The mechanism that this sentence reaches your retina falls on at least one of the following scenarios. It’s the light reflected by the ink molecules that were absorbed through the capillary fibers of the pulp of the paper that you’re holding. Or it is the visible light which was originally a beam of electrons that was bent and fluoresced by electromagnetic forces. Or it is sum of lights that just passed through the barriers of liquid crystal molecules.



Or it may have come from tiny little light bulbs that illuminates through plasma discharges. One certain fact is that you don’t imagine any of these situations described above when you read a sentence like this one. But that is until you stand in front of the piece “R”.
Like inspecting internal structure of a clock through a magnifying glass, like appreciating delicate micro symphony of tiny little gears and windup springs, when you’re in front of “R”, you’ll find yourself experiencing the elaborate procedures that humankind have invented to make a soulless machine draw a picture for itself.



“R” is a giant wooden kinetic sculpture made of thousands of hand-carved components. It constructs an image with thousands of black and white ping pong balls in respect for humankind’s endless efforts from Altamira cave’s drawings to splendid images on light emitting diode matrix displays.

It is a shelter from the furious competition of high-tech inventions trying to create revolutionary devices worldwide. It makes you turn around and have a time to look back and reminisce about the meaning of creating devices that create images.



The piece works in two modes. In passive mode it constructs ready-made images by stacking up black and white ping pong balls in predefined orders. In interactive mode, the piece detects human activity nearby itself and drops ping pong accordingly. As time goes by, like bones of dinosaurs in stratum, spread dots of black ping pong balls accumulates leaving traces of visitors that passed by.

Everyware

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are considered a suitable photovoltaic system for urban applications and highly bendable DSSCs can be expanded to applications such as dispensable DSSCs for commercial advertising and small portable power sources.

However, although many reports have shown flexible or highly bendable photoelectrodes using TCO-coated polymeric substrates or metal meshes, until now, few have shown highly bendable DSSCs using electrodes because the flexibility of a single electrode is not a critical issue for highly bendable DSSCs.

Here, we report a new DSSC design, inspired by the traditional Korean door structure consisting of a paper-bonded wooden frame, and a process for TCO-free highly bendable DSSCs utilizing glass paper and metal mesh. In the new DSSC design, constituents such as stainless steel mesh and mesoporous TiO2 loaded with a Ru-complex dye were bonded on the glass paper, which was sputter-coated with Pt on one side and filled with electrolyte.

The glass-paper-based flexible DSSCs showed 2% energy-conversion efficiency, which was maintained under bending until the radius of curvature reached 2 cm. The new glass-paper-based flexible DSSCs may have potential applications as low-cost highly bendable solar cells to overcome the limitations of conventional sandwich-type DSSCs.

Korean researchers have developed “paper solar cell,” applying the structure of traditional Korean pattern of wood framed door and hanji paper concept. It is considered the breakthrough technology that can push the solar voltaic industry a notch upward to explore a new market of solar cell, drawing attention from scientific circles at home and abroad. 

The research team led by Dr. Lee (Lee Dong-yoon and Cha Seung-il) at Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute made the announcement on the 28th that they have combined nano and fiber technologies to come up with light and flexible but low priced dye-sensitized solar cell. It has the durability and permeability with distinctive traditional Korean pattern but overcomes the limit of thin film solar cell which cannot be folded. Therefore, it doesn’t need to have the land to install the solar panels or abide by the strict environmental regulations, or be threatened by Chinese “price war.”

It has also gone a step further from the previously “flexible” solar cell which also had its limit in flexibility due to its base material. The new paper solar cell is expected to be applied in mobile devices or exteriors of buildings, or can be worn or detachable in clothes, opening a new chapter of solar cells.

Unlike the previous dye-sensitized solar cell, new type of paper solar cell uses longer fiber type of nano titania to make traditional hanji like paper which is very flexible and durable. To eradicate plastic substrate, they had also developed conductible metal mesh with the pattern of Korean wood framed door. Finally they attached glass paper to maintain the strength of the solar cell and to fixate electrode liquid.

When it is mass produced, the price of paper solar cell will be less than half of the current Si solar cell but the efficiency level will reach 5%, far beyond the commercialization level of 3%.

KERI



Everyone experiences rotating a shower knob to adjust to the proper temperature when he/ she takes a shower. Taking a shower is one of the most common experiences to everyone, and I wanted to use this common behavior as the main physical interaction for my project. For this virtual shower project, I changed the meaning of a hot shower to an emotional experience and a cold shower as a realistic experience.



As the user turns the shower knob towards the realistic side, money falls down from the shower-head, and various quotes that tell how to be rich falls down together. On the contrary, as user turns the shower knob to the emotional side, the rose petals and different quotes that tell how to fall in love fall down from the shower-head.



The different degrees of the rotation reflects the number of rose petals or leaves of money and the content of the text that fall. If the shower knob sits in the middle, both money and the rose petals fall down together. By turning a real shower knob in a physical space, the user can experience either an emotional or realistic virtual shower and can find the appropriate level of love and money.

Yoo Kyoung Noh






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