Exploration is an important part of inventing. It helps to have things or places to explore. You can explore the same things or places over again if you are exploring with a different context.

In this video series, an hour’s exploration through the workshop is captured. The context is roughly that I am trying to mend a favourite pair of pants. So this is an exploration of what material could be used to turn the pants into a more personal design.

During the exploration, I am open to new thoughts – meta or generational thoughts that might indeed lead to more important ideas. There is always the pull between inventing and making. I want to make the modifications to the pants, but other ideas arrive. The act of filming is also meta as I realize that what I am filming is becoming a summary or history of various other inventions. I play this out a bit and in combination with branching to other inventions, I do not end up completing the pants. But I have explored materials and came up with some good ideas for future construction.

Here are the minivids in Zen Mix format merely for uniformity. There are 53 along with descriptions of salient points. You can also watch them all at once in a mash. The early ones are a little dark which is okay because it looks like I could use a shave….

Mash of all mixes (61 Minutes)

View Mix (85s)	TEXTURE IN CLOTHES All to often we worry about keeping our clothes clean. Yet, it is nice if what we are doing or have been doing is reflected in our attire or in how people see us. I like getting a bit of wax on my clothes – it reminds me of time in candle light. A few burs from the woods hanging on is a way to keep in touch with the experience. So, the act of wiping your hands on your pants is not the end of the world – it saves on electricity and paper towels in some cases as well.
View Mix (85s)	I DO NOT WASH MY CLOTHES The study of clothes care through the ages might lead to interesting commentary on society. I think of blacksmiths and artists who wear clothes that reflect their work. The grime of the mechanic, the dust of a cowboy. These days, we seem to wash our clothes a lot and dirt or texture is discouraged. This attitude has environmental impact. In general I do not wash my clothes and I survive in the normal everyday life without any difficulty. So if this is so, could you not wash too? We would save energy that goes into washing.
View Mix (47s)	TECHNIQUES FOR AIRING OUT CLOTHES Clothes can be hung up or put over a chair and air out. I have sweaters and shirts that I have never washed yet have worn hundreds of times. I have work pants that are five or six years old that I have never washed. I never dry clean my jackets.
View Mix (34s)	WHAT ABOUT UNDERWEAR???? Yup… that gets aired out too and after a while I might put a couple pairs in the wash but primarily because I feel guilty that I never have anything in the wash and that might be perceived as yucky. I am sure that is going through your mind right now.
View Mix (79s)	LAYERING TECHNIQUE Wear layers to separate body contact from outer contact. Rotate wearing. Store clothes laid out beside the bed. Sleep in your clothes.
View Mix (50s)	SOCKS? DO YOUR FEET SMELL? I can wear socks 20 or 30 times without any problem. They do not smell. So I think I am lucky that my feet do not smell. But there may be many of you out there whose feet do not smell either. Well then you do not have to wash your socks all the time. Again, take them off, let them air out and you will be okay.
View Mix (85s)	WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOUR CLOTHES WEAR OUT? What happens is that as things wear out you patch them or fix them. I am proud that my shoes were fixed with a bolt and I have gotten an extra year out of them. Pants can get paint stains or rips. These add character and can be mended to add further character.
View Mix (44s)	MENDING IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR CREATION It is when clothes need mending that you know you like that article of clothing. You have worn it a lot, it is you! Now you have an opportunity to use some creativity to patch it. Take some other fabric that you like and work it in. Eventually those pants will become an art piece. Now you may not wear them to work perhaps but give them a chance. And certainly do not throw them away. At least keep them for fabric. Make bags out of them etc. At this point, I have decided to patch the pants and I go down to the workshop to look for material. It may be that I use an old pair of pants in the operation.
View Mix (121s)	MESS CAN BE BEAUTIFUL I pop into the workshop and there is stuff everywhere. I clean it about once a year. But all this stuff acts as items to explore and explore again with respect to different context. Is there a possible space theme or circuit board theme… I consider medallions to hang on the pants, etc.
