IM Blankie

Responsive Architecture at Daniels (RAD) Lab

 

“IM BLANKY is a blanket with an IP address. The basic v. 1.0 is self-modeling, which means that it is wirelessly linked to a digital model that registers and represents its changing state in real time. The built-in capacity to situate and represent itself in space and time points to a most primitive and essential form of cognition, the sense of one’s own body. This ability constitutes a foundation for multiple additional functionalities that would be enabled with the use of other sensing devices in future generations of IM BLANKY.

Soft tilt sensors arrayed in a hexagrid pattern and sewn into the fabric of the blanket enable the digital self-modeling. The data they generate—variation in current resistance—establishes the vectors from which the shape of the entire blanket is computationally extrapolated.

The electronic components and their circuits constitute figurative patterns. The organization of flows and connections here reproduces the logic of nature in generating intricate and hierarchical forms: stems, flowers and petals are the decorative by-product as much as the motivated form of a functional circuit.

IM BLANKY was commissioned by WORKShop Toronto for “Stitches,” an exhibition that invited artists and designers to project traditional embroidery and stitching practices into the 21st century. IM BLANKY aligns ornamental craft with digital electronics and computation to invest the intelligence and knowledge built into traditional materials and forms with a renewed purpose and relevance in increasingly networked environments.”

   

 

 

Studio NMinusOne in collaboration with Rodolphe el-Khoury
Principals in Charge at Studio NMinusOne: Christos Marcopoulos and Carol Moukheiber
Fabrication Team: Valentina Mele, Sebastian Savone, Yie Ping See
Programming: Jonah Ross Marrs, Samar Sabie, Dina Sabie