Our latest window with Barneys New York was called “Twinkle Toes”. We finished it just in time for fashion week. Featuring two pairs of robotic legs dancing together. The curtains opened and closed to display them wearing mens and womens shoes in front of a clips of automation machinery.

A movie of them in action can be seen here!

The official Barneys post can be found here -> http://thewindow.barneys.com/madison-avenue-flagship-window-display/

The true fun of this design is tucked away, only two motors (the same ones we used for the paintings going up and down in the DESTE windows) are used with a series of pulleys and cables to drive these legs. We used our favorite motor driver board for these guys, the one James designed of course. It’s so versatile.

We’ll be doing some more windows here soon so there’s some more exciting designs to look forward to!

This piece was a collaboration between many many people. I will copy and paste at the bottom all of the amazing people who were behind this masterpiece. < br/>
Patten Studio did the hardware design and some of the software. Basically this is 17 different panels that make the whole curve and each of these panels have simple individual “H boards” that were designed specifically for this application as well as driver boards that controlled 20 screens and each which all communicated over RS485.

More information on the project can be found here http://hypersoniced.com/projects/ribbonsculpture/

Credits:
Concept
SoSolimited – Eric Gunther
Plebian Design – Jeff Lieberman
Andy Merriell & Associates – Andy Merriell
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences – Roy Campbell
Hypersonic Engineering & Design – Bill Washabaugh

Design
Hypersonic – Bill Washabaugh
SoSolimited – Eric Gunther
Plebian Design – Jeff Lieberman

Content Design
SoSo Ltd – Eric Gunther
Plebian Design – Jeff Lieberman

Engineering
Hypersonic – Bill Washabaugh, Katie Treidl
Plebian Design – Jeff Lieberman

Electronics and Embedded Software
Patten Studio – James Patten and Laura Wickesberg

Fabrication
The Hypersonic Engineering & Design team
Bill Washabaugh
Katie Treidl
Matt Tyson
Andrew Personette
Jake Oas
Heather Blind
Brett Van Aalsburg
Jamie Foster
Mark Miller
Amanda Parkes
Anne Marsen

Installation
Hypersonic – Bill Washabaugh
Plebian Design – Jeff Lieberman
IATSE Rigging – Greg Osbeck
IATSE Rigging – Jeremy Jackson
Patriot Building Company – Curtis Warren

Additional
Chris Parlato – shape
Jack Daniels – color analysis
Mitch Joachim – color consulting
Geo Homsy – installation consultation
Jeremy Frechette – addional Photography
Jesse Baerkahn – legal
Steve Olejar, Falcon Engineering – PE
David Weiner – lighting

Special Thanks To
Betsy Bennett – North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Roy Campbell – North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Ricky Osbeck – North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
David Small – Small Design Firm
Shaun Miller – Griffin Electrical
Chris Setzer – Clancy & Theyes
Ward Setzer – Patriot Building Company
Al Attara – 33 Flatbush, Brooklyn

Video by Michelle Chu

This was the first project I worked on with James. For three of the windows at Barneys New York. One window featured a rather haunted room set from a photograph, in which we placed linear actuators inside the drawers and the door to open and close on their own.
The second window used a combination of DC and stepper motors to make shoes spin around a woman’s head.
The final window was the most complex. In which we designed a system that used magnets to seamlessly move shoes around in a chase.

More information about this project can be found at our website  http://www.pattenstudio.com/projects/louboutin-barneys/

BAM.

The first window featured drawings by Marc Jacobs etched on to metal plates. Each weighed about 30 lbs so we had to design a very stable and strong mount with a motor that could handle that kind of load. Cables and pulleys raised and lowered each drawing to reveal the final work behind it.

In the other window we worked on an old dot matrix printer produced endless pages as the poem it was printing was read out over the speakers outside the window.

The full posting including the other windows that we weren’t involved in can be seen here -> http://thewindow.barneys.com/destefashioncollection-art-meets-fashion-at-barneys-new-york/

First I got into my invisible plane and jetted across a vast body of water. Straight after parking in what may be known to some as an airport…I.. oh heck, lugged my suitcase filled with not the most practical footwear for cold snowy climate off the plane and immediately went to Sint Niklaas to drop off most of my stuff. After only about an hour there I grabbed the essentials, stuffed them in my computer bag and headed to Amsterdam. Where I learned heels, while great on ice, tend to slip a bit more in the slush especially with my balance thrown off by a very heavy bag. This struggle is what keeps me fit, that and carrying around lots of clothes when I go shopping, it’s my equivalent to weight lifting and going on treadmills.

Anyways, why am I talking about Amsterdam, I didn’t take any pictures while I was there. Or even in Delft, ok one quick snapshot with my camera phone of the Dutch ice skating on a make-shift ice rink of a frozen pond on the TU Delft campus as seen here (http://twitpic.com/8gvl0k) that was irresistible.

After those days I got to slow down a bit and just take a day back in Sint Niklaas exploring. It’s a small town… really small.. I got lost, then realized I was no more than a few hundred meters from the train station. It was charming, that’s what people say about small things.

That weekend I went to a conference in Maastricht on the importance of interdisciplinary studies.  Some of it was really interesting, some of it was well… not, as it sometimes seems to be with the mixed bag of conferences. Some of it I learned that I’ll need grey hair for people to listen to my opinions. I still met some interesting people and escaped briefly to get a glance of the student life and met some people from Brooklyn, who had even lived in my neighbourhood!

After that weekend I spent one of my last days wandering around Gent. I got properly lost, or rather if I had cared where I was going or had anywhere to be, it would have been defined as lost. Instead I call it exploring.

Until my next adventure…

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