View Mix (90s)	REUSE – THE UNJUNK MOVEMENT A fabric bag is a handy thing to have around to tuck old fabrics and shirts and pants, etc into. I have made pouches, wrappings, costumes, etc. of fabrics. Here I see a mesh but not the type I like and realized that I like rope meshes like old hammocks. We all have gone through the rope hammock that breaks after three years. Well keep it around. I found a great loop on the end of rope that if I were to sew it into the pants it would make a great loop to dangle things on. This type of urban invention could become a fad. I have worked through many options called lupey. Lupey involves marketing to perhaps the most looked at free space for marketing. Stuff that hangs from belt loops. A finding of this string hammock loop can lead to Lupey being realized at least in prototype. And also the idea behind many of my inventions is that people can make things themselves – rather than mass produce.
View Mix (70s)	KEEP MATERIALS LIKE SHOWER CURTAINS Having raw materials to make things is important when inventing and prototyping. This does not mean that you go out to a big box store and buy expensive craft wares. Just start noticing things. Packaging is often great to collect. Wallpapers, foils, carboards, Styrofoam, cartons, cans, jars, old clothes, purses, etc.
View Mix (179s)	MAKING A PURSE FROM A SHIRT Bags, pouches and purses are easy to make from shirts and pants. I made bum bags out of pant bottoms cut out and folded in half. They had belt loops at the top so I could just run my belt through them to fasten them to my pants. It looked cool and carried lots of stuff. Here I visualize that the front pocket area of a shirt would make a good bag with the arm folded into it like a liner. The strap can be made of a strip of the shirt. This is something that you can do with a shirt that no longer fits or is ripped.
View Mix (92s)	FRINGE AND FRAY THAT MATERIAL! Technique for making a strap with a fringe. Certain materials fray really well and can lead to interesting looking design.
View Mix (99s)	A WIG MADE FROM THIRTY MISMATCH SOCKS I ran into this wig that was made of mismatch socks. I used to wear black suits as a patent agent and this was from that time. It is amazing how many mismatch socks one can manage to find. These were careful analyzed
View Mix (42s)	THESE TWO SOCKS DO NOT MATCH Further discussion on the riveting topic of mismatch socks.
View Mix (179s)	SHIRT COVERED IN BURS In hunting for a box of computer straps, I found a shirt full of burs. I have been saving this shirt because they are amazing burs. They are the micro burs that do not hurt and you can squeeze them and they still work – they are like fleas! I want to cultivate these and put them on pads for cleaning and velcro-like applications. I have been enthralled with these for a good number of years and I can’t imagine why it took so long for the invention of Velcro. So I am hoping to plant these seeds in the garden for further experiment.
View Mix (40s)	AMAZING MATERIAL IN COMPUTERS I have enough old computers of my own to keep me happy with respect to harvesting them for materials. But on any given week, the dump has hundreds of computers and that is one source of amazing materials. The drives have super powerful magnets in them – can you believe that! There are wires and circuit boards, fans, metal, etc.
View Mix (104s)	USES OF COMPUTER PARTS You can glue Lego to pieces and pieces to Lego. You can make art, jewelry, lampshades and all sorts of things.
View Mix (101s)	EXPLORATION OF MATERIAL Metal shavings from a mill make great sci-fi decor, river stones are amazing for carving into with Dremel and making stacking games, etc. keyboards have these great rubber nub spring things and all sorts of different insides – each one I opened was different and most have really cool simple beautiful green circuit boards. Computer straps look good frayed.
View Mix (28s)	ART COMBINING COMPUTER AND NATURE Here is one of the cyber stones in my collection available for viewing at http://www.danzen.com/art
View Mix (49s)	MENDING AND REUSING TO FURTHER TIES WITH PAST If you mend something or reuse something then you are extending its life with you. This can bring comfort. It also is environmentally friendly. I have had the same ladder ever since I have had a ladder. I have ties to the ladder, the paint stains are from our toil. The step broke and if felt good to spend a few hours mending it and I feel good every time I step on it. My dad’s ties from the 70s and some that I have collected are just pinned over a bamboo stick to act as a room divider like love beads. This has been a fascinating part of our home for many years and I never tire of it. I think of my dad every time I see them.
View Mix (157s)	EXPLORATION OF MAD INVENTOR’S GARAGE Cyber stones, light shows, old macs that you just plug in and press a button and instantly the computer is on and ready to use. And they still work years later. Old bikes with propellers on them.
