How can 3D printing be used to preserve and interpret various aspects of our heritage?…
Category: Blue Rabbit (Page 5 of 6)
We were instructed to begin our posts with our question. Singular. But my project is the culmination of many questions, some of which drew me to Making Meaning Matter to begin with. How can we each discover our own value out of seeing our thoughts materialize before our eyes? Is it possible to not just imagine but witness the transformation of our ego-consumer-driven age to one that learns from, engages with and contributes to the life of and on this planet? How can we use language, our language, to birth our ideas, the delicate, vulnerable, innermost beauty of our being, when we experience daily the limits and inconsistencies our language imposes on us? How can we use 3D printing to get in touch with what it means to be a human, on this planet, in this time?
The question for this project is: Can a 3D printed object be responsive to its environment and to the dynamic energies of the people and processes that interact with it?
Yes, I want to create something that is alive, responsive, intuitive, and vulnerable. I want to create an object that will interact with its environment. The 3D object will either itself be made from magnetic materials, or will contain conductive filament such that it can interact with a magnetic force to create a magnetic field in and around the 3D object. Whether I can create a magnetic 3D object or a 3D object with conductive filament will determine the next phase of my project.
If the 3D object is made with a conductive filament then I will introduce a ferrofluid which will demonstrate how the 3D object is interfacing with the magnet and its environment by following the flux lines of the 3D object (Ferrofluid). The particular shape of the 3d object has yet to be determined, and I will experiment with various shapes that mimic the fundamental shapes found in many patterns throughout the world; torus, vector equilibrium (cuboctahedron), 64 tetrahedron grid, flower of life, and others.
If the 3D object is itself magnetic then I will print a number of smaller 3D objects and experiment with a series of smaller magnets. In this case, I will 3D print a number of small flying birds, and attempt to mimic a murmuration of starlings (Keim), what I would consider a 4D version of Indra’s Net.
The shapes I spoke of earlier have been found by many scientists, inventors, innovators, and philosophers to be the basic building blocks of the world we live in today. The structural shape of the vector equilibrium and the torus shape of the magnetic energy field that surrounds every living thing at every scale in the universe, have shown up throughout written history and across nearly every major culture spanning the earth. These shapes are considered the code for a sustainable and ever-evolving cosmology that, when adopted, could mean the end of the myriad concerns enveloping our consumer driven world today (Thrive).
Buckminster Fuller said “The VE represents the ultimate and perfect condition wherein the movement of energy comes to a state of absolute equilibrium, and therefore absolute stillness and nothingness” (Cosmometry). When the eight tetrahedra of the vector equilibrium are expanded out to the next scale, the 64 tetrahedra grid is built. When spheres are drawn around each of the individual tetrahedra, the tetrahedra removed, and the image of the spheres turned two dimensional, the flower of life appears in the overlapping circles. The flower of life has been found in the ancient Temple of Osiris in Egypt as well as The Forbidden City in China, both of which were built centuries ago (Thrive). Even Leonardo da Vinci contemplated on the flower of life in his drawings and used the torus energy shape in some of his inventions (The Secret to How the Universe Works).
You say, so what? What difference will it make to spend a quarter exploring this idea and its manifestations? It will make absolutely no difference if what happens during the unfolding of this idea is not documented, reflected upon and critical discoveries made known. This question could better be answered by Lambros Malafouris’ argument “that by knowing what things are, and how they were made what they are, [we] gain an understanding about what minds are and how they become what they are – and vice versa (Malafouris, 9).” I hope his argument coupled with my curiosity will give me a clear insight into my overarching question: what does it mean to be human?
Works Cited
Cosmometry: Exploring the Fractal Holographic Nature of the Cosmos. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://www.cosmometry.net/overview-of-cosmometry
Ferrofluid on the track of a Meatgrinder. (2008). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE2pB1pyZN0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Keim, B. (2011, November 8). The Startling Science of a Starling Murmuration. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://www.wired.com/2011/11/starling-flock/
Malafouris, L. (2013). How things shape the mind: a theory of material engagement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take? (2012). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEV5AFFcZ-s&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The Secret To How The Universe Works Lies Within This Geometrical Pattern. What Is The Flower of Life? (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/10/the-secret-to-how-the-universe-works-lies-within-this-geometrical-pattern-what-is-the-flower-of-life/
Sarah Redden
Blue Rabbit Iteration I
Week 4
10.21.2014
The work of Shane Hope
What is not worth not making?
My idea is to work primarily with pieces taken out of the 3-D misprint box in an attempt to make some thing that does not necessarily resemble any thing. In this process I want to experiment with printing methods, and manipulation of printed pieces. I am curious about our relationship to beauty, ornament, decoration, perceptions of “trash”, and “uselessness”. What can be made of the objects that come out of the 3D printers that are “ugly” and useless? In order to explore these ideas I would like to approach the Blue Rabbit project through tactile engagement, using my hands to work with a material that isn’t necessarily made for it, a material made for “computer’s hands”.
Most all of us are all are touched one way or another by the hands of computers. Yet, if things shape the mind, what effect is the un-touchable digital world of “things” having on us in the physical world of multi-dimensions? Through technology, theoretically anyone could make almost anything without touching much. It is important to question this rapid production? Is it important, now more than ever, to attempt at making no-thing? If nothing doesn’t or can’t exist, can it be made to exist?
In both art and science there is much to be seen, but there is also a great deal, and sometimes a great deal of meaning, in that which cannot be. This is a principle explored often in Modern and Post-Modernist art, and also by the four individuals I have found whose work relevantly embodies, plays with, and speaks about, material, abstract 3D printing, trash and Post-Internet art. These folks are Shane Hope, Edward May, Tim Noble and Sue Webster.
Edward May has a WordPress site just like all of us, and that is about the only thing I could find out about him. The website is called “Anti-Composition within Objectism and Post-Internet art”. May writes about many different mediums in relation to Post-Internet art, with one of the unifying themes being the exploration and propulsion of anti-composition. Anti-composition is defined by May as occurring “within post-internet art and new media when something that cannot or does not resemble nature is assembled in a way which is meant to look disturbed.. It is an exploration of nature in a way that is not natural and is a reaction to the use of objects within society.” He goes on to add, “[a]nti-compositionist art cannot resemble natural objects or manufactured items but instead explores the things we cannot see.” (May).
Cue Webster and Noble. In 1998, Tim Noble and Sue Webster made a piece called “Dirty White Trash (With Gulls)”. The piece is made up of trash the artists’ collected trash over a period of six months. Photographs of the piece depict illuminated trash that has been arranged in what appears to be a random heap in the corner of a gallery-type space, but created in the shadow of this trash is a perfect outline of two individuals sitting back to back, drinking and smoking. They have taken a waste object(s) that reveals nothing in itself, only in what it “leaves behind”.
With an interest and skepticism in molecular manufacturing, Shane Hope raids a protein bank database looking for organic shapes of interest, and when they aren’t quite what he was looking for he writes Python script to skew them even further. The designs are then 3-D printed and wildly manipulated in the process. All of the shapes are then amassed and assembled together in a beautiful, chaotic mess. Wired magazine calls Hope’s pieces “paintings”, (Flaherty. Wired) which is another interesting relation to the idea of returning to traditional mediums of art in highly unconventional ways, which is one component of Post-Internet art (May).
I feel that the principles of anti-composition with the relationship to technology and objects, the execution of the British duo’s piece, the technique of Shane Hope, and the influences of many more to come will greatly inform and weave almost seamlessly into the context and exploration unraveling before me. In spending a quarter exploring these ideas I hope to gain a better understanding of my relationship to objects, materials and meaning. Hopefully I will gather greater perspective of the unique ways in which objects carry meaning, or more specifically don’t, and how this is decided and understood, consciously or otherwise. I also expect that I will become quite familiar with PLA as a material and medium of creation, while simultaneously becoming familiar with the physical iterations of student work in class through their trails of printed trial and error, and beautiful mistakes.
Bibliography
Flaherty, Joseph. “3-D Printed Paintings Make Jackson Pollock Look Plain | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 8 Oct. 13. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.wired.com/2013/10/3-d-printed-abstract-expressionism/all/1#slideid-256431>.
May, Edward. “Anti-composition within Objectism and Post-Internet Art.” Edwardmayobjectismanticomposition. 5 May 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://edwardmayobjectismanticomposition.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/anti-composition-within-objectism-and-post-internet-art/>.
Noble, Tim, and Sue Webster. “Tim Noble & Sue Webster.” Tim Noble & Sue Webster. 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/>.
Blue Rabbit Assignment – 1st Iteration Otis Lambert In a world where entropy is increasingly fought against with the goal of its removal; how does that affect creation and the creative process? In the essay Michel Mendès France and Alain Hénaut wrote for MIT Press, titled Art, Therefore Entropy, they put forth the … Continue reading
Printing tools to make art: Can instruments built using additive manufacturing have place and meaning alongside their wood and metal counterparts?
3D printing, though new on the block, has so many potential uses, but perhaps what interests me most is creating the tools to create art and in this case, music. I’m fascinated by the concept. While most previous methods for creating an instrument require the removal of material from an object to reach a finished product, additive manufacturing is practically waste free, printing only what you design.
I’m interested in printing an Irish flute. I chose this because of its simplicity, small size and relative ease of play. The greatest challenge will be in tuning, which ideally would be in the key of D. After speaking with Arlen though, I’m now considering alternatives, such as just intonation, following an algorithm or even random hole spacing.
Beyond a specific instrument, the practicality of printing any instrument would be huge. Though I have little to no experience with the Irish flute, I find it fits best then my goal of using 3D printed instruments for educational purposes. This is a cheep and quick way of producing a gateway to a new art for many people, especially in a classroom setting where budget and supply may be short.
Being able to print an instrument allows for faster prototyping that doesn’t require the time and tools that say wood working does, nor the expertise of a practiced luthier. In addition, any tinkerer would have the ability to fully customize any piece they wish to print. Making the instrument suit his or her needs specifically, whether that be in pitch, color, shape, size or tamber. Arvid Jense states that, ‘While all of these things are cool, they’re all replications of existing traditional instruments, and aren’t touching the new geometrical and structural possibilities of 3d printing. (Though, this quite mirrors early electronic instruments, which were mostly trying to emulate existing instruments in sound).’ He implies that the real ingenuity of this technology will come with experimenting with new and unfamiliar designs, something that that is already being explored on Thingaverse.
Olaf Diegel, a professor at Lund University in Sweden, recently created what he calls the world’s first live concert with a ’3D printed band.’ He has designed and printed electric and bass guitars, keyboard housing and even a drum kit (all of which are for sale, none of which are affordable). In a video featured on digitaltrends.com, you see his students playing the track ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood on printed instruments (Mugatu’s brainwash theme from the film Zoolander). Diegel’s instruments are under the brand name Odd and you can find them for sale at www.odd.org.nz.
‘No two instruments sound exactly alike, and players frequently have widely differing opinions about what constitutes a good sound. There are many factors which contribute to the sound of any given traverso, among which are embouchure size and shape, interior dimensions of the bore, and type of material from which the instrument is made’ (Solum, 67). John Solum, in his book The Early Flute, outlines what goes into making a flute, what the factors involved are and why they’re important to the finished product’s sound. I wonder about these effects with PLA. Since the instrument is less dense and softer (in regards to the overall material strength), how will a printed flute sound in comparison to one made of wood?
It’s most important to students and people looking to experiment with new instruments. Students, because they could in theory have access to a 3D printed instrument for very cheep and be able to learn the basic techniques. Take a 3rd grade music class for example, if the school wanted to try teaching the recorder, but didn’t have the funds, they could order a batch of 3D printed models for much cheaper.
Printing instruments empowers people that want to explore sound. With prototyping taking a matter of hours, instead of months with traditional practices, musicians and students can create, test and perfect any idea they choose to design. I don’t believe that such technology will find it’s way into concert halls anytime soon, but for the curious musician of the future, this world of 3D printing opens many doors.
