheff, who helped us put together the Contraptors Lounge at the Bay Area Maker Faire, has been commissioned to build a beating, mechanical heart for this year's Burning Man (yes, for Mr.
Splinters himself). She's documenting the build process over at the Steampunk Workshop.

The Man's Heart: New Kinetic Project - Part One
The Man's heart, part two: Moving between two worlds

The final day of 5 in 5 was happy-dirty, telepathic, deliciously chilly, retro-reflective, recursively meta, southwardly mobile, ephemerally illustrated, dubiously conversant, cartographically challenging, mixed, mashed and lovingly recycled.

Andrew Schneider was our final Guest Star and meta-chronicled the waning day of five. As promised, the fivers headed to Odessa where their personal bartender concocted the 5-in-5-Dead-or-Alive cocktail. The ingredients are a poorly guarded secret, but suffice it to say that there's five kinds of booze and (true story) five of the fivers had five of them each. Outside of the hangover, the week was a great success--creative, interactive, productive and prolific. In five days they completed over 60 projects. Check out the blog for details or read all my posts for a summary.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

Lenore Edman has some more pics and info about our recent Foo Camp field trip to Sturgeon's Mill, a steam-powered saw mill being restored near Sebastopol, CA.

A Visit to Sturgeon's Mill, a Steam-powered Lumber Mill

More:

• Sturgeon's Mill field trip

Day 4's 5 in 5ers drew like text, cooked like robots, threw and chirped, mapped and walked, made peace with sandwiches, strolled with Dada, arrowed electroluminescently, surfaced tubularly, put out 2 sea and put up with Zombies.

We were proud to have Make Blogger and ITP alumni Jonah Brucker-Cohen as the Day 4 Guest Star. Only a single day of super-productivity remains, then it's off to custom cocktails, assuming we survive the invasion of the undead.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

The middle day of 5 in 5 rebranded Bed-Stuy, counted clicks, twittered literature, resistored a dress, gamed a subwoofer, hacked Peggy into Lite-Brite, mapped our past, threw light sculptures, sampled soft circuits, waisted a skirt of waste, retold one story of a man named Brady and another from Beverly Cleary (a lovely lady).

Guest Starring today was ITP's own Resident Researcher Kate Hartman. There's two days, and therefore two projects per person remaining. A wrap party is planned, with rumors of a custom and probably toxic 5-in-5 cocktail concoction.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

Day 2 of 5 in 5 brought to life a periodic tote, tickets to a sunset, a year in pictures, balls of light. In an impromptu celebration of old-time computing we got earrings compatible with your PC, AsteriskFTP, and thank goodness there's finally BASIC for Twitter. Clink your glasses for a laser photo trigger, trip the family crest fantastic, snap a jacket, work some flash, and with today's guest star, compare the Olympic to the merely average.

The group is now 14 strong and with today's Guest Star Dennis Crowley, they did each project in a single day. Three more days to go! Check out the Etsy Video published yesterday by Guest Star Bre Pettis that includes FrankenFace.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

Syuzi Pakhchyan, author of our first Craft: Projects book, Fashioning Technology, was a guest on New Hampshire Public Radio's "Word of Mouth" program. You can hear the webcast of it here.

Buy Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan in the Maker Shed today!

This book demonstrates how to blend sewing and assembly techniques with traditional electronics to assemble simple circuits using conductive thread, solder joints for snaps, and switches for buttons. With the sewing machine as a viable substitute for the soldering iron, you can craft a new generation of objects that are interactive, quirky, and fashion-conscious.

Look for Fashioning Technology Kits soon this Summer in the Maker Shed! For now, check out the rest of our CRAFT Kits.

Our pal Gerard Nebesky, a.k.a. The Paella Man, will be on Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network tonight (July 30). Gerard provides the amazing paellas for Maker Days at the Bay Area Maker Faire. World-renowned Iron Chef, Bobby Flay, shows up in Gerard's back yard to challenge him to a paella throwdown. See whose Valencian cuisine reigns supreme when the smoke clears.

It's the first day of 5 in 5 and there's a parade of projects. See the gang free themselves from Positioning Systems, choose their food decisively, sash a speaker, stick socks to a tee, mate software circles, print Mega Man, enliven their claw prizes, greet with robots, calm a TV, root for poops, Eco-nomize a billfold, season some mittens, dramatize their voicemail, cut their own coins and Franken their Faces. This motivated group of ITP students and their Guest Star, Bre Pettis did each project in a single day and they'll do another four each this week for a total of around 50 different projects in five days!

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

Ten ITP students are doing 5 Projects in 5 Days:

"5-in-5 is a group event based on the New York University ITP resident researchers' project "7 in Seven" that took place the second week of June 2008. The premise goes something like this: Do a creative project every day for five straight days, starting Monday, July 28th 2008 Projects must be completed in a day, so they need to be as compact as they are creative. Each project needs a name and documentation posted by the end of the day. It should be a stand-alone accomplishment."