View Mix (28s)	DRAGONS AND WALKING STICKS Every year we put up a dragon in the red hedge. This is an example of relevance and has been very popular with the neighbors. We are known as the house with the red dragon. I have a set of walking sticks in the corner that remind me of many walks. They are kind of rustic and I do art pieces with them like make miniature tree houses. Some examples are to come or visit http://www.danzen.com/art
View Mix (31s)	SPOOKY SHADOW PUPPET SHOW Every other Halloween we put up a spooky shadow puppet show with the garage door opened and covered with a white sheet. We use cardboard cut-outs and a bright light behind. The kids sit in the driveway and watch. The stories have been neat. There is a little girl and all these monsters take turns scaring her and then all of them at once. At which point, the girls hair flips down and turns into a cape and her face is revealed to be a demon! In a second, the monsters scare a poor little teddy bear only later to reveal that its six jagged arms come popping out and it is a huge spider!!!
View Mix (178s)	THE BIN OF FABRIC! Some from old chesterfields that were going to be used for luxurious towels. Sheets for backdrops, Seventies drapes, scarves signed by Donovan, and Harris Tweed bags or pouches made from old suit jackets would be very cool!
View Mix (76s)	COAT HANGERS, EGG CARTONS, AND THE EASIEST LAMPSHADE EVER Coat hangers are the most accessible, best wire that you can bend by hand. They are amazing. Always be on the lookout for more! Egg Cartons too are easily stacked – I have been for years and one day they will come in handy. They already have for various decorations and sound proofing. I used a scarf and pinned it on its side in a square shape around the garage light. It makes for a very nice shade. It could be round too I suppose. Check it out!
View Mix (37s)	DO NOT BLIND THE NEIGHBORS! Here we use scarves to block the garage light from blinding the neighbors.
View Mix (14s)	MECHANICAL LIGHT SHOWS – A THING OF THE PAST I have been making light shows for years – see http://www.opartica.com but now I am making organic looking light shows that respond to music on the computer – see http://www.danzen.com/lightshow for an example.
View Mix (39s)	FOUND! INVENTOR GOGGLES THAT MAKE ME LOOK LIKE WILLY WONKA I have a pair of old welding goggles and I cut the extra strength off to give a sort of mad inventor looking pair of goggles. I had lost them and just found them in a basket of things in the house that were destined for the garage. This kind of system where you have a main living space and a procedure to cull or circulate to a creation space is often productive. It is important to have a workshop or a studio or at least a study where creation can happen.
View Mix (14s)	MOD AND THE SNOUT OF SNOOD Here is the resting place of puppet, MOD, and the Snout of Snood. I have a few more episodes of the Snout of Snood to drum up. This mock intro leads to a philosophical owl that asks why instead of who.
View Mix (7s)	THE BUDDHAS AND THE BANANA Here is another modified windchime – windchimes are easy to make and even easier to modify. Every windchime that I have had that breaks, I fix it in a unique way. It is much more fun that way! In the background here is a painting that I painted and then found that I liked it better upside down. This lead to three or four pictures that I drew or painted and displayed upside down.
View Mix (11s)	A JEWEL OF A BYCICLE This is a bike with a large emerald (glass) jewel set on the front. It is actually a bracelet that I mounted on an old watch band – actually, it is an old door knob of all things! I have a matching silver dome bracelet – about the same size and I wear them and tell people that they are sun dials. They believe me too and really, they probably would work as such. You point north and the refraction in the facets or reflection on the dome tells you the time. This is Madeline’s old bike which matched Elliot’s old bike with the large grey propeller on front.
View Mix (45s)	ZERO ONE – A BINARY ROBOT Zero One has two faces filled with cool parts. The parts are stuck in this foam that was cured with a sealant of some sort so it will not crumble. If you can ever find that stuff it is amazing!!! I made Elliot’s Bionicle costume with it and he has made art pieces out of by stabbing in popsicle sticks cracked in the vice – what fun! Zero One has huge magnetic ears that collected money out at an art charity puppet ball that he was made for along with Mod.
View Mix (32s)	HUNDRED FOOT HIGH TREE HOUSE Another tree house – there are 18 of these around – see http://www.danzen.com/art. This one is a glass house on top of a tall patterned tree with a bending top and seed beaded ladder.