- John Solum. The Early Flute. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
- “Shands_2010_HowToBuildASimpleNorthAmericanStyleFlute_2010_03_01.pdf.” Accessed October 20, 2014. http://www.flutopedia.com/refs/Shands_2010_HowToBuildASimpleNorthAmericanStyleFlute_2010_03_01.pdf.
- Tretbar, Alex. “Take a Listen to the First Ever Concert Using Only 3D-Printed Instruments.” Digital Trends. Accessed October 20, 2014. http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/students-hold-first-concert-with-only-3d-printed-instruments/.
“A painting can display and juxtapose its elements at the same time, but verbal utterance lacks that kind of simultaneity and is forced to deliver its elements in a certain order of sequence…”(Hawkes 25)
A strongly worded assertion about language like the one above may seem to burden the whole concept of language with a negative light, implying that the lexical framework we use to communicate obeys a deliberately created, confining structure, and does not allow linguistic expression to arise freely. One example of language arising freely would be an individual expressing something with words is not thetic, something that not build toward a thesis. However, language is used as a tool in the most literal sense of the word, which leaves little room for experimentation, when both the addresser and the addressee try to cipher a satisfactory meaning into an unsatisfactory code. This concept of an unsatisfactory code, however, is not reason for despair, but rather the aperture for capturing a way to keep words from becoming a mere currency of meaning.
The closed structure of language is made even more problematic by the popular method of transcribing words onto a page. One problem is the fact that we rarely stop to think about the sound of sounds, the shape of sounds, or the shapes that form the shape we call a word, which we eventually turn into a sound. Another is the ephemerality of words on a page, the concept that as you continue reading this paper you throw away each word the split second before you read the next; once you harvest the signified, you throw away the husk of the signifier, leaving it lonely and forgotten on the page. The Tralfamadorians, a species of aliens in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, are able to access any point in time. To me, this concept is achieved by a Tralfamadorian trapping the moment while they are simultaneously aware of the fact that time continues moving in any and all directions, even while they have their moment. How might I use a 3d printer to resist the tendency of the reader to either be flurrying through text without thinking of the words, or fixated on one word for an extended period of time? How may I use it to make an expression such that “there isn’t any particular relationship between the messages,” and “it is seen all at once?”(Vonnegut 112)
The space that language takes up is taken for granted, as it is usually transcribed onto a screen lacking 3d space, or onto a page which is essentially 2d. Language was originally carved onto tablets, where it remained imprinted for the hand’s touch and the mind’s eye to feel. Not only does 2d inscription cause shortcoming because of its ephemeral nature, the physical aspects pose significant constraints as well. Pretend you are in charge of a postmodern childrens’ museum exhibit: how do you familiarize a young child with the notion of the poetic function? How do you reconnect them with Julia Kristeva’s idea of the semiotic, which evokes “the sound produced by the rhythmic babbling of small children who cannot yet speak”?(Belsey 16) One strategy would be to expose them to material forms of words, cementing the immense role language has in shaping both life and mind. The physical constraints of the page are irrelevant when one ventures to 3d print words, and any number of configurations could be utilized to create a 3d printed poem/sculpture/puzzle.
An interlocking series of words printed in all different shapes and sizes, configurable in an infinite series of “choose your own semiotic adventure.” It could simultaneously be thought of as interactive book art, or a poetry machine.
I once found an old chapbook at an estate sale I was working at, and inside were some very curious pages and signatures. Before my boss took it away to get it appraised, he let me skim through it to see what I could find out about it. Apart from accounting and some calligraphy practice, the only thing interesting in the notebook was one poem, the corners seeped with ink and obscuring the title. I wrote it down, as it captured perfectly for me he type of linguistic expression I am thriving for. I hope to create something of the same caliber, with maybe less words, and more possibilities for combination.
The “O” in his/her middle name was obscured by ink, never giving me a certain name, and making it unable to google or find more poetry of theirs. This absence of an author is also exciting to me, because i am focused wholly on the quality of the work and not on who did it. This poem has no pragmatic function, it could not be used to help someone answer a question or to help some complete a task, but it does a great job at showing us an example of the non-function of poetry, especially the type of Semiotic-invoking poetry I am striving to create.
Works Cited:
Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism & Semiotics. London: Methuen, 1977. 25. Print.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse 5. Vintage: n.p., 1993. 112. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. Post-structuralism: A Very Short Introduction. By Catherine Belsey. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. 16. Print.
Chrissy Giles
October 21, 2014
Week 4
In what ways does our “home” shape the way we live and how does this connect us to our environment?
My idea explores the concept of living spaces. I want to explore the relationship between the outside world and the spaces which we claim as our own. How does the concept of “home” affect the way we treat our non-home? For the past century, there has been a general disconnect between the spaces we choose to live in—that is, the spaces where we spend most of our time…our “home”—and the environment. Our environment is under threat because of our current methods of survival. We are taking from the planet without giving back. How can our living spaces change our relationship to the earth, and ultimately change how we are treating our environment?
In this project, I want to use 3D printing to create a model of my home, a Pacific yurt nestled in the woods of Northeast Olympia. I want to re-create my yurt with the intention of learning how to build it.
I will explore why yurts have been used for thousands of years as the primary shelter for nomads. I hope to gain an understanding of physical structures and the purpose they serve for our needs, both functional and aesthetic. Furthermore, I want to study the link between lifestyle and the concept of “home,” and use this analysis as a means to explore our current method of survival.
My overarching goal is to find out how 3D printing can help build cheap, accessible, and sustainable homes for people. Reaching beyond my motivation to learn how to build and design prototypes for simple, small-scale homes, I also want to teach others how to be more appreciative, creative, and aware of their natural surroundings.
“When one buys a house today, he/she is essentially going on a voyage on planet Earth for the next thirty or forty years. Considering the condition of the planet (due to years of abuse), our [homes] must now be self-contained. Our numbers are too great for us to continue taking from the planet—we must now stand with it” (Reynolds 8).
Before 3D printing can guide us toward a more sustainable future, we must revisit how our ancestors “stood with the land”. Yurts are an ideal example of adaptability in a home and lifestyle. For thousands of years, they have existed in nomadic cultures of Central Asia. “The Mongolian pastoral nomads relied on their animals for survival and moved their habitat several times a year in search of water and grass for their herds” (Leicester 6).
An emphasis on mobility and non-permanence means that nomadic, Mongolian living spaces had to be built with transportability in mind. “Not only did gers [the Mongolian word for ‘home’] make this easy by being so fast to set up, they were also very light. Large family gers could be entirely dismantled in an hour and hauled on two or three pack animals” (Nat’l Geographic Education).
As a physical structure, Mongolian yurts were a response to a conversation with the environment. One could argue that perhaps they didn’t design the yurt, but their physical surroundings forced the yurt into existence. For example, “the dwellings for the nomadic cultures of the Central Asian steppe [existed in] a very windy biome, and the circular shape of yurts made them able to resist winds from any direction. The sloping, aerodynamic shape of the roof also meant that winds were unlikely to tear off roof beams” (Nat’l Geographic Education).
The correspondence between the outside world and the inside world is the symbolic essence of our relationship with nature. As the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy said, “We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves”.
In today’s world, yurts continue to symbolize freedom and connection to the outdoors. Beginning in the 1990’s, Oregon and several other states have incorporated yurts into their Parks Department as year-round camping facilities (Gauper). Yurts are, as they always have been, cheap, easy to construct, and aesthetically beautiful. Their circular shape represents a pattern in nature that we simply can not find in suburban developments. “Living in the round is a way of living more closely with nature. Everything around us is round- the moon, the earth, eggs in a nest, the trunks of trees. As a lifelong nature enthusiast, I want my home to connect me with nature, not separate me from nature” (Ross). The circle represents the unbroken cycle of stuff.
So, why would I want to make something that’s already been designed before? I believe this is the first step to understanding what “home” means. We have no way of understanding the context of the earth at large if we cannot draw relationships to our immediate surroundings, and look inside ourselves. Evaluating what is truly necessary for survival is essential to rewriting our destructive “current method of survival,” and creating a narrative of sustainability.
The tiny house movement is a beautiful example of how an increasing number of individuals are interested in reconstructing this narrative. By owning fewer things and living in a home as small as 80 square feet, mobility and non-permanence are thrust to center stage. This way of living dismantles the American ideal that owning property, and allows people to live without having to buy or rent land.
What is worth 3D printing in a world that is already loaded with too much stuff? We can use this technology to evaluate how we are making our bare necessities.
Works Cited:
Gauper, Beth. “Yippee for Yurts.” Yurts in Clear Lake and the Upper Midwest. N.p., 12 Sept. 2012. Web. Oct. 2014.
Leicester, John. “Mongolian Herders Struggling to Survive.” Mongol Tolbo(2001): 6-7. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Reynolds, Michael E. Earthship. Vol. 1. Taos, NM: Solar Survival, 1990. Print.
Ross, Rachel. “A Firsthand Look at the Magnolia 2300 Yurt – the First Energy Star Home in British Columbia.” Inhabitat: Design Will Save The World. N.p., 29 July 2012. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
“Yurt.” National Geographic Education. Verizon Foundation, n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Chuck Neudorf
20 October 2014
Blue Rabbit
Iteration #1
I would not be satisfied making trinkets with a 3D printer for my Blue Rabbit Project. There were several false starts while trying to decide what to make, but when I hit on the idea of making something that is functional and that might also work as a teaching aid, I knew I was on the right track. Because I have a background in navigation, it seemed logical to go in that direction. To choose which device to make was a matter of eliminating the impossible ones and then see what’s left.
The first to go were the electronic devices. GPS receivers are small and superbly accurate but far to complex for 3D printing. I could probably make a cover for my GPS unit, but that doesn’t seem like a proper challenge, nor does it provide a teaching opportunity.
Before there was electronic navigation, there was celestial navigation. Tools were used to measure the angular distance of celestial bodies above the horizon. That measurement, along with accurate time and either tabular data or formulas, allowed navigators to determine their position. Foremost among these tools is the sextant. Traditionally made of metal, there are some sextants available in plastic. While we may be getting closer, sextants are still too complex for 3D printing. They have many moving parts plus gears plus optics.
The first device I actually tried to make was an astrolabe. This device is a precursor to the sextant and has far fewer parts. My design has only two parts, a base and a sighting ring. One of the issues I have with this unit is how to read the numbers it generates and another issue is sizing the two pieces so that they don’t bind on the one hand, and they don’t lose too much accuracy on the other. At this point the astrolabe is on hold while I work on the next design, but I fully expect to return to it.
It should be noted that every time we step backward on the technology scale, we lose some accuracy, but if we have to give up accuracy in order to get a tool that works, so be it. That is the deal I am making by creating a plumb bob sextant. This is the simplest design yet and I can guarantee that it will work but I won’t have any idea about its accuracy until it is tested. This device is simply a 3D printed plane with angular values marked at 10-degree increments. A weighted string is attached so that when the upper edge of the tool is angled above horizontal, the angular value of the rotation can be read where the string intersects the scale. (Burch, 149.).
Assuming we can use these tools to measure how high in the sky the sun is (as an example), what can we hope to learn? The sun appears to rise in the sky throughout the morning, stops at its highest point for just an instant, and then begins its descent. The point where the sun appears to stop is very special to a navigator, that is the point when the sun is exactly on the same meridian of longitude as the observer. At that point, latitude can be calculated with just a little addition and subtraction. (Bowditch. 344.) The practical aspect of using these tools is being able to tell where you are. The slightly less practical but equally important aspect is that by looking closely enough at the world around us, we can understand how it works.
