For the past month I’ve been working on something really special with a stupendous partner, Andrew Hyde. We paired up at SXSW discussing our hand-crafted business cards and came out of it with an idea for Record Monsters. Record Monsters are laser cut puzzles in vinyl records. You simply pop out the pieces and put together something like the Stegosaurus (above) or the Mosquito (on a 45). We also have Triceratops, a Butterfly, an Ant, and more dinosaurs than you can name. Sounds like fun, right?

We need your help making sure we can start providing Record Monsters to all the good little girls and boys. We’ve been running a fairly successful Kickstarter campaign so far. Thanks to Kickstarter for featuring us on their front page! At this point we only have 72 hours left and are still a stretch away from our $15,000 goal. This money will be used to purchase necessary equipment to make these puzzles and serve our first orders, you the good people of the internet and our family, and friends. Please visit our Kickstarter page and make a donation before the end of Friday.

The best part about this project has been working with Andrew. We first met at Startup Weekend Houston way back in the fall of 2007 before the Houston creative, technology, and music communities had gelled. I credit that 2007 Startup Weekend as laying the foundation for a whole mess of incredible and hardworking people to meet and form working relationships. Andrew receives special credit and gold stars as the founder of Startup Weekend; bringing it to Houston meant that we all got to know him.

The reception to the project has been stunning to say the least. Both Andrew and I underestimated people’s desires for re-imagining their music memories into tactile objects. So far, Record Monsters has been covered by Not Cool, Dude Craft, TrendHunter, Make, and Ponoko.

Keep watching over the next month or so, we will be adding new puzzles and new pictures.

Record Monsters Kickstarter Page

Record Monsters Site

What’s this course all about? Well, it’s a multi-disciplinary course addressing art conservation and engineering. That means that the students will be asked to critically examine art techniques as well as apply the decision based engineering design process. Taken from the course description:

The objective of this course is to apply the engineering design process to pressing problems in art conservation. One half of this course will focus on the history and practices of art conservation at modern museums.  The other half of this course will utilize the engineering design process by applying the art conservation knowledge to develop innovative storage solutions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Each week, students will be briefed on a specific issue relating to the art conservation world, starting with the history of conservation leading up through modern times. Students will be given a unique and private insight to the inner workings of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, including behind-the-scenes access to their storage and conservation facilities. Museum officials will discuss the hidden portions of the museum and the day-to-day of the modern museum. Art storage experts will address the handling and storage of our cultural heritage. Students will learn the properties of materials used in art and the properties of materials used in its storage and preservation. Local conservators will guest lecture, providing unique perspectives on conservation principles in practice. A living artist will provide a perspective of their background, creative process and conservation concerns for their art. Finally, students will learn preventive conservation in long-term art ownership and cultural heritage disaster and damage preparation.

Each week’s art conservation topic corresponds with a step in the Engineering Design Process, a decision based system for developing new products or solutions. One case study will be presented per week that highlights the relationships between the art world and the engineering world. The art conservation lectures and the case study will provide the framework for a semester-long project where student teams will address their own unique conservation issue. Each team will select a piece from the MFAH’s private collection and then develop an innovative storage solution for that piece, culminating in a product design presented at the end of the semester. Through the engineering design process student teams will gain an understanding the problem in context, learn the current solutions, develop design criteria, brainstorm solutions and develop a product. In class activities that foster increased creativity and non-traditional thinking will help to arrive at unique solutions for the semester project.

Students will apply a digital workflow over the course of the semester, resting upon web 2.0 tools to transparently document and research the topic of conservation. Students will have their own blog where they will post recaps of the week’s information, progress reports for their semester long project and relevant information pertaining to art conservation.

Engineering for Art Conservation (ENGI/HUMA 240) meets Tuesdays and Thursdays on Rice University’s campus in room 119 of the Humanities building. If you would like to audit this course as a community member, information can be found on Rice University’s cashier’s website. To sit in on individual classes (syllabus will be posted shortly), please email me at mwettergreen@rice.edu.