View Mix (45s)	ZEN CORNER – LET’S MAKE A SIGN! I like custom signs – they are always exciting to me and combat the official signs. Here is the Zen Corners prototype sign. We have a Z corner in front of our house which I am hoping to brand Zen Corners. I have some subversive alternative ideas for that too. One day…
View Mix (50s)	A BOX OF SILVER – TREE HOUSE TO TIN MAN This scene is on the way upstairs where we pass a tree house – they are very skinny so fit in corners where other art does not – that is handy. Then we pan across the living room to the tin man made of tin. If you collect a box of silver stuff, this type of thing becomes quite easy to make. This was a few hours – maybe an evening of piecing together found objects. If you need a start, go to the Amity and spend $10 of kitchen utensils and pans. Or collect old ones from garage sales or family storages.
View Mix (12s)	KIDS – THE GREATEST PEOPLE TO CREATE FOR AND WITH Kids have few concerns about the difficulty of creating. As far as they know, anything can be built and just to let them have that feeling a bit longer… well… anything has been built. And when it is not built, it can be drawn or at least told in a story. Here Santa has created two doll houses from old drawers.
View Mix (14s)	ALWAYS WANTED TO BE AN ARCHITECT? Designing houses is fun and a doll house is a great place to try out your sliding pole you always wanted. And how would that meditation room look? Hang little medallions. Try an old slide viewer as a TV…
View Mix (63s)	ARABIAN LAND IN BEADS Here we picked out six aspects of magical lands – camels, fruit, stars, jewels, baskets and of course flying carpets! All made from beads that run on coat hanger tracks mounted in wood and put up like a shelf. The thief is getting away in the basket! Hey, stop that camel from eating the fruit!
View Mix (49s)	GYPSY CARAVAN WITH LOVE BEADS A rolling caravan made from a basket with hanging beads, carpet, fortune telling table and working sink with tap that captures rain water from the roof. Perfect for the bad hat Pepito and Madeline to escape in.
View Mix (84s)	MACHINE THAT GOES BLEEP ON PAPER AT LEAST, SNOWFLAKES, DRAGON FLY CLIPS AND SNIFFING TEA Well, I suppose the title is fairly descriptive. These are little things that are made that have outlasted many of the bought toys – there is just a special connection to things that are home made. They save money and resources, are unique and inspire further creativity. Smelling tea to go to sleep easier was an interesting solution.
View Mix (96s)	KALEIDOSCOPE – A MOST MAGICAL CONSTRUCTION Of all the gifts that you can make, a Kaleidoscope is the most rewarding. Take three mirrors cut with a glass cutter to fit in an equilateral triangle or at least go for an isosceles to fit inside a cardboard tube with perhaps foam wedges to keep the mirrors from moving. Try fabric tubes for instance. Cut a couple plastic disks from a CD case with a Dremel grinder for instance and fit them into the end of a cardboard cowl with spacer cardboard leaving a half inch gap. Fill the gap between them with buttons, wires, rings, tidily winks, marbles, etc. This is the fun part, designing what goes in there. Frost the inner side of the outer plastic disk with wax paper for instance and fit the cowl onto the end of the mirror tube. Variations are possible depending on material at hand.
View Mix (33s)	TOWER HOUSE IN KAZAKHSTAN Drawings let you express all sorts of creativity. In the last five years, I must have drawn twenty different rooms with various decor, secret passage ways and futuristic designs. Towers are fun to imagine.
View Mix (65s)	A MYSTERY A DAY AND A BLOCK OF BREAD If you are in the position of being asked for a mystery a day cumulating in a football game with a mystery a quarter, then you are probably being fairy stretched thin. Although I did like the lying girl being caught going to the football game with another guy because she was seen on the big screen. Anyway, a box of Nancy Drews might be just what you need! Thanks Kim! Also in this clip you can spot the loaf of bread I made Madeline out of a block of wood. It is sanded into a loaf shape and one slice is cut that can stay on by Velcro and then be sliced. She loved helping sand.