Of course, not every seafaring culture has a use for the tools that are so familiar to me. Hundreds of years before Europeans found their way to the Pacific Ocean, Micronesian navigators explored the entire Pacific basin. “Micronesian navigation, I realized, is also an integrated system; instead of being based on charts and instruments, it relies on a vast body of lore and the navigators own senses”. (Thomas. 75.) The test of the Polynesian navigators was their ability to find low-lying islands that are far away. Fortunately for me, my challenge won’t be that difficult.
The tools that I am building will measure angles, and they’ll work fine on targets other than the sun, moon, and stars. I propose that a fair test of the design and execution of my tools (and my math), will be to use them to determine the height of the clock tower on campus.
Bowditch, Nathaniel. The Marine Sextant: Selected from American Practical Navigator. New York: D. McKay, 1976. Print.
Burch, David. Emergency Navigation. Camden, Me.: International Marine Pub., 1986. Print.
Thomas, Stephen D. The Last Navigator. New York: H. Holt, 1987. Print.
Iteration One: The Idea
John Grieco
10/20/14
The idea that I have chosen to explore over the remaining seven weeks of Making Meaning Matter is how to produce 3d printable shapes and objects with the programming language Javascript. By the end of the quarter I hope to contribute to the open source community a number of shapes and objects submitted to the OpenJsCAD github examples page. I have been inspired by the DIY community to take 3d printing and design as deep as possible.
I see three levels of 3d modeling and design; the first level is finding a model already made on Thingiverse, and printing it. The second is creating your own model using one of the many 3d modeling programs like TinkerCAD or Blender. The third is pealing back the skin of a 3d modeling program and writing the code manually for the shapes and objects you wish to create.
3d modeling programs have many advantages over manual coding. Using a 3d modeling program to create a square is much quicker than programming a square. A square can be created and adjusted in TinkerCAD in a matter of seconds and programming the same object takes much longer. In Blender, you can create many shapes and objects that may take months or years to figure out how to do manually. The biggest advantage that 3d modeling software has over manual programming is the learning curve. A designer can spend a few hours with TinkerCAD and feel comfortable with the basic functions and design techniques as with programming it is practically like learning a foreign language.
This brings me to my question. Why would anyone want to take the time to program 3d models when the same thing can be accomplished in a fraction of the time using software already developed?
“If you’re not able to open and replace the batteries in your iPod or replace the fuel-sender switch on your Chevy truck, you don’t really own it,” Mr. Jalopy argues. “The terms of ownership are still dictated by the company that assembled it and glued the iPod shut so that you couldn’t get into it.”(Jalopy, NPR.org) The argument presented by Mr. Jalopy applies not just to hardware like your iPod but to software as well. While TinkerCAD is a great tool for design as is an iPod for playing music, the user often doesn’t know what is going on inside the machine or behind the UI (User Interface) of a web application or software package. This quote inspired me to take ownership of my designs and embrace the DIY mentality of the open source community through programming.
“To most, computers are a means to an end, not something you want to learn about. A doctor isn’t interested in how an EKG machine works; he just wants to use it and read the results. A structural engineer doesn’t concern himself with how his calculator works; he just wants to use it to calculate loads.”(Smith, PCMag.com) Programing may be a dying art. There is little motivation to learn how to program something when someone has already made an application that can do what you wished to accomplish. Technology can make us lazy. With spell check and auto correct on every computer and smartphone what motivation do we have to learn to spell words correctly? I don’t want to use computers as just a means to an end. I want to understand how shapes are generated and keep the dying art of programming alive within Making Meaning Matter.
I can only hope that my contributions to the open source design community will have a positive impact on future designs that could years later make a difference in world. An amazing thing about the open source community is that your code or design has the possibility of influencing someone in ways that you never imagined. It’s a piece of you, forever embedded to be used by all.
I also wish to provoke more conversations about what it means to have ownership of something and encourage others to understand how shapes and objects are generated in the 3d modeling software they use. A greater understanding of this software enables us to trouble shoot when things aren’t working instead of just being helpless victims of the application. “Computational thinking is a skill that everyone should learn. Even if you never become a professional software engineer, you will benefit from knowing how to think this way. It will help you understand and master technology of all sorts and solve problems in almost any discipline.”(Crow, TheGaurdian.com)
Citations
“Are You Sure You Own Your Stuff? : NPR.” N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
“Programming: A Dying Art? | Tim Smith | PCMag.com.” N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
“Why Every Child Should Learn to Code | Dan Crow | Theguardian.com.” N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
How can the process of cognitive archaeology refine physical understanding of subconscious imagery predicated on past, future, and present emotional constructs?
Possessing the human ability to be aware of a chronological division between past and present events relevant to personal experience is remarkable. Decision making, processing social interactions, and directing motivational purpose are all systemic of our inherent ability to compare the “then” and “now”. Rudimentary stages of idea creation and expansion fall into line beneath a subconscious organization of events and fragmented memories. Fabrication of my three dimensional object will follow the directional means of cognitive archeology, ultimately establishing a conglomeration of personally historic and momentous thoughts indirectly synthesized into the environmental aesthetic of a dream scape I have recently experienced. Involuntarily retaining observational memory of procedures or interactions made throughout the day is often a process that occurs without self-recognition or established agency(. How does the brain decide what is to be remembered and what is to be forgotten? Is the brain itself the singular deciding entity? The thought process can become synchronized with or through external influence, social representation, or material connection. Stimulation of memory can sometimes become apparent in an active cognitive state during the day. Reproductions of thoughts and daily events during a position of rest or sleep however, can be manifested in disorienting abstract patterns resulting in a personal desire for truth along with explanation for the indescribably unknown. Dream excavation can be credited with redefining interactions one has made during past or present life and assembling them with implications of social or emotional makeups relevant to present or future experience, “it is an open picture with permeable boundaries, and it is so for a good reason: it maps a cognitive landscape in which brains, bodies, and things play equal roles in the drama of human cognitive becoming (Malafouris, 2)”. Malafouris uses this explanation to define his observation of human interaction and cognitive exposition however, this elaboration is crucially relative to my own formulation and justification of dream excavation in relationship with cognitive archaeology.
I thought I knew
The imagery and material validation of dreamscapes can become uncontrollably infinite, providing a distorted development of confusing questions, obligations, and indefinite answers. Complete control of decision making in dreams is not easily attainable and a much more instinctual, almost primitive thought process emerges. Repurposing, or discovering purpose for fragmented thoughts swarming my subconscious mind could potentially provide a new conceptualization of environmental stimulus and anthropological constructs relative to subtly disowned creativity. Emotional convictions and confrontation can be replicated then reorganized within a dream state also parallel to REM sleep. Guo Yuxian, a woman recognized in “women and the Material World” briefly summarizes the life of her mother in comparison ot her own, bringing forth great emotional conflict and discomfort, revisiting the personally imposed question of “why didn’t I help her when I could”? Annotations of detail embedded in the interview text indicate that Guo Yuxian’s most vivid childhood memory was that of her mother’s bound feet (Dowling, 50). This experience represents a very real cognitive interaction immediately reflected upon by shared human experience. What if She were able to interact with her emotion through a physical manifestation of her “most vivid childhood memory”? Would this be beneficial or detrimental? Uncovering and refining a subconscious image or idea promotes particular human endearment pertinent to the value of success or ownership. Allowing that same idea/image to manifest itself into physical form redirects the concepts back to ornamental value, reflecting the history of a thought process within the realm of contained static motion. Valued in acute vividness and intensity, a recent subconscious organization of memory and emotion implored me to interact with a personally irrelevant past acquaintance, a stranger, a bathroom, and a knife. My body was then a subject of impalement within the dream, slowly progressing to incision line-work moving vertically down the torso and ending at my waist line where I then existentially impeded further cutting imposed by the blade. While holding the tool delicately in my hand, it was then revealed by its user or opposing projection of thought, that the knife’s material identification was to be known as a “plumbing knife”, directed towards me as if I had posed the specific question. Consumed with the vivid aesthetic of the “plumbing knife” I intend to reproduce it physically along with its metaphysical properties of anxiety and fear. Subconscious compilations of distinct imagery along with recognition of language through explicit personal history have been synthesized into a false memory which will soon have new meaning physically. The knife itself will be designed and printed to the exact details vividly represented in my alternative innovative state of consciousness. The rust of the short and dull blade is crucial to the overall simplistic aesthetic of the tool. This will be a process of time travel in prospect of artifact recovery, an artifact that has been created by my own subconscious mind to be remembered by my conscious self, eliminating the boundary of the mental and physical, ultimately creating a blanket of transparency or bridge between two opposing states of mind.
Works Cited
D’aluisio, Faith. Dowling, Glenn. “Marriage.” Women and the Material World. Sanfransisco: Sierra Club, 1998. N. pag. Print.
Malafouris, Lambrose. “introduction”. How Things Shape The Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013. Print.
What determines if an object is meaningful?
My idea is to 3D print a tchotchke. I was first inspired by the sign in the Computer Applications Lab above the 3D printers that reads “No Tchotchkes.” Following this rule, I am not able to print most of the things that I really want to. I question why we aren’t allowed to 3D print tchotchkes. Does anything exist that is actually pointless, meaningless, valueless, and functionless? I don’t think so. I believe everything has some sort of meaning or value, regardless of how apparent it might be.
One thing about tchotchkes or trinkets is that one rarely buys them for oneself. They are usually given or received as gifts. When anything is given as a gift, it is automatically assigned meaning. When I was 6 years old, I was given a Starbucks temporary tattoo by a relative who was visiting from across the country. This was the first time I had ever met this relative, and I haven’t seen them since. I thought they were the coolest person in the world, and I held on to that tattoo for as long as I could. My dad asked me if I was going to put the tattoo on, and when I told him I wasn’t, he wanted me to throw it away, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t care at all about what the tattoo meant to anyone else, or what its intended use was. I didn’t drink coffee, I had no special affinity for temporary tattoos. What mattered to me was that someone had been thoughtful enough to give it to me. I don’t even remember the name of my relative or how I am even related to them now. I would say that at this point, the idea of that temporary Starbucks tattoo means more to me than that relative does. I don’t think that a giver even has to put a lot of thought, if any at all, into a gift for it to have a ton of meaning. The children I work with will give me their artwork, and I highly suspect that a lot of these gifts come from a loss of interest in the activity and the need to get rid of the mess left behind. This doesn’t make the art mean any less to me though. One child gave me an empty envelope and I still hung it up on my wall. That being said, a gift has the potential to have a great amount of intended meaning that might not be known to anyone but the giver and receiver of the gift.
There is also great meaning in objects that one can make for themselves. We know a lot about making from reading the Maker Movement Manifesto, and how it just feels good to make things. If you make something, I think that automatically assigns meaning to whatever it is that you make. Even if the object turns out nothing like you wanted it to, it still means something that you made it. When I was younger I attempted to make a cereal bowl that looked like a turtle out of clay. It turned out totally non-functional and vaguely turtle-like. Even though it’s pretty ugly, I have still kept it all this time. Just because I made it. Also possible with creating something for yourself is intentionally making something that has meaning embedded in the design of the object, whether apparent to all, or just the creator.
I intend to to print two objects, one to gift, and one to keep for myself. I don’t have any ideas of what these objects might be, look like, or mean at this point, but I don’t intend for the meaning to be apparent. They will have meaning.
Meaning in an object might not be apparent to more than one person. I think this idea is important because even if an object is only impacting one single person, I think it is still worthwhile for this object to exist.
I was unable to find material on the meaning of seemingly pointless items, but I did find that there has been some movement against tchotchkes in the professional world. There have been moves in the pharmaceutical industry to ban tchotchkes as a form of marketing. (Iskowitz; Pharmaguy, That’s Snot Funny!) This brings up an interesting point that tchotchkes can serve a very blunt purpose by being used by companies to “offer clients an effective and efficient way to build loyalty to their brands.” (Pharmaguy, May Ban Tchotchkes)
I think this is worth studying for this quarter because exploring how and why objects hold meaning could be very useful. Discovering and sharing how meaning can apply to one might change perspectives on we view seemingly meaningless objects. Perhaps I will be able to use my learning to get the “No Tchotchkes” sign removed.
