week 16 invention, intellectual property and income
This assignment covers the documentation of the research and development part done by me and my students for the final project and how we plan to disseminate it in the due course of time.
Research & Development
Initial concept and inspiration One of my keen interests in the very beginning of my working years was culture and heritage restoration. The long Indian heritage and its monuments fascinated me. The jali, or a screen of mesh made with several ornamental fenestrations is a key element to our culture. Monuments in Rajasthan and several Islamic monuments elaborately used jalis as an architectural element. Not only from the aesthetics point of view but also from the climatogical perspective, they played an integral role. They blocked and cut off excess sunlight thus creading an interesting pattern of shadows within the palaces. Also, they made it possible for the queens inside the palace to have a view of the outer world clearly through the jalis but restricted view from the outside of the interior spaces. I thought of fusing dynamism into this traditional architectural element and make it interactive. This got me thinking about several geometical patterns that could move, yet seem like iterations of a same design. The Japanese art of geometrical figures readily had several dynamic patterns already, one of which I wanted to make into a working prototype.
A working ecosystem
I wanted to devote quality research time and an environment where the whole idea, which looked quite intimidating at first to execute would come as a successive flow. My students- Ankita and Ashris helped me with the other assignments and hence, we could together put our brains together over the final project in a very effective manner. FabLab was instrumental as all the nescessary components and other resources were readily available which made prototyping feasible and let me iterate confidently with updating the design to get a perfect solution to the end.Precision and Order
The measurements were required to be precise in order for the pattern to work becuase the motion of every piece was inter-dependent on all other parts, hence any error would have reflected in the overall performance. We tried iterating over one module. When it worked decently, I used it to fabricate the seven others to form our basic pattern.Copyrighting
I decided to copyright the module, for it falls under the same category as copyright generally is used to protect,i.e original works of authorship, designs, softwares and circuits. I believe that all the research, time and energy that has been devoted into the work should be protected against piracy and plagiarism.
Income Generation
Proprietorship of the module would be a definite move to claim profits on the use of the module as installations, as part of private interior works, public showrooms, etc.