Life Dress Redux
For those who followed the ridiculousness of last year’s shenanigans in physical computing, I made a ham-fisted attempt at creating what I called the Life Dress, based on John Conway’s Game of Life algorithm. The Game of Life is a simple algorithm in which cells—squares within a grid—are represented as either living or dead—white or black, 1 or 0—based upon the health of their immediate neighbors.
In materials, I have decided that I have both the skills and background work with which to give this attempt another fair go. Thus, for midterms, I presented my prototype for a single cell of the new life dress.
The Life Dress (working name) is a dress composed of tiles of dragon skin silicone. Surface mount LEDs are embedded in each tile and hooked up to an Arduino through a TLC4950. The tiles are turned on and off based on the rules of Conway’s Game of Life.
Progress
Now is the dreaded time of midterms. In order to not be outdone by the pain inflicted by my other classes, Materials called for a prototype of our final project. Considering my dress is of a modular design, it was easy to breakdown the project to come up with a prototype. Thus, I decided to make my first version of the tiles with which I will be composing my dress.
After a visit to The Comlpeat Sculptor, I returned to school weighted down with the two parts for the dragon skin, hydrocal, wax, plasticine, and mixing buckets, ruminating on how much I preferred money to possessions…it is so much lighter.
After collecting a dish to pour my molds into, I set up a work space at school. I rolled out the plasticine to the desired thickness, cut it into a three inch square, and placed eyelets into the corners to enforce the dragon skin when it is attached to other tiles. I then added another layer of clay as a bit of extra space for pouring and then set it in the tray. This took surprisingly long.
I then mixed hydrocal into some water until it was pea-soupy and then poured it on top of my master. I then let it dry overnight as went home and finally got to sleep after a 36 hour marathon of consciousness.
Today I soldered surface mount LEDs to copper jeweler’s wire and placed it into the mold (after removing the clay). Unfortunately, the peaks that I had set up to in the hydrocal to guide the placement of eyelets came off in the removal. So I had to place the eyelets in the mold and hope they would stay in place. I then mixed dragon skin and poured it into the mold just in time to take off for dinner and a glass of wine before class. What a wonderful day!
Next…
After talking with Peter, it seems like my mold is far from optimal. Rather than making individual hydrocal molds, Peter suggests that I block off a plate of plexiglass into 16 tiles so that I can pour them in bulk and level them with the stroke of a flat edge. Count on me to do it the hard way.
On another tack, it seems that the white surface mount LEDs that I bought weren’t white after all. (Thank you DigiKey!) While red can be a stunning color for a dress, I am aiming for clean, lively squares, not the red death. So, I’ve made a new order and hopefully these LEDs will better serve me. In fact, I’m feeling adventurous. Maybe I’ll try some more subtle colors too!
Finally, I am not satisfied that the eyelets are the best way to connect the cells. The do create a very industrial look. It could be something worth embracing. At the same time, I feel like whatever I use to link these tiles is going to define the look of the dress and so some experimenting is called for. Other approaches I am considering is a series of eight smaller, white, plastic eyelets that will be less noticeable or possibly using some large string, yarn, or ribbon to sew the pieces together. I feel, however, that the former would be inelegant and lack and look, whatsoever, and that the later will look too homespun—reminiscent of quilts and ostentatiously patched clothing.
Related posts:
- Life Dress [Mold v3] Today, quite likely, has been my most efficient work...
- Life Dress [aftershow wrap up] The Life Dress is a garment constructed of dragon...
- Life Dress [Tiles] I have been horribly remise. My lack of posts...
- Life Dress [Mold v2] After trying out a protoype tile last week, i...
- Life Dress [Proposal] I know I am not one for the best...
One Comment
I’d heard of John Conway’s Game of Life, googled it for a refresher. Found the pattern for my namesake, Toad, at http://www.math.com/images/wonders/life/toad.gif
… woo hoo!
Will you be able to set up different starting positions on the dress?
What do you think of the idea of adding in some random cells onto the dress during the game – to avoid a continually repeating pattern?
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[...] to make a new one. Since I’ve done the base before, you can check out my notes form my mold v1, v2, and v3 posts to see how I got to this point. In this post I’ll simply address some of [...]