Works Cited
Iskowitz, Mark. “U-Pittsburgh Med Center Weighs Tchotchke Ban.” – Medical Marketing & Media. Medical Marketing & Media, 1 Aug. 2007. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Pharmaguy. “Pharma Marketing Blog: Duluth Bans Tchotchkes — That’s Snot Funny!” Pharma Marketing Blog: Duluth Bans Tchotchkes — That’s Snot Funny! Pharma Marketing Network, 8 Jan. 2008. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Pharmaguy. “Pharma Marketing Blog: EU Pharma Industry May Ban “Tchotchkes” Outright! Tchotchke Makers Threaten to Sue.” Pharma Marketing Blog: EU Pharma Industry May Ban “Tchotchkes” Outright! Tchotchke Makers Threaten to Sue. Pharma Marketing Network, 9 July 2013. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
http://www.zachblas.info/projects/facial-weaponization-suite/
http://www.urmesurveillance.com/urme-paper-mask/
“First meticulously censused, and then censored…. The more the word safe is repeated, the more our fears increase.” – Emily Abendroth
“Liquid surveillance is… an orientation, a way of situating surveillance developments in the fluid and unsettling modernity of today…. Surveillance spreads in hitherto unimaginable ways, responding to and reproducing liquidity. Without a fixed container… surveillance spills out all over.” – David Lyon, Liquid Surveillance
What are the possibilities for interacting with and/or refusing interaction with surveillance?
WHAT:
-My project will be an active exploration of surveillance, with particular focus on the advent and advantageous use of facial recognition software. What are our roles in this narrative becoming? Are we co-conspirators, assisting and promoting the surveillance of one another (even in the simple, yet dogmatically tended to, act of tagging our friends in a Facebook image)? Are we merely compliant data, passively permitting the aggressive aggregation of each opportunity of information? Are we/will we be a denial to this seamless system, this situated stockpile that recedes into evermore untraceability as we become irrevocably more findable, see-able, readable?
What do we do when visibility itself becomes compliance?
-With my work, I intend to trouble the increasingly asymmetrical transparency between the surveillers and the surveilled. The resulting material will be a series of wearables that deny facial recognition software accurate readings of the face. As technologies in surveillance progress, it becomes increasingly evident that the body is a contested site where negotiations with power are played out. With this understanding, how can we adapt our interface (our very bodies) and claim agency once again?
What control can we have over our Data Double?
What control does it have over us?
“Today we are witnessing the formation and coalescence of a new type of body, a form of becoming which transcends human corporeality and reduces flesh to pure information…. [T]his new body is our ‘data double” (Haggerty, Ericson 614).
-In short, the information collected about us (our credit score, employment history, criminal record, shopping habits, etc.) creates a virtual doppelganger, a “data double” of ourselves. In the refusal to be located/sorted/catalogued, can we induce dissonance with our data doubles? By adapting our appearance IRL, can we become alienated from the biometrically constructed “double”?
Who is hiding from whom?
-I intend to contextualize my contemporary enactment of camouflage with an understanding of its history; a history long and varied, with direct links to both violence and nature. Researching the historical uses of camouflage and the politics that surround it will clarify my own intentions for the form. Access to strategies of hiding appears to be of extreme importance in the years to come.
What are the politics of privacy?
-Is privacy a basic human right or merely a bourgeoisie concept? Who historically has had the right to privacy? Who hasn’t?
WHY:
-The recent launch of the FBI’s Next Generation Identification program (a “faceprint” system that intends to house over 52 million criminal and non-criminal photos by 2015), a horrifying increase in drone warfare (320 strikes with 2,400 killed within the first five years of Obama’s presidency alone), and the development and implementation of RFID microchips for identification purposes (the Northside Independent School District of Texas plans to implant them into student identification cards next year) are just a few of the reasons why presently exploring our relationship to surveillance couldn’t be more important.
Surveillance moves forward with or without our consent,
with or without our dissent.
-The question of the future of the civil liberties, human rights, and privacy of us and our “neighbors” is tantamount to the question of surveillance. If surveillance is a chain of closely watched links, each location recorded and maintained, every dimension organized according to fixed categories, how can the simple act of covering one’s face break that chain?
WHO:
Bauman, Zygmunt, and David Lyon. Liquid Surveillance. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007. Print.
Blechman, Hardy. Disruptive pattern material: an encyclopedia of camouflage.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 2004. Print.
Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. “The Surveillant Assemblage.” British Journal Of Sociology 51.4 (2000):
605-622. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Warren, Samuel V., and Louis D. Brandeis. “The Right To Privacy.” Harvard Law Review 4.5 (1890): 193-220. Business
Source Complete. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Tobias Hope Young
10/20/14
Making Meaning Matter
Blue Rabbit
Did you know every year in the United States we dispose of… 1.6 billion disposable pens (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act)
A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said. (The World’s Rubbish Dump: A Tip That Stretches from Hawaii to Japan)
I would have everything in the house-television, washing machine, stereo, water pump. I would be proud that I had everything that everybody else has. Then my life would go smoothly and I would be proud. I wouldn’t have any problems. (Women in the Material World)
When asked what to print my knee jerk reaction was to make some gadget like a clock or a special sort of puzzle box with a sophisticated lock or any number of sophisticated knickknacks which would be quick to get thrown onto the shelf and collect dust before, inevitably, getting thrown away. After all I have no need for a clock of any kind since I already own a watch and a cellphone just as I have no need for a puzzle box since I have nothing that needs to be locked away. My second thought was to create something with symbolic value like a cross or a good luck charm or a token that could remind me of the ideals and values that I hold dear to me now. But then it occurred to me that that the symbolic item would lose all value once it was passed onto the next person or once I moved on to a different stage in my life. After all what would happen to these objects after I have given them up to Goodwill? Some people might keep them to put on their shelves but most would get thrown away which makes you really think. The object that I am making needs to get used thoroughly before it enters the trash heap. This of course led me to think about the continent sized trash island and the wildlife that it was destroying in the middle of the ocean and I shuddered to think that I might contribute to that cycle. The thing I wanted to bring into the world would be less stuff, less junk, less plastic, which would mean that I would have to work on replacing some of the disposable things that I have in my life. This caused a problem for me as to what I could dispose of until it hit me that the one thing that I use every day is my disposable black pen.
My decision of what I would make was enforced by reading sections from the book “Women in the Material World”, because when I was reading some of the chapters I was able to really reflect on what it means to own something and how that might positively affect you. It has been generally accepted that owning more stuff is a source of pride but in today’s world of increasing global temperatures where every appliance and product we own contributes to our own carbon footprint more is not necessarily the answer. This is why I believe that we need to start moving towards a more minimalistic lifestyle.
Unlike Buaphet in Thailand I don’t consider myself particularly proud of the things I own (like my television). By that I mean that I try to embrace a more eco-friendly lifestyle by owning the least amount of stuff as possible. And the stuff that I do own is high quality. This applies to just about everything I own with the exception of one thing: the disposable pen that I replace every month. The more that I thought about it, the more I realized how irrational my choice of stationery was, and it really did violate my philosophy. This is because when you think about it, what is a disposable pen but a product that is guaranteed to break (run dry), at least once every two months. When this product does inevitably break the next step you take is to go to the store and buy another one which only perpetuates the cycle and adds more trash to the trash heap. The strangest part by far is that no one really questions it, that we just accept it as normal.
My goal is to create a pen with a refillable ink cartridge so that when the pen runs dry it will mean simply replacing the cartridge. This is preferable to buying a pen with a refillable ink cartridge at the office depot because the pen that I will make will be more tailored to my needs and will have a more personal feel to it since I designed it. It will also have added personal value because, as I know from experience, the things that we personally make have added personal value to us in contrast to the things that we buy from the store. With my 3D printed refillable pen I can start working towards staying true to my own philosophy and keeping in mind that the United States throws away one point six billion disposable pens per year I can slowly start adding less stuff to the worlds junk pile.
Citations
Fact Flash 6: Resource Conservation And Recovery Act (Rcra). FACT FLASH (n.d.): n. pag. FACT FLASH. EPA. Web.
Marks, Kathy, and Daniel Howden. “The World’s Rubbish Dump: A Tip That Stretches from Hawaii to Japan.” The Independent [London] 5 Feb. 2008: n. pag. Print.
D’Aluisio, Faith, and Peter Menzel. “Thailand.” Women in the Material World. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1996. N. pag. Print.
For my project, I have decided to explore the realm of 3-D scanning items and turning that scan into a 3-D printable format. Throughout the upcoming weeks I will be making a platform capable of capturing precise 3-D images of an object with any smartphone, finding the most suitable program to convert these captures into printable .stl format, and testing the practicality of printing replicas by scanning and printing a house key. During the entire process, I will be researching and writing on the impact that making these technologies available to the public could have on society.
My idea first started as a simple way to print out a spare key. During my first attempt to make a key image using 123D Catch, I realized the process would require more tools, the most significant being a stable, adjustable arm to photograph the key from multiple vantage points without moving it. After this realization, I decided to widen the scope of my project and include the development of a platform to scan objects with, using the printer to make many of its components. The idea I came up with was inspired from a photo from a Google search titled “3D scanner platform”
but redesigned to work with the gyroscopic sensors used with the 123D Catch Android app. I also discussed my design with Michael, who had previous experience with making a scanner/platform with an XBOX Kinect unit, and he invited me to see that scanner in action. I hope this will shed some light on the next step in the process, which is that of converting the capture into a printable file. Although I haven’t worked with the program yet, I know that 123D Design offers an import/export and brush-up of files captured via phone. Finally, after conquering all of these hurdles, I hope to test the ability of my digitally scanned and converted key file by printing it up and testing it in a lock. But why spend so much time and effort on creating a replica of something that already exists?
I think that the urge to replicate comes from within our own bodies, constructed of DNA endlessly reproducing to scribe our stories within its helical pages. In terms of objects, replicas are seen as synonymous with fakes and forgeries, but can also be used to educate people and create an interactive learning environment when paired with 3-D scans (Roozenburg). Also, there exists a convenience factor of knowing that you have a digital copy of something, whether or not you need to manifest it at any given time. This idea somewhat nullifies the question of what to make in a world so full of stuff, because things could be produced only based on their need, and kept in a digital realm until then. In the case of a key in particular, having a digital copy stored somewhere safe could make you $50-100 richer, and a few hours younger.
After doing some research to see if anybody else had played with this concept, I came across an article in the Telegraph that wrote of two companies – Keys Duplicated and KeyMe – that offer paid services for key duplication. While I find this very similar, I would like to see the services offered to anyone, freely. Aside from that, I saw images and ideas for keys with customizable faces, adding a new element of fun to every lock/unlock session, woo-hoo!
But in the deep, dark corners of searching the internet (actually the front page), I also found atrocities. From bump keys to testing the integrity and safety of the aforementioned KeyMe service, it seemed that the ill intentions were as plentiful as the good. Bump keys, formerly used by professional locksmiths, could be inserted into a lock, whacked a few times, and voila! Problem solved. In the digital realm, these keys can be found and 3-D printed easily, and in the hands of the wrong person they can be devastating (Sparkes). Andy Greenberg decided to test KeyMe’s claim that “only you(key owner)can scan your keys” by attempting to scan his neighbors key, on a keyring, in a 30 second time frame. Surprisingly, he had no problem taking this scanned image and reproducing his neighbor’s key through the KeyMe service(Greenberg). The author and experimenter suggested that people just “keep it (the key) in their pants” because in this day and age, every bit of personal information is at risk.