View Mix (81s)	FASHION DUMMY FOR BUDDING FASHION DESIGNER You can check out fashion by Madel put together in a Zen Picture presentation at http://www.madelinezen.com and then fashion. And by the way, that was not my clipboard. Here I found the discovery that she stored all her shirts, dresses, pants and shoes in order. That happens quite often with Madeline – she pays more attention to pattern than anyone I know – except maybe me. The more you recognize patterns, the easier inventing becomes. Patterns are also a form of siblings which lead to alternative embodiments or indeed generational thought.
View Mix (87s)	MAGNETIC WORLDS! Inventing with alternatives. Here we see a magnetic scene which leads to very powerful thoughts of creating a magnetic climbing game on circuit boards.
View Mix (66s)	CLIMBING UP CIRCUIT BOARDS Specifying the design for a climbing game in a circuit board land. Again just a plan for others to make the game themselves by opening up an old computer. Mount the mother board so it is standing up. Then make two climbers (robots, men, etc) that are tethered together with a thread or a thin wire – for instance a stripped copper computer wire. The climbers are magnetic and in theory you could attach the wire so it can be lengthened or shortened – or maybe just make a few different sizes. These then have to start at the bottom and work their way up the board by sticking on metal parts of the board. It is like a maze. I made up a game similar with suction cups traversing a room on things that are smooth.
View Mix (107s)	SEARCH FOR ROBOTS OR NANO HEROS Here we look through a tray of smaller computer parts. This tray has come in so handy from needing little screws to decorations for jewelry and art. Is it not so filled with yummy things! Here relevance and scale are considered as I try and look for a hero to go scaling the circuit board world.
View Mix (61s)	THE TOOTH FAIRY THAT GIVES OUT MAGNETS Magnets are in rare supply in our house because the tooth fairy hands out magnets instead of money. And lenses and magnifying glasses to the other. This clip also discusses the concept of stretch where we wonder what relevance a magnet or a disk on the bathroom tiles might take. Could we make a game with it – would it work as an amusement. I can’t tell you how many times I have played little games with tiles so perhaps there is an opportunity. Do not just look at something and say that it does not belong. Ask yourself what would make it belong. Stretch your mind.
View Mix (179s)	LEGO CIRCUITS Quick prototyping through testing material can help mold an invention. Here we test how much of a circuit board is magnetic and predict that it might make the game too hard if rely solely on magnetic connection. Having said that, Elliot and I returned to discus the magnetic circuit climbing game and we tried two magnets, one on back and one on front and you can easily make the one magnet move with the other which makes it seem alive. You could play some sort of attacking game or indeed any type of role playing game – like dolls for nerds. We could mount the circuit board as a floor and move robot / nano / cyber characters around to act out stories. With further testing jumpers were considered and that led to the idea of Lego which is further explored in the next video.
View Mix (58s)	CYBER LEGO WORLD! The concept of attaching Lego to circuits and old computer parts to build up a cyber world. Perhaps this gives Lego too much well… credit. Any fasteners would work but Lego is so common and is a pretty good size and seems to go well with the plastics of the computer parts. It might be handy to have micro Lego around which would be so cute. We have seen big Lego blocks take off – what about smaller Lego blocks. We have jumpers, pins, cables, screws to hold together the circuit world but if we were playing in this world we would want something more adaptive perhaps. Gluing Lego mounts would work but there might be alternatives.
View Mix (102s)	A MAZE OF IDEAS Well, after a whirl-wind tour of the workshop in search of material for pant repair, a number of ideas were racked up. I was in pretty good shape to put the camera down and get building. As I went to put the camera down, this maze was spotted by the computer. I am planning on scanning it in and then making a system where any maze can be scanned in and actually played on the computer say in a flash application. So you just point the application to a maze picture and it will display it and let you drag a little ball though the maze but not over the lines. This of course is a dream of any maze maker and I have been making mazes for as long as I can remember. It is a great thing to get kids to do!
View Mix (59s)	MAZE DESIGN If you draw a structure with some sort of repetition and then make a maze around that structure you will find the maze takes on a nice organized look and it stretches your maze making skill or perhaps makes it easier to make the maze harder to solve. It does so because you have to work your way around the restraints of repetitive design. Here we have a circular outer restraint and then a number of pretty well symmetrical dashes and alternating circle hubs.