Kate Stone: DJ decks Made of Paper
“I love paper, and I love technology,” says physicist and former sheep herder Kate Stone who’s spent the past decade working to unite the two. Her experiments combine regular paper with conductive inks and tiny circuit boards to offer a unique, magical experience. To date, applications include a newspaper embedded with audio and video, posters that display energy usage in real time, and the extremely nifty paper drum kit and set of DJ decks she demonstrates onstage.
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ABOUT Kate Stone
“At Novalia, Kate Stone and her team use ordinary printing presses to manufacture interactive electronics, which combine touch-sensitive ink technology and printed circuits into unique and cost-effective products.
Born in Cheshire, England and the child of a continent-hopping engineer, Kate Stone was often left to her own devices among some of the world’s most disparate cultures. Whether learning to cook rice from Gurkhas or spending time alongside a garageful of car repairmen in Borneo, Kate quickly learned that non-traditional problem-solving was often the very best kind.
At 20, shemoved to Australia and eventually to the outback, where she was soon herding 22,000 sheep on a 120,000-acre farm. She then returned to England and began her studies in electronics at Salford University, before being recruited to do her PhD work in physics at Cambridge’s famed Cavendish Laboratory.
Her focus on moving electrons eventually led to the creation of her ground breaking company, Novalia. At Novalia, Kate says: “The work of my team and myself is the realisation of my childhood fascinations. We put electronics into paper, and paper is all around us.”
Stone sees herself as a ‘creative scientist’ blending art and science to create startling fusions of new and old technology. In addition to her work with Novalia, Kate is on the Advisory Board of Lifeboat, a think tank dedicated to solving the ethical challenges brought about by scientific advances.”
The VIDEO