I hope that over the next six weeks, I can add a new angle to the 3-D scan society by creating a platform that will allow any smart phone user to scan any object of their affection to keep with them forever in the digital realm, or use in a practical situation. In doing this, perhaps another case study can be conducted on what people find necessary to scan into the digital realm.
Works Cited
Greenberg, Andy. “The App I Used to Break Into My Neighbor’s Home | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 23 July 0014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Roozenburg, Maaike. “Smart Replicas: Bringing Heritage Back to Life.” Smart Replicas Nov 25 (2013): 28-31. Smart Replicas. Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Sparkes, Matthew. “Lost Your House Keys? Just 3D Print Another…” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 29 July 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014
For my project, I have decided to explore the realm of 3-D scanning items and turning that scan into a 3-D printable format. Throughout the upcoming weeks I will be making a platform capable of capturing precise 3-D images of an object with any smartphone, finding the most suitable program to convert these captures into printable .stl format, and testing the practicality of printing replicas by scanning and printing a house key. During the entire process, I will be researching and writing on the impact that making these technologies available to the public could have on society.
My idea first started as a simple way to print out a spare key. During my first attempt to make a key image using 123D Catch, I realized the process would require more tools, the most significant being a stable, adjustable arm to photograph the key from multiple vantage points without moving it. After this realization, I decided to widen the scope of my project and include the development of a platform to scan objects with, using the printer to make many of its components. The idea I came up with was inspired from a photo from a Google search titled “3D scanner platform” but redesigned to work with the gyroscopic sensors used with the 123D Catch Android app. I also discussed my design with Michael, who had previous experience with making a scanner/platform with an XBOX Kinect unit, and he invited me to see that scanner in action. I hope this will shed some light on the next step in the process, which is that of converting the capture into a printable file. Although I haven’t worked with the program yet, I know that 123D Design offers an import/export and brush-up of files captured via phone. Finally, after conquering all of these hurdles, I hope to test the ability of my digitally scanned and converted key file by printing it up and testing it in a lock. But why spend so much time and effort on creating a replica of something that already exists?
I think that the urge to replicate comes from within our own bodies, constructed of DNA endlessly reproducing to scribe our stories within its helical pages. In terms of objects, replicas are seen as synonymous with fakes and forgeries, but can also be used to educate people and create an interactive learning environment when paired with 3-D scans (Roozenburg). Also, there exists a convenience factor of knowing that you have a digital copy of something, whether or not you need to manifest it at any given time. This idea somewhat nullifies the question of what to make in a world so full of stuff, because things could be produced only based on their need, and kept in a digital realm until then. In the case of a key in particular, having a digital copy stored somewhere safe could make you $50-100 richer, and a few hours younger.
After doing some research to see if anybody else had played with this concept, I came across an article in the Telegraph that wrote of two companies – Keys Duplicated and KeyMe – that offer paid services for key duplication. While I find this very similar, I would like to see the services offered to anyone, freely. Aside from that, I saw images and ideas for keys with customizable faces, adding a new element of fun to every lock/unlock session, woo-hoo!
But in the deep, dark corners of searching the internet (actually the front page), I also found atrocities. From bump keys to testing the integrity and safety of the aforementioned KeyMe service, it seemed that the ill intentions were as plentiful as the good. Bump keys, formerly used by professional locksmiths, could be inserted into a lock, whacked a few times, and voila! Problem solved. In the digital realm, these keys can be found and 3-D printed easily, and in the hands of the wrong person they can be devastating (Sparkes). Andy Greenberg decided to test KeyMe’s claim that “only you(key owner)can scan your keys” by attempting to scan his neighbors key, on a keyring, in a 30 second time frame. Surprisingly, he had no problem taking this scanned image and reproducing his neighbor’s key through the KeyMe service(Greenberg). The author and experimenter suggested that people just “keep it (the key) in their pants” because in this day and age, every bit of personal information is at risk.
I hope that over the next six weeks, I can add a new angle to the 3-D scan society by creating a platform that will allow any smart phone user to scan any object of their affection to keep with them forever in the digital realm, or use in a practical situation. In doing this, perhaps another case study can be conducted on what people find necessary to scan into the digital realm.
Works Cited
Greenberg, Andy. “The App I Used to Break Into My Neighbor’s Home | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 23 July 0014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Roozenburg, Maaike. “Smart Replicas: Bringing Heritage Back to Life.” Smart Replicas Nov 25 (2013): 28-31. Smart Replicas. Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Sparkes, Matthew. “Lost Your House Keys? Just 3D Print Another…” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 29 July 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014
“There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.” (Lorde 53)
What would it mean to exploit the thing that has exploited me?
In any attempt to create, I feel forced to look critically at myself as I (and art object) unfold. In this way, it becomes imminently important for me to position myself as a white woman effectively challenging myself and the West as authoritative subjects of feminist and anthropological knowledge. I begin questioning the complexities of what it means to exist, operate, and “claim objectivity” as a creator, documenter, or ethnographer under the trajectory of Eurocentric frameworks which have been already put in place for me. What would it mean to disrupt these bottomless “master discourses”? What would it mean to create something in a state of becoming or fragmentation? What would it mean to exploit the thing that has exploited me?
My idea involves careful consideration of the possible linkings between “post-feminism” and “post-modernism”. By defining these two terms as not merely what comes after feminism or modernism, but pointing towards their most nascent stages, it becomes highly valuable to examine them within the context of 3D printing. Because everything we make, whether we want it to be understood as art or not, is inherently political, the ideas of “post-feminism” and “post-modernism” become my framework for understanding both my positionality and the tools, myths, and gestures involved in 3D creation.
Additionally, the exploration of truth//fact will be a guiding force within my process. By understanding that the accumulation of fact does not equate to the arrival at any certain “truth”, I question the objectivity of any notion when one realizes the aberrations carried out in the “name of truth”. Since a large part of the work that we do in this class is documentation, I feel that it is important for me to challenge the “facts” in a documentary practice. Are fact and truth neither relative nor absolute? What can truly be considered “scientific” or “objective”, when more often than not a number of codes are unconsciously used to disfigure and alter our individual understanding of how things look and feel? Why does it become more and more difficult for us not to confuse fact with truth each time we engage in a documentary practice?
It is hard for me to not feel overwhelmed. Because there are so many artistic, political, and ethical concerns connected to 3D printing, it is difficult for me to settle with one singular image or idea. It is difficult for me to get past the feeling that absolutely nothing is worth me 3D printing at all. As I find myself face to face with the hyper-reality of 3D printed pizzas, unborn fetuses, and working guns, I ask myself what separates a necessary creation from an unnecessary one? Who gets to decide what is necessary or not? This is where I try my best to take these broader terms and conditions (post-feminism//post-modernism//truth//fact) and turn them into specificities.
Specifically, what feels most vital in my attempt to create is the relationship between myself and the machine. Through well-considered poetic analysis of myself and the object I create I hope to disrupt something, to exploit the machine. This is where I return to my idea of creating something in a state of becoming and fragmentation. From Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Framer Framed, I quote, “Fragmentation is here a useful term because it always points to one’s limits. Since the self, like the work you produce, is not so much a core as a process, one finds oneself, in the context of cultural hybridity, always pushing one’s questioning of oneself to the limit of what one is and what one is not.” (Trinh 156)
This limit described by Trinh T. Minh-ha is particularly important because it not only points to the limits of the machine and its inevitable failure, but also the limits of myself, my physical body, and its failure to perform (at times) the way that it is “supposed to”. By further exploring my physical body’s limits and “failure to perform” from a feminist perspective, it becomes clear the many ways in which our capitalist-imperialist-heteronormative-patriarchal society has turned my body (simultaneously) into both a weapon and an object to (simultaneously) either be regulated or possessed. So what would it mean to visually represent this horror? What would it mean to compare my body’s limitations to the limitations of the makerbot? How can I exploit this?
I will be 3D printing dildos. With access to a machine that can literally materialize violence including ammunition, working guns, drones, and bombs, I will exploit the machine by creating objects that are used for pleasure. However, the dildos that I create will not appear to be functional. Because our society has such an obtrusive definition of what female pleasure looks like, and that dildos must appear to be phallic, I will design three that not only completely disrupt that vision but are also crafted specifically to the wants and needs of my three housemates.
What is the function of female pleasure? How is my definition of female pleasure different from yours?
Works Cited:
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1984. Print.
Trinh, T. Minh-Ha. Framer Framed. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print.
Graham Fisher
Iteration #1: The Idea
What are the boundaries of creating musical instruments?
http://www.3ders.org/images/brazilian-caxixi-instrument-kxx-3d-printed-rattling-rings-3.png
http://createdigitalmusic.com/files/2011/01/multi-pipetrumpet.jpg
http://img-new.cgtrader.com/uploads/blog/large_121606b7-96f1-41cf-87fe-a278d30f5405.jpg
On a planet already loaded with too much stuff, what idea is worth turning into more stuff? Stuff that transcends stuff. Stuff that makes music, oscillating vibrations of the air and/or itself. Stuff that dematerializes and then rematerializes meaning. Stuff translating a dialogue between matter and immateriality.
My idea is to create a plethora of 3d printed instruments. Some initial ideas include a variety of percussion instruments: a guiro, a series of tonal “wood” blocks, a cixixi rattle ring, a few shakers and perhaps a “steel” drum. I will certainly have to experiment with designs to perfect the acoustic properties of each idea since for the most part these instruments were created using wood or other non-plastic materials which have quite different timbre profiles than the P.L.A we are using.
As technology advances so does the art of the time period. Advances in recording techniques and manufacturing materials in the early 20th century completely altered the popular music landscape, increased its accessibility and dramatically changed its artistic direction. Developments in music production in the past few decades have changed the way music is created. DJs and producers can be inspired, write, record, mix and perform all in the same day using a computer with infinite varieties of digital instruments and orchestration, some prerecorded, some altered and even some completely imaginary. 3d printers allow a further level of customization and manipulation of sound. Computers using 3d printers are able to create impossible to construct instruments through traditional means of instrument. The possibilities are endless: exotic timbres, acoustics built into architecture, custom instruments, at home, printable orchestras. This is the new evolution of our ever-changing musical tools.
Parker, N. G. “Biomedical Materials.” Longitudinal Acoustic Properties of Poly(lactic Acid) and Poly(lactic-co-glycolic Acid). 9 Sept. 2010. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
There are a number of science labs across the country and the world experimenting with P.L.A (the filament we print with) and using it in surprising contexts. This particular study test P.L.A for use as a sound dampening material to use in construction. Traditional sound dampening materials are heavy and expensive but specially designed P.L.A fiber pockets could be quickly printed and used cheaply in modern construction. (This application of P.L.A is kind of the opposite purpose that I would be using it for in my experimentation but the research data is extremely valuable.)
“3D Printing In Popular Culture: A New Character Is Born – Blog- CGTrader.com.” 3D Printing In Popular Culture: A New Character Is Born – Blog- CGTrader.com. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
3d printing is so new that much of the general public doesn’t even know it exists. This article documents a few examples of the emergence of 3d printing into popular culture and its applications in fashion, representation in media and potential in video games. It could turn into a fad.
“3d Printed Instruments.” Printed Instruments -. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
3d printed instruments are of course the subject of my inquiry and this article was what first inspired me to appreciate its potential. This page contains hundreds of prototypes and tested examples of theoretical and applied 3d printed musical instruments. Some are variations on existing instruments enabling new sounds; others are attachments and accessories, still others are imaginary instruments with the potential to create some very unique timbres.
So what? How can that question even be asked? The implications and applications of 3d printing have not yet even begun to be explored. We have no idea how this device might alter our culture, our perceptions, our religions. This is assuredly an exciting time to be watching all this unfold and I believe that music and musicians, undeniably at the forefront of experimentation and technological innovation, is an interesting place from which to observe the progress. Plunging into this avenue of investigation will not only allow me to do research in a field that is at its infant stage and which requires an enthusiastic involvement that I luckily possess but will further progress my own musical development. I hope to exit my investigative engagement with tacit knowledge in the process of 3d printing and its acoustic properties as well as a few useful creations that I can be proud of and utilize to their full extent.
