Category / e-luminated books

E-Luminated books is workshop series developed with Natalie Freed. In the sessions participants add light and choreograph interactivity in books. We ran the workshops monthly at San Fransisco Center for the Book.

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  • Curiosities of paper circuitry

    I’ve made a thing. It is part of Jie Qi’s research for her PhD at the MIT Media Lab into the way in which artists and makers approach circuitry in a creative way. We were given these materials to play with: And made a big mess. It’ll be on display in Boston in the summer.…

  • Paper Switches

    Series of paper switches I designed for the second part of the e-luminated paper circuits workshop at SFCB. I used the Silhouette to pre-cut paper samples that students could use in the workshop to learn about some of the possibilities.The sampler as constructed by one of the class participants Spin switch Tab switch Push Switch…

  • Book Club of California

    This week I had the pleasure to present some of my books at a public talk for the Book Club of California. The club, which has been in San Francisco for about 100 years, is on the 5th floor of a commercial building a stone’s throw away from Chinatown. Walking into the space is kind…

  • e-luminated books part 2

    This weekend we ran part 2 of the e-luminated books workshop at San Francisco Center for the book. This part was focused on interactivity -embedding sensors and switches into books, as wells as designing programs for the Attiny85. It was a lot of fun and will be happening again in June! If you haven’t taken…

  • Circus-y disco e-luminated book

    Quite a long title for a tiny weeny book. This one was rather wonderful to make, and was programmed using a simple Arduino blinky pattern and the teeny-weeny-ATtiny. (so teeeeeeny) Here is the process: All the layers putting the pages together The lighting The control -including wonderful paper battery holder curtsy of Natalie Freed and…

  • San Francisco Center for the Book

    We held our second e-luminated book workshop at the SFCB this weekend. It was a really lovely and creative group -they experimented with light and switches and made some really beautiful tunnel books in a very short time. We’ll be teaching the same class again in the new year, and will also be teaching a…

  • Making lights blink with Pa

    This weekend my dad came to visit.* Apart from doing very nice things, like a cycle ride across a big red bridge, we had fun playing with electronics. It went something a bit like: Me: Hey Dad, not seen you in a while, look at some of the stuff I’ve got (points at arduino, flora,…

  • E-Luminated Books @ SFCB

    I taught a workshop in lighting books with LEDs last week at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Here are some pictures of the amazing creations participants made. We will be teaching the workshops again in the fall.

  • What’s in the box?

    Oh, you know, folk climbing mountains and holding up a rainbows in a storm of electrostatic discharge. Same old.* *hand made clamshell box with paper cuts, LED lighting, and animated circuitry.

  • Nexmap book hack

    I recently had the absolute pleasure of taking part in a daylong book-hack (a boohackathon?). It was hosted by Nexmap, a San Francisco based arts-tech company who are currently developing a series of hackable journals for schools. I spent the day discussing and making books with an group of creatives, including friend and collaborator Natalie…

  • Coyote Peep Show

    Oh look. I made a peep show. It is a coyote peep show where shadows of wolves howl at shadows of wolves with boobs. peep through the eye of the eye hooooooooooooooo wwwwwwwwwwww lllllllllllllllllllllllllll This is another prototype for my final project for the bookbinding class I am taking. And I am terribly excited, because…

  • Shadowy tunnel(ish)

    After tinkering with *f l a t* images I realize I am actually barking up the wrong tree, or at least, the wrong side of the tree. My aim is to create a hand-held animated shadow puppet theatre, and this needs to have depth as well as interaction. So, here is my next iteration in…

  • Shadowy pages

    I’m still barking up the shadowy-animated-book tree. Here are some recent experiments, which I am developing when I get the chance. The idea is to create a handheld animated shadow puppet theatre. I’d been experimenting with pop-up mechanisms, and recently tried this animation technique. Below is an animated gif of the page in action. Sorry about…

  • Paper Potentiometer

    What? I know. It is a mouthful, and also known as a pot (as this website points out in jest). Anyway, I made one today (yes *made*). This makes me very happy, because through the process of making a potentiometer, I now know how they actually work (rather than the vague understanding I had before).…

  • Under the sea

    Last year I started playing around with paper circuits and well, I’ve started again. Yippee. I made this very simple pop-up-light to start with (making some of the rather marvellous folding techniques I have been practicing of late). I love the way the light throws the paper folds into it’s own world, it reminds me…

  • Paper Folding

    I’ve been in valleys and up mountains of late. If only it were in contours of Cumbria, but alas, it is just on my desk through the folds of the A4 80gsm office paper. I’ve been trying my hand to this rather marvellous book. It really is amazing what you can make with some simple…

  • Pop-up-delux-extravaganza-eat-your-heart-out.

    Shortly, these little beauts, along with about 20 more, will be stitched into a pop-up-reference book (categorised into 4 types of folds: counter, parallel, V, and shape). I’ll use them to make more wonderful pop-up-mini-theatre-in-your-hands books. If you have seen any of my usual messy-wonky-splodgy-could-have been-made-by-a-five-year-old style of work, you will understand that being so…

  • *Foundation folds in wolves and woods

    I’ve been making some pop-up prototypes. Pop-up engineering has the perfect clever-brain to maker-brain ratio (CB:MB), and it’s illustrating stories with paper, which adds a whole other dimension into the big-amazing-paper-pop-up-pot. Thus far I have LOVED the process. Here are some images from a book I made called “Pop-up Papper (oops!) Mechanics *Foundation folds in…

  • Paper Circuits

    Paper circuits with kitchen foil: Ooooooh. Now that is low-fi-hi-fi. Paper circuits with conductive paint: Recently, I had the pleasure of attending an internet of things work day. A team of makers, researchers, academics and artists meet at Bristol University every now and again, and discuss how we can get things to talk to other things to do…

  • Spoon-Fed

    This months Spoon-Fed (a wonderful Bristol based micro-funding event) was full of creative ideas, and inventive ways of communicating those creative ideas. The night goes something like this: we all pay a fiver and get some soup and bread (delicious); 8 artists present a project idea (interesting); everyone votes the project they want to fund (democratic); the artist with…