The original event has been enhanced with Guest Stars, daily meetings and snacks. I'll be blogging about each day here and on my own site.

From Left to Right: Armanda, Vikram, Andy, Adam, Corey, Josh, Christian, Kristin and Rob. My head is poking up behind Corey's shoulder.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

I've been enjoying Joel Johnson's fawning fanboy coverage of Syd Mead on Boing Boing Gadgets. Hey, I'd fawn, too. I'm a huge fan of Mead's and even thought about becoming a conceptual or industrial designer on his inspiration. In this episode of BBtv, Joel talks with Mead about the awesome one-of-a-kind Spinner police vehicle from Bladerunner that the folks at LEGO did as a present to Syd.

Blade Runner LEGO Spinner Car: Syd Mead with Joel Johnson

The other Mead segments on BBtv:

Jeremy Mayer makes these really fantastic evocative sculptures from old typewriters. I'm amazed by what he uses for each body part, and how he could have imagined to put things together the way he does. Via BoingBoing.

I've been excited about the forthcoming 1000 Journals documentary. In case you don't know about the 1000 Journals project and documentary, here's a synopsis:

1000 Journals is a film about people whose lives are touched by 1000 traveling journals. These blank journals were released into the world in the summer of 2000, by Someguy, a San Francisco based artist. Some people found a journal, or got it from a friend or stranger. Some signed up on the web and received it in the mail. Some wrote in them, others doodled, pasted in photographs, or added artworks. Some kept them. Some passed them on. There are no rules, and no one really monitors these journals and their movements. And yet, they are connecting tens of thousands of people worldwide, provoking and inspiring them.

In September 2003, one of the 1000, number 526, returned to Someguy, filled. What happened to the other 999? This film tells their stories. 1000 Journals shares the experience of their worldwide journeys, and chronicles the self-governed collaboration of thousands of random people who have added to this global "message in a bottle." Directed by Andrea Kreuzhage. USA. Running time: 88 mins.

"Someguy" was at the Bay Area Maker Faire. I never saw him, but I came back to the Maker's Notebook Modding Station in the Maker Shed after a break, opened up a notebook on the table, and like a visit from the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, a bunch of pages had been magically altered in my absence. Here are a few:

The 1000 Journals documentary will be running at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco from Aug. 1 - 7. Check the film's website for more upcoming screenings.

The 1000 Journals Project

More:

• Maker's Notebook Home Page

Here's part two of BBtv's tour of the TCHO chocolate factory that David covered in his Proto column in MAKE Volume 14. I love the way they've bodged together village tech, Home Depot specials, and high-tech components to create machines and sensors for a few thousand bucks that would cost tens of thousands on the market.

TCHO Chocolate, part 2: magical machines, mysterious molecules.

More:

• TCHO chocolate on BBtv

Mister Jalopy of Dinosaurs and Robots points us to the amazing automata and kinetic sculptures of Tom Haney (Atlanta, GA).

Dale Dougherty writes:

Mike Weiblen showed up to the Maker Faire Austin Town Hall on Sunday night with his own handmade T-shirt mashup, Make Austin Weird. Mike and about thirty other makers got together to meet with the Maker Faire team and discuss their own plans for the event scheduled for October 18-19 at the Travis County Expo Center and Fairgrounds.

Maker Faire

The Sashimi Tabernacle Choir is an art car project by Richard Carter, John Schroeter (Houston, TX), and some thirty volunteers. The car incorporates 250 singing Billy Bass animatronic fish and 250 mechanical lobsters, including a conductor that's perched on a boom over the hood of the 1984 Volvo sedan the choir calls home.

After the car made an appearance in Lewes, DE yesterday, the Cape Gazette wrote:

Occasionally you witness firsthand an astounding display of American ingenuity. Such is the case with the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir art car that wowed dockside crowds in Lewes Wednesday afternoon. When you see such displays, you wonder: wouldn't we do better in Afghanistan and Iraq if we rolled more of these down the streets of Kabul and Baghdad?

The project's website has a lot of construction information, photos, and video clips of the car singing and twitching its goofy little heart out.

Sashimi Tabernacle Choir [Thanks, Judy Willard!]

This photo gallery by Marc Steinmetz really illustrates the essence of making what you "need" from what you have at hand; the objects are rough, but incredibly elegant solutions to problems that most of us will never have to solve.

Come by and join us for a beer. We'd love to meet you and learn more about the things you make and craft.

Flapjaws Cafe, 840 N Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL (312) 255-1122. If you have any questions, email Dale at dale@oreilly.com.