Eric Ross
Week 4
Blue Rabbit pt. 1 WD:467
10/19/2014
3D Horseshoes
In a world full of mass produced junk is it OK to create something useful? 3d printing can be used to improve plant, animal and environmental life.
The following image is of a horseshoe that was 3d printed by CSIRO in Australia. This shoe is a titanium shoe printed. for a horse named Holly she has Laminitis a disease that affects the attachment between hoof and bone and causes pain and inflammation. These shoes are remarkable bringing pain relief to horses everywhere.
My Idea is to create something significant to do my part and help improve the planet. This is what I’ve been thinking about the horseshoes and how much its improved Holly’s life in Australia. I want to use this idea in America to help horses with Laminitis. Due to excessive intake of grass and grains being a common trigger www.animedvets.co.uk/laminitis mentioned prevention through diet. Some other risk factors other than diet include enlargement of the Pars Intermedia of the Pituitary gland and high insulin levels.
I believe my Idea is important because eight thousand horses per year get Laminitis and of those eight thousand six hundred are euthanized. Laminitis is a disease that has affected the horse from the beginning of recorded time. If one those horses can be saved than what are we waiting for?
CSIRO and a veterinarian named DR Luke Wells-Smith have created a titanium horse shoe for a 10 year old mare named Holly. They scanned her hoof and 3d printed a shoe perfectly fitting her hoof. The new shoes redistribute the weight away from painful areas and allows Holly and other horses to heal.(http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Hollys-Christmas-wish-comes-true.aspx)
Amanda Lee Welch researched Laminitis of the bovine claw, What if this idea can be used on other animals that suffer from this disease. Think of how many animals we can relive from this burden.(http://www.udel.edu/ocm/development/evan/delete_me/envirotext_ek_older.html)
Maryland farrier Henry Heymering wrote a paper in 2010 titled a Historic Perspective of Laminitis. At the end he concluded. “We’ve had nearly 2,000 years of bleeding as treatment, 1,700 years of exercise as treatment and more than 40 years of phenylbutazone as treatment – without proof of effectiveness in treating laminitis. Although longevity suggests effectiveness, until we have proof of our treatments, future generations may find them as quaint and misdirected” as the ancient treatments that have come before. (Historical perspective of laminitis Henry W. Heymering, CJF, RMF)
What I believe he is trying to say is that until we know what treatments work we will doubt current treatments out there. So if this idea can help there will be no need for doubt or skepticism.
So without a doubt I believe that this idea is worth spending the rest of the quarter on. If I can help just one animal it will be worth that and more.
Blue Rabbit Sources
- http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Hollys-Christmas-wish-comes-true.aspx (Holly’s horseshoe’s)
- http://www.udel.edu/ocm/development/evan/delete_me/envirotext_ek_older.html ( Pre-Vet student Amanda Lee Welch)
- http://www.laminitishelp.org/504/history-of-laminitis-may-date-to-ancient-greece-and-beyond/ ( Historical perspective of laminitis Henry W. Heymering, CJF, RMF)
Apart from a (largely embraced) shift from wood to linoleum during the early half of the twentieth century, the invention of water-soluble inks, as well as the disposal of labor division, the medium of relief printmaking has remained relatively unchanged throughout its twelve hundred year history. This is doubtlessly one of the reasons it seems to compel such a diverse range of artists. Another reason could be the rampant restrictions it imposes upon the carver’s artistic vision: fine artists are restricted by the imprecision of the blade, which make lines imperfect and color inconsistent; while propagandists are restricted by the degradation of the linoleum (being that linoleum presents a bit of a paradox – the softness of the material makes small details possible to carve, but that same softness means that prints slowly wear down and lose their detail). And although these hindrances can breed creativity, three-D printers present doors begging to opened.
So, Is it possible to blend the oldest form of printmaking with the newest?
I spend my free time running stamps through a printing press. I spend my class time creating digital models to print on a MakerBot. That fantastic juxtaposition glared at me until I noticed it halfway through the first week of class. Suddenly, I had an intention. I would use the fermented cornstarch or some other filament to print computer-calculated stamps that could potentially print with an unprecedented consistency. It was circular, poetic, and it barely followed the rules – all synonymous with impeccability, in my book. The idea of making something two-D out of something three-D, and using cutting edge technology within a medium that’s been largely stagnant for a millennium, was too enticing to leave anywhere but the forefront of my mind.
My enthusiasm was met by a fellow student and lino-cut artist who shed light on the processes’ potential for evolving the foreboding multi-layer stamp. Before, the project seemed like a cute little interpretation of technology from the viewfinder of a self-assured technophobe, but the idea of working with layers could mean a tangible advancement in not only the medium, but in my personal germination as an aspiring printmaker. For the past couple of months, multi-color prints have been both the prerequisite for, and the bane of, my aspirations. I’ve been largely unsuccessful in my attempts to augment other mediums in order to add much-needed color; my venture into abstraction using only (and far too much) lino was laughable and left me feeling wasteful. In fact, most of it was distressingly un-printable. But Involving computers in the printmaking process could mean the margin for imperfect calculation droping to zero: colors could meet one-another with precision, and their interaction would not detract from the continuity of the print (a phenomenon which so often cripples my efforts). In light of all this, I must say that I haven’t a damn clue how this is all going to turn out, or even if it will turn out at all, but my thoughts are consolidated by an individual I discovered on the internet who has gallantly tread these waters.
The appropriately named Jason Webb, in March 2013, using only a basic knowledge of printmaking, developed an open source “printing plate generator,” and briefly experimented with stenciling, embossing, as well as relief printing. This is a step forward, but it seems to have ended there. I searched the internet to the best of my abilities, and could not find a single print made with his generator (outside of his initial work-prints), and there is certainly nothing that ventures into multi-layer printing. So although two-D printing with three-D printers is a door that has been previously opened, it has remained at a very rudimentary stage in its development for the past year and a half. I would be lying if I said this did not comfort me I way, knowing that whatever I create will be the first of its genus and caliber.
Walking into a situation where your creativity is pressured to bud can be a little counter-intuitive, and frankly, no one knows this better than myself. So, the excitement in finding a place for my passions within such parameters is duly multiplied. Yet I have no idea what to expect. And thus, I walk into this project both skeptical and optimistic, invigorated and terrified – a blind man with a flimsy walking stick.
Works Cited:
Thompson, Wendy. “The Printed Image in the West: Woodcut.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wdct/hd_wdct.htm (October 2003)
Lecomte, Domonique. “Relief Printmaking Techniques.” http://lecomtedominique.com/techan.html (2014)
Webb, Jason. “Parametric printing plate generator for OpenSCAD.” http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32772 (March 2013)
How can I be a figure that helps connect people back with the sea, basic elements, and the unitive light of nature, and how can I spread the thrill of the art of surf while helping spread the understanding that it is such an aesthetic and energetic delight at the same time? It took me quite a bit of brain storming and imagination exploring to finally come up with a novel and sustainable idea that I can create and work with especially in this world of already oh so much rubbish and trinkets. So one night while listening to the rain and packing some things for the next days venture to the ocean I took a moment to just sit and enjoy the rain drop like symphony going on outside and the rich air sweeping through my apartment, and in that timeless moment I started spacing off at my surfboard leaning up against the wall looking gorgeous and all, and then the idea came outta of nowhere right from left field and struck me and I knew just what I should create and work with for our programs mighty 3d printing project which I decided then was gonna be surfboard fins. Which is perfect because there is a whole wave of youth that are really starting to want to clean up the sea and appreciate surf as a source of wisdom and aesthetic glory. For the late Tim Leary once wrote “you could almost say surfers are outcast mutants, throw-aheads of the human race”(surfermag.com, January 1978) The idea of a fin is also ideal for me personally because Ive surfed since childhood and its always been such a zen like omega experience of magical clarity and heightened sensations. When Im out surfing or sheerly just playing in the sea I swear its like overdoses of satisfaction. So I look forward to being able to have the technology which will enable me to give back to the surfing community with sustainable, and artistic fins.
Basically I want to print three different types of fins all for dealing with different waters, primarliy big waves called thrusters, cold water fins, and hard drive fins. Also I’m using orcas, sharks, humpback whales, and dolphins all for inspiration as to how to shape the ultimate fin design, so far it seems like orcas have the ideally evolved fins to try and shape and replicate my designs to be like. Its important to me as well that the fins have an artistic quality and touch, I really would like to put the Japanese aesthetic symbol the enso on each fin or do a little hand brushed calligraphy or perhaps even come up with a cool lightning bolt logo or some fractal designs and abstractions of color.
The fin is a simple and fabulous shape, and although surf is for play I feel creating my own eco friendly fin technology is rather important and at least has meaning to me and Im sure there are others out there who would agree. For surfing is great in the sense that it is for play, for isn’t life like a cosmic joke anyways? Its a positive that it counters seriousness as well as fear and takes you out of mind and ego dualistic rubbish which allows people to have a complete encounter with life’s mystery where they can forget calendars and clocks and come back to sheer consciousness not the movement of thought. Like when Im on a wave I can’t help but get that feeling of all is one and one is all and that my body is and instrument for the cosmos and my brain a great reciever. In those moments I feel intrinsically pure and electric as can be and wholly receptive taking in all the incoming data and stimuli, but more than that it gives me sensations of sheer wholesomeness with the inexplicable which is great for to know the always so is to be illuminated. The next few weeks I have with this project I look forward to quite so for its going to involve a lot of my own personal study as I set to design the supreme fin and continue to gather information on orca and other marine life’s fin style. Its going to involve a lot of experimentation to master the craft, and Im going to have to experiment a lot with tinker cad as well with enso and calligraphy painting.
“Not to sound too deep or weird, but I think that the times when you really appreciate surfing are the times you’re really sort of becoming one with nature. Surfing’s as raw of a sport as it gets”.(http://www.changemakrs.com/kellyslater)
After surfing the internet trying to collect some info as to who else is doing a similar project, all that I was able to discover was just a handful of people who made attempts on thingiverse. Which I suppose is a misfortunate fortune for me, due to I won’t have many people to connect and learn from, but this also means there basically is a wide open market when it comes to 3d printed surfboard fins, so hopefully I can craft a novel design and style that I can share with others in which they can than create with there own printer and means, and hopefully one day will all be able to just 3d print and customize our own boards right from our casa.
“surfing is an aesthetic style of the liberated self, and thats the hopeful model of the future” (quote source unknown)
What different symbolic meanings and significance do Bells have to different people?
Bells have always had a meaning to me during my life, I just never thought too deeply about them. Just knew they appeared frequently. Weather it was during christmas time of “santa” leaving a bell from his slay on my porch or simply finding a bell in a bathroom stall or at my sisters soccer game . They have always popped into my surroundings. When I was younger I never thought twice about it just really loved the sound it made and the feeling it had in my hand.
When I came to Evergreen last year it was so magical to me and I had several spiritual awakenings. Not understanding my life at all growing up or why certain things had occurred. Questioning of why things were happening and why to me. I just went with it and did what I needed to do.Feeling out all the different emotions and feelings as they came. I didn’t understand why I did certain things either. Coming here I felt comfortable, loved , and happy . I looked at myself one day in the mirror in my dorm and something inside me was telling me to take the makeup off my face , and to just be. Just be was a reoccurring thought threw my head over and over again. The make up came off my face and I saw myself differently then I had ever seen myself before. Not only myself but everything around me, I saw colors, symbols, numbers, and signs. I was laying in my bed and thoughts were rushing to me so fast . I felt that I understood my life at such a deep level , I could feel that I was surrounded by love, support and guidance. Being up for almost the whole night tears were rushing down my face. Around four in the morning when thoughts were clicking for me I heard the most beautiful sound outside , realizing it was the sound of bells. It was a sign to me that I got it and it was okay. Everything that had happened in the past was okay and had happened for a reason. I saw myself how it had been before. Connecting everything together .
