The Fabratory was invited to participate in this year's Maker Faire by our friends at the Big Picture Company. Held in Detroit, Michigan, the faire proved to be a great place where creative minds could work together and make an idea come to life. At the faire we met fellow thinkers and makers and saw incredibly strange and unique inventions from people all around the country, including a machinist who fabricated his own 3d "cupcake" printers, a farmer who built a combined lumber mill/laser cutter/shop bot/3d printer (that was portable!), and a community group that made multiple seated bikes for more than one person enjoy. What really interested us about all of the different inventions was the mix of things both useful and totally useless. The faire proved to be a place for these off-beat people to explore their ideas with style, such as a guy who converted a Volvo into a robotic choir using animatronic fish, crabs, lobsters, and sharks, or a team that built a life-size mouse trap game, or even a metal singing skeleton.  These inventions have no place in a household, but the fact that the ideas are so different and the makers thought outside the box is what makes these things even more special.

The Fabratory wasn't in Detroit to just enjoy this gathering of inventors. We were also lucky enough to participate in an education symposium put on by the Big Picture Company. People from around the world came to think about a high school for people who learn with their hands and discuss what a school of makers would look like. We showed the group our own personal projects that we are working on in the Fabratory and spoke to them about how we learn using the tools in a Fab Lab. We were really excited to be able to help them out. Take a look at some of the photos that we took both at the Maker Faire and at the symposium.

-Brian Melo

The last few classes for Intro to 3D have been great!

We are working on making a city, where each block is modeled in 3D by a student. Then we collectively combine the blocks to feature in a game. Later we'll take what we made to experiment with Augmented Reality.

To draw inspiration, we have been touring downtown Providence to collect photographs of interesting historical architecture and saving them for reference.

Check out the progress that we've made!

This past monday, the Fabratory welcomed guest speaker Tiffany Jon. A recent RISD grad ('09) from the Industrial Design department, she is currently a designer for Apple in Cupertino, CA.

Tiffany showed us samples from her portfolio, focusing on projects related to the work we've been doing this summer. She spoke about her experiences, learning the design process and real world applications for design beyond school.

Tiffany's presentation helped to give perspective on the projects we've been busy with and showed us the opportunities that are available using the valuable skills we've been developing here!

We've heard the age-old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words." This week in the lab, we're exploring possibilities of conveying meaning with design!

Now in our fourth week of the summer work program, the Fabratory is creating an informative word wall - a visual dictionary of design terms to help us with our own design practice and to equip us for conversation and critique.

Our summer work program is now in full swing. Check out what the media and technology team has been up to!

Today we had some demos on Gimp and experimented with different tools to manipulate photographs and images. We're going to put what we learned into use by designing our own logos and business cards.

today i transformed a image from my school using photo shop & here is my process