Daniel Carnes writes in to tell us about this cool wooden RC tank built by Matthias Wandel. The site has lots of pictures of the build. Matthias also makes other super elaborate wood works.

(NPR photo by Jolie Myers)

MAKE Contributing Editor Mister Jalopy (Los Angeles, CA) was profiled on NPR's Day to Day.

Mr. Jalopy describes himself as a mediocre welder, a fair mechanic and a clumsy designer -- not the type of fellow one would expect to create what he playfully calls the "biggest iPod in the world," a beautiful retro stereo, re-wired with an iPod so it can transfer songs from old vinyl records to MP3s.

...

Like many of his fellow makers, Mr. Jalopy is simultaneously an artist, a tinkerer and a craftsman. For him, it's a lifestyle. His garage is lined with cabinets full of parts, an unimaginable number of widgets, wires and springs. There are broken sculptures, pinball machines and dozens of bicycles and old cars in various states of transformation.

...

Mr. Jalopy has been consulting with Disney, Apple and other major corporations, preaching the gospel of open source manufacturing. He tells them to use screws instead of glue, and to make schematics readily available so consumers can fix and re-imagine the objects they buy. He also urges technology companies to create forums for consumers to share ideas, and pushes car companies to sell patterns so people can create accessories like seat covers.

Are You Sure You Own Your Stuff?

Device is a new art gallery in La Jolla, California created by sculptor Greg Brotherton and his wife Amy. Their next show, Fantastic Contraption, opens July 19 (and runs through Sept. 2). The 18-artist show explores the leaky margins between humans and their machinery and includes some of my favorites: Stephane Halleux, Nemo Gould, Theo Kamecke, and Mike Libby (all of whom have appeared here on Make: Blog).

IDW Publishing has produced Device Volume 1: Fantastic Contraption, a gorgeous art book, to accompany the show. I was thrilled and honored to be asked to write the introduction for it.

The book is 140 full-color pages, sells for $20 ($13.60 on Amazon), and is available for pre-order now.

More:

• Robots and curios from Stephane Halleux
• The kinetic, robotic sculptures of Nemo Gould
• Theo Kamecke - Circuitry sculpture
• Mike Libby's Insect Lab

Steampunk Workshop has a photo piece on cigar box guitar maker Mark Melchior (Hot Springs, Arkansas):

...he searches local antique shops for older boxes to build these one of a kind pieces. Most boxes he chooses are pre-30's and are solid wood. They feature skeleton keys for bridges and key escutcheons for sound holes. The necks are hand made both fretted and fretless in varying scale lengths depending on the size of the box. Most are the size of Uke or fiddle.

Mark Melchior's Cigar Box Guitars

We at Maker Media are thrilled to announce that we're going to be doing a Best of Instructables, Volume 1. As part of the book, we want to get the Instructables community involved in choosing some of their favorite projects. The book will include both projects chosen by Maker Media and Instructables staffs and those Instructables chosen by the author community itself. Instructables is running a contest to determine the latter. Every item on the site, all 14,000 projects, now has a vote button. The top 50 most-voted entries will be listed in the book and the authors will get a free copy when it's published.

We're also looking for build experiences and stories surrounding Instructables projects. If you built a project and have some thoughts about it (that you've yet to post to the project's page) or an interesting story about an Instructable (it got you a date, got your arrested, helped you survive for days in the Australian outback, made you a hero in the eyes of your kids, etc.) please send them to me, gareth (@makezine.com), or you can also post them here in the Comments.

The Instructables Book Contest

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool, Vin Marshall (Philadelphia, PA) writes:

We built an human powered panzer kampwagen III tank in 11 days. This was intended to crash the party at the 2nd annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby (we crashed the 1st annual with a pirate ship), but by the time we arrived, we were all too exhausted to do much party crashing.

Team pzkpfw

PingMag has an interview with Yoshiharu Shinohara, a Japanese "furin" (glass wind chimes) maker.

Lastly, please tell me what it takes to be a craftsman in this day and age.

Lately, parents of young people will come up to me, and say "My child is really quiet and withdrawn, and just likes to stay in the house all the time, so I want him to become a craftsman." But this is what I tell them: "Lady, you've got it all wrong. It's tough to be a craftsman these days. You've got to find your own way to market your product, explain it by yourself, and add value to the product so it will sell for a good price. If you're quiet and withdrawn, you'd better forget about being a craftsman." But you know, if you're good at it, you can use your hands and your mind and make much more money than your average white collar worker. (laughs) If you want to succeed as a craftsman, you've got to be passionate about your work, passionate about your wife, and passionate about your land. Look at my family. We all get along. My son's going to take over the business, and even my granddaughters says they want to make wind chimes. Even though they both went to a good university. (laughs)

Blowing in the Wind [Via Dinosaurs + Robots]