The feeling of only sharing this with a few close friends last year to now sharing it with this whole class makes me feel a little weird but good at the same time. It was something that was very memorable, important , and intense for me. I wasn’t to sure of what I wanted to make, I had thoughts of making a beehive also being very symbolic to me, until Bells started coming up a lot for me again. Popping into my head , and hearing a lot about them during our retreat and seeing a few of them as well. I realized I would be very interested to make one big bell or a collection of eight bells with different thicknesses and colors.
Not growing up in a religious home, but defiantly believing in something of a higher power. when I started researching bells, there was a lot about religious value, but also about many other things. Bells and chimes are used in ceremonies, celebrations, and announcements by numerous cultures across the world. The bell dome is supposed to represent the vault of heaven above and its flat circular bottom represents the flat, circular horizon of the earth . The empty space within represents all that is between heaven and earth. When the clapper hits the inner side of the bell, it symbolizes a message being resonated and created within the vault, or dome, of heaven delivered to the earth below. Bells are also used for many different reasons such as being certain peoples wake up calls to push us forth into our daily routines. Schools use Bells for the beginning and ending of classes to notify that a certain time period is over and boats use the sound when sailing through thick fog in order to announce their presence. The different tones of bells have different meanings. The higher tones are supposed to lift peoples spirits, represent happiness , and symbolize a closeness to a spirit. Lower tones can supposedly dampen peoples spirits. Chimes and high pitched bells can announce the presence of the higher spirits. Many people can associate bells with religious activity, but also can be used as magical enchantments. Bells are used as luck or to ward off evil spirits. Some believe and some doubt, but I was just very interested in researching the different symbolic reasoning due to my own personal experience with bells. Bells have a beginning and ending to what they symbolize and can also be used for the ringing of a door bell. When looking into the Chinese culture it is said that they are used for prospering and protection. And when looking at the bell and the sound symbols of Dharma , the bells sound symbolizes the proclamation of the masses of Dharma. The empty interior means voidness . The center of the bell is the reality of full knowledge of awareness .I believe that bells speak their own language through a variety of tones.
Is enjoying something for a moment less valuable than being able to hold it forever?
I plan on playing with the idea of what a 3d printer can do. I would like to try something more extreme than printing a plastic object and challenge myself by printing a completely edible object using the 3d printer. I’m inspired by the idea of someone eating an object that I believe represents them. It’s entertainingly cannibalistic. This project will take some, “Do-it-yourself,” work which will require me to print and assemble my own extruder, and also purchasing or making my own filament. There is not a solid design idea as to what the objects I’m printing will look like due to the fact that I will be designing and printing different objects for different people. There is also this interesting idea that my edible objects might be seen as less meaningful because they wont last nearly as long as typical plastic based printed objects.
The idea of printing edible objects is important because of what the world is already saturated in; plastic. Creating something that can be eaten and then eventually return to the earth after exiting someone’s body seemed most practical to me. I wanted to approach this project and challenge not only myself but the 3d printer and its capabilities. Rather than attribute to the plastic all around me, I’ve decided to get rid of the plastic
altogether when printing my final objects.
My central exploration surrounding my idea of the meaning behind something edible and also its context as a physical object led my research to interesting areas. I was able to find an article titled Do We See Apples as Edible written by Benece Nanay. Nanay poses a question, “What properties are represented by perceptual experiences? (Nanay 305)” This immediately made me think of the implications of the objects I would eventually print, the meaning behind eating an object that wouldn’t typically be edible, and how someone might go about eating, or not eating it. Do the shapes of objects define what action we take? The properties that objects have are characterized by our actions (Nanay 311.) Printing edible objects is quite a daunting task considering there didn’t seem to be much of a market at the start of my research. As I progressed I was able to find that some companies were playing around with the idea of creating edible objects made with a 3d printer. The process appears to be in its early stages from an article that I discovered which was published in 2012. The process of creating these edible objects involved heating the chocolate up in a tub before printing and maintaining it at just the right temperature (Sereno et all 827). Although laborious the challenge of finding a workable filament is both exciting and daunting, the challenge will fuel my project. The advancements in technology are making the way edible objects are created more accessible and less costly (Sereno et all 832). This can turn anyone into an edible molder at a low personal cost. The accessibility of 3d printers is exciting, in the foreseeable future people may have printers that can spit out a huge variety of things (Greengard 17).
This projects central question is, “On a planet already loaded with too much stuff, what idea is worth turning into more stuff?” This question challenged me and inspired fear within myself. I wanted desperately to create something that would be worth more than personal value or accomplishment. I set out to challenge myself and figure out how to produce objects that weren’t sentimental but meaningful and EDIBLE. Something that you can hold but also eat, something meaningful but also tasty. In many ways I wanted to work without plastic and go beyond what I thought was possible and figure out what else I can make this printer do. Challenge, devotion, and creation make my idea worthy of running with for eight weeks.
Works Cited
Greengard, Samuel. “All the Items Fit to Print.” Communications of the ACM Vol. 56.Issue 7 (Jul2013): p17–19. Web.
Nanay, Bence. “Do We See Apples As Edible?” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92.3 (Sep2011): 305–322. Web.
Sereno, L. et al. “A New Application for Food Customization with Additive Manufacturing Technologies.” AIP Conference Proceedings Vol. 1431.Issue 1 (2012): p825–833. Web.
How can maps help people navigate and understand an area better?
My goal is to create a 3D map of downtown Olympia that will be comprehensible and tangible to people struggling to understand the area. I will color code different types of businesses and locations to help guide people in their errands and adventures. I think maps are important to efficiency of getting around and I believe that the most useful type of map is one that brings the feeling of an area to the user.
By looking at the images above, one can see that map images try their best to convey an area, but attempting to exhibit a spherical object like the earth, as a flat image is impossible to do without distortion. 3D representation of a location is the most useful and least distorted type of representation (if done properly). This is why a globe is the superior model of the earth – it essentially is a mini-earth. Of course regular 2D printed maps can be very useful in navigation, but it depends on how the map is designed, and it depends on the interpretation of the person using the map. It takes a certain type of mind to relate a flat image to one’s surroundings in order to orient themselves and navigate from that.
With 3D representation, there is little to be interpreted. A tangible mass, modeling a city, puts your mind within the buildings allowing you to understand the layout and the sensation of the area. Becoming familiar with such a model will make a person relate to the area as if they are familiar with it itself. There’s little translation to be done.
Jeffrey Ambroziak is a cartographer from the United States. He is known for his invention, the “Ambroziak Infinite Perspective Projection” which is a form of 3D mapping. His development includes the third dimension of objects within images without distorting them. Distortion is a common problem among cartography since maps often try to relate 3D objects or areas to flat paper or screens. “Ambroziak doesn’t consider these kinds of images to be truly 3-D, as viewers must look at them from a specific distance and angle. Glancing from the sides, or walking toward or away from the image, distorts or destroys the illusion.” As a young man Ambroziak struggled to accept this distortion in maps and eventually developed a way to avoid it.
Recently he had a KickStarter project raising money to create a 3D map of the moon. He used data released by NASA to put into his program and develop the map.
“NASA put out some amazing digital elevation data of the moon late last year, but nobody had released it in true 3-D. So I decided I would,” –Jeffrey Ambroziak
What is “true 3-D”?
“A three-dimensional model that displays a picture or item in a form that appears to be physically present with a designated structure. Essentially, it allows items that appeared flat to the human eye to be displayed in a form that allows for various dimensions to be represented. These dimensions include width, depth, and height.”
The above definition of “true 3-D” says that for something to be 3D it has to display something in a form that “appears” physically present. I want to make something that actually is physically present. It will be exactly what it is showing people. There will be no possibility of distortion anywhere because its appearance does not depend on its viewers.
Unlike the idea for my project, Ambroziak’s map is 3D in the sense that a 3D movie is. He refers to it as “true 3D” because one can move with the image without distorting it. However, they still need 3D glasses and they cannot touch and feel the dimensions. This is why I aspire to create a map or model that is a tangible 3D representation of Downtown Olympia.
3D images are definitely getting popular these days. As someone who has an affinity for cartography, I truly appreciate maps that include the third dimension.
Recently Apple and Google have introduced 3D maps to their mapping programs and it is clear that the 3D versions are far superior. Just by looking at this image you can see how much better the right map is at displaying the area. I think moving cartography in the direction of 3D will make a big difference in map usage. I see people becoming less frustrated and less lost. Using the map on the left would almost discourage me from trying to acquaint myself with an area, whereas the map on the right excites me.
Works Cited
Ambroziak, Jeffery R. “PopView 3D Moon Map.” Kickstarter. Kickstarter Inc., 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
Dilger, Daniel E. “Apple’s IOS 7 3D Maps Leave Google Earth, Nokia Maps 3D Looking Old Fashioned.” Apple Insider. Quiller Media Inc., 30 July 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
Mosher, Dave. “Stunning New 3-D Moon Map Made From Lunar Data | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 08 Feb. 0012. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
“What Is 3D Representation? Definition and Meaning.” BusinessDictionary.com. Web Finance Inc., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.
“Yale Bulletin and Calendar – News.” Yale Bulletin and Calendar – News. N.p., 21 Jan. 2000. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
(a picture of a prototype dual guitar pick)
I am a musician and I am always in the process of creating something new and defining and redefining my sound. The guitar is the main instrument (besides my voice) that I play and is an extension of my own body. One of the main interfaces of my biological vehicle and the guitar can be found within my right hand—the pick. Over many years I have tried many picks and then settled with a Dunlop .60mm nylon pick that defines my specific sound and style. Now with the technology to 3D print so many things, I saw an opportunity to interact with my sound by creating my own pick, customized to my own liking. I can even make a double-pick that strikes the strings twice in one sweep. My goal is to make musical matter that connects the musician to the instrument and literally “make” my sound and connect that to a song that I write portraying the interaction between the realms of thought and materiality as mentioned in the Gnostic/Neo-Platonic mythologies.
What does the future look like for innovators of sound? I plan to explore the lives of experimental guitar artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Jack White, Jerry Garcia and more in discovering how they “made” their unique sound using things. Things play such a vital role in the formulation of a unique sound, and when thing are now easier than ever to create, I wish to capitalize on my ability to design and print specific picks for specific sounds that I am looking for. When I first posted a picture of my first 3D printed pick on a social media site, I immediately had people interested in custom designed guitar picks. I think the future will boom with people getting creative and making new instruments and instrument accessories to really mold their sound.
I will study the formation of new pedals and guitar effects. The connection that artist such as “The Edge” from U2 had with their sound and new effects technology is something that I wish to explore and learn from. “Widely recognized as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 20th century, Jimi Hendrix pioneered the explosive possibilities of the electric guitar. Hendrix’s innovative style of combining fuzz, feedback and controlled distortion created a new musical form.” (http://www.jimihendrix.com/us/jimi) Jimi Hendrix used things that people never thought of using before to create his unique sound.
I wish to inspire people to create more music and to branch and see how they can make innovative things that give music new life and a new way to play. Musician’s such as the band Mutemath have created interesting new instruments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zdtzk5mYf4) that make sounds like no other. When seeing this instrument played live, it opened my eyes to the possibilities of what kinds of sounds we can make and create new soundscapes with. “Music soundscapes can also be generated by automated software methods, such as the experimental TAPESTREA application, a framework for sound design and soundscape composition, and others” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundscape)
While there are many ways to create sounds in a digital audio workspace (DAW), I wish to focus on the creation of analog or physical objects that create unique sound. There is much going on in the digital realm, but I feel a material connection to music is irreplaceable in an age of digitalizing everything. I feel this creation of my own sound will inspire other to also hone their sound and think out of the box. I will make a presentation at the end of the quarter of a song in which I will incorporate the meaning of matter and thought. The digital realm is very analogous to the masculine principle of thought and then is brought into actualization by the feminine principle of material form.
The song that I create will address the issues that we have had with the mythological Artificer or “maker of things” that is referenced by Plato in Timaeus. In the Gnostic neo-platonic tradition, there was first a “Pleroma” or fullness that all consciousness came from. Out of the pleroma came the “Un-begotten Father” (see Gospel of Sophia) and the Divine Mother aka Sophia (personified Greek word for wisdom). Sophia created the Demiurge out of matter and since he was made out of matter, he only saw matter and thought himself to be the only god and creator. He then created the physical world and seemed to trap the souls of mankind into material bodies. Unbeknownst to him, he was actually carrying out the will of his mother, Sophia, by creating the physical world and the souls of man were only trapped by their own ignorance of their true origins.
For my blue rabbit project I have decided to spend 8 weeks researching the cost and availability of custom glasses frames to the mid and lower classes as well as what it takes to three-D design and print frames without using a pre-made framework.
This idea is important because of the high cost of optical wear and the importance of functional glasses frames. If you go to a normal optometrists office to get new glasses you most likely will spend thirty minutes trying on glasses that you will wear for at least 2 years (The American Optometric Association recommends that non-senior adults and children over age 6 have regular eye exams a minimum of once every two years.) those glasses then will characterize your face for the rest of the time you wear them, and if you pay an obscene amount of money for a pair of glasses that don’t quite fit you right, you might end up not even wearing them, or paying more to find the right pair.
I have always had a hard time finding glasses that I thought I would actually wear every day, and when I have found “the one” pair they were always too expensive. Eye care is important and will degrade the more you ignore the problem, it can be frustrating when the only thing holding you back from getting the eye care you need is the high cost of frames. Buying lenses online, if you know your prescription, can be as low as 40 dollars, and if you customize your own frames (or scan in a pair that you want to print) you can cut down the cost of the frames to just the cost of materials.
Right now the monopoly on eyewear is controlled by Leonardo Del Vecchio at a net worth of 17.1 billion dollars, owner of Luxottica, which owns a slew of well-known brands such as Ray Ban, Persol, and Oakley. Luxottica also makes sunglasses branded Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Stella McCartney, Versace, Vogue, Miu Miu, Tory Burch, and Donna Karan. Leonardo is the 38th richest man in the world as of August 2014. Why must we trust this rich Italian fellow to produce all of our optical wear for us? Where else can we go?
Mykita is a berlin-based firm which has produced and patented their own process of creating three-D printed custom eye wear. In 2007 they made a polyamide-based material which uses selective laser sintering (SLS) to create a finished solid piece. With google-like ideals they call their workspace a ‘manufactory’ and have a specific vision for the aesthetic of the store. Adorned with white lights and smooth spaces each Mykita store has its own in-house optometrists who performs certified eye tests, generates customized optical profiles and adapts the frames and lenses to the wearer’s face in the store. It seems like the customized glasses seeker’s dream, right? At a whopping 400- 700$ there is a very limited amount of people who can actually afford Mykitas custom lenses.
There are many innovative techniques that are being utilized by eye wear designers, such as Tom Davies, who has been using three-D printing to print out prototype frames in store to ensure they will fit his customers’ correctly before he hand-crafts the custom frames from a more durable material such as bone. Even in Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of the web are coming up with algorithms which can use two photos (portrait and profile) of your face and create the optimal glasses frames for the shape of your face. John Mauriello and Marc Levinson along with three other co-owners created Protos, a start-up company which is now offering custom frames to people who pledge ~500$.
This raises the question, “But where does that leave me?” as a college student with limited income and the opportunity to use a maker-bot, at least I don’t have to pay the fee to have Shapeways or iMaterialise print frames for me; but it also leaves me stuck counting on Thingiverse to have the fit I need. There is really no place with the option to customize glasses to your face online without paying a large fee and just handing it over for someone else to create. This quarter I want to find/use/or create a template where you can upload pictures of yourself onto an autoCAD program and use frame templates to create and morph the frames into exactly what you are looking for. Customization without all the useless fees.
“MYKITA – ABOUT.” MYKITA. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. https://mykita.com/en/mykitahaus#
“Protos Eyewear.” Protos Eyewear. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. http://www.protoseyewear.com/
Sharma, Rakesh. “Custom Eyewear: The Next Focal Point For 3D Printing?” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 10 Sept. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeshsharma/2013/09/10/custom-eyewear-the-next-focal-point-for-3d-printing/
“TD Tom Davies.” TD Tom Davies. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Anthony Stallsworth
Professors Arlen Speights and Sarah Williams
Making Meaning Matter
20 October 2014
Blue Rabbit Iteration 1
The population of honeybees has been going down drastically, which is also known as the “Colony Collapse Disorder” to most researchers. This is a major crisis for nature, and the food we need to live. Bees pollinate ninety percent of our food’s nutrition, and without honeybees we would be at a major decline in food, making it very hard to sustain a healthy daily diet. I believe that the printing of beehives to help sustain the bee population is something worth making in the world. This is why I have chosen printing a beehive that may be able to sustain and house honeybees for my Blue Rabbit Project.
I would like to back up my idea with more statistics on the importance of beehives, not just in the United States, but in the rest of the world as well. “Each year more than a million commercially produced bumblebee colonies are sold around the world.” (Paul H. Williams) These beehives produce more than ten billion dollars annually through their pollination service alone. The beehive industry is a fairly large one, and it is only getting larger with people already 3D printing these beehives. Lulzbot is a 3D Printer-manufacturing business with a blog about people who “design hives that can support bee colonies in a sustainable way, to monitor and track the health and behavior of a colony as it develops.” (https://www.lulzbot.com/blog/3d-printing-open-source-beehives)
The structure of a beehive is a repeated octagonal pattern. Basically, this is a pattern where each line intersects each-other at a one-hundred and twenty degree angle This pattern is not that hard to print, especially since the 3D Printers already print anything out in an octagonal pattern. I believe that printing out a plastic beehive is not very safe to the environment, because after time it enters our oceans and kills a lot of the animals that hunt in the ocean or live in the ocean. Most man-mad beehives are created out of wood and wire mesh, which creates the octagonal pattern. Plastic is harmful to the environment which is why I would like to create my beehive out of a different material. I considered beeswax, which would be a great substitute filament, because it would be easy for the bees to find and move into, and also it is a natural material that would not hurt the environment in any way. Although there is a type of extruder you can install on your 3D printer to print with beeswax, our school does not have one. This is the only thing stopping me from going through with it. There is a filament called “Laywoo-D3”, which is created out of recycled wood and harmless binding polymers. This type of filament would be immensely better for printing than the more common PLA filament, because it is not made mostly out of plastic.
In New Zealand, a golden honeycomb was created and placed in Sir Edward Hillary’s backyard “whereupon his bees adopted it as their own.” (Jacob E. Nyenhuis 140) This is only one example of bees moving into a man-made honeycomb, and I am sure that there are many more examples. Since the total number of managed honeybee colonies has receded 2.5 million in the last 40 years, it is very important that we create more, to keep the honeybee population sustained. By creating more honeybee colonies we can maintain the honeybee population, if not increase it, and in turn that will keep our plants pollinated to keep making the food we need. We cannot produce most of the food we have on this earth by ourselves alone. If we lost all of the bees in the world, we would start declining in populations ourselves. As humans it is our job to help the other species that live on this planet, especially the ones we need. Because there is already so much stuff on this Earth, I find it alright to create something that matters to the Earth, and is not just some useless plastic object that people will eventually throw out. I believe that studying beehives for a quarter is useful because bees are such a necessity to humans, and also flowers. If we 3D Printed beehives, bees would have more availability to colonies and this would help sustain their population. Most bees die in the winter because it is cold and because most of the flowers go away during this time of the year. While supplying more beehives to bee farms, we could keep them alive during the winter. This is why I think beehives are an important and useful object to create in the world.
Works Cited
“3D Printing Open Source Beehives.” Web log post. Lulzbot. Aleph Objects Inc, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Kaplan, Kim. “Related Topics.” ARS : Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. United States Department of Agriculture, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Nyenhuis, Jacob E. Myth and the Creative Process: Michael Ayrton and the Myth of Daedalus, the Maze Maker. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2003. Print.
Williams, Paul. Bumble Bees of North America an Identification Guide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2014. Print.
What is the potential of 3D printing in healthcare, and how will it revolutionize the medical field? This is one of the many questions that first inspired me and seized my attention when I began delving into the Making Meaning Matter program. I am still amazed by how cutting edge and truly interesting our texts are for this quarter, I knew this is what I wanted to do and that I was in the right place when I first started reading Makers, by Cory Doctorow, and couldn’t put it down. I’m convinced that this is the next big thing to revolutionize our existence and I am overjoyed to be learning about it, as well as fascinated and motivated to be a part of it.
Not to sound too sappy, but the most influential person in my life has always been my Mom, Kim. She is driven, intelligent, loving, and tenacious. She had me at a a relatively young age by today standards, growing up in Olympia she used to take me to class at Evergreen with her. Of course I don’t remember this, but she has described pulling me around campus as a bundle of blankets in a little, red, radio flyer wagon. After getting her degree from Evergreen Kim went to midwifery school and became a home-birth midwife, which was rough as a child because she would always be on call and have to leave at odd hours, often in the dead of night, to deliver new life. In my middle school years, Kim went back to school at PLU to get her masters as a Nurse Practitioner for many reasons, but mainly because she wanted a broader scope of practice. She worked so hard all those years and I’m incredibly proud of her, and I grew up knowing that like her, I loved helping people. I’ve contemplated going into a healthcare profession, but life took over and I decided I didn’t really have any clue about what I wanted to do or how to get there. Also medical school is a lot of time, and money, plus I’m squeamish… but who knows what the future has in store for me, right now I’m happy to be moving forward with my education, I’m loving Evergreen, and I’m really interested in 3D printing some bones! I plan on starting small like some teeth, or just a shape that resembles a bone, but I would love to work my way up to a pelvis or skull.
My mind is still trying to grasp the potentials of 3D printing, but I think that medical advances through technology are game changing, and I am hopeful, and somewhat fearful of how we will use this tool to increase or longevity or quality of healthcare. I could see it being possible for people to make 3D printers that can create new bones, and potentially even organic matter like skin or organs for transplants, but what are the ethics surrounding this? Could we 3D print Stem-cells? Could we printing machines that are capable of doing automated medical procedures and surgeries. This is important to me because I grew up learning about the medical field and because I’m curious of how this will impact it, and because I think healthcare is a basic need, yet it is heated topic in modern society because of the economical and ethical state of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry.
As I began my research looking for other people who had significant ideas surrounding 3D printing in the medical field I stumbled quite easily on some incredible tales of heartwarming ingenuity. One such article, titled “3D printed heart saves baby’s life as medical technology leaps ahead” tells the the story of a 2-week-old baby who required a complicated heart surgery because the babies heart had holes and the chambers were in an unusual formation like a maze. These issues were due to CHD (Congenital Heart Defects), which is a common defect of the structure of the heart present at birth. Using MRI scan data Morgan Stanley Children Hospital in New York City 3D printed a copy of the child’s heart to act as a sort of road-map. This 3D printed heart allowed for the opportunity to study the riddled, structurally unusual organ, and develop a detailed strategy for the complicated and dangerous surgery. Before this technique, they would have of had to stop the heart and take a look inside to decide what to do, which means more dangerous surgery, and less opportunity for strategic planning. I found several other amazing ideas that had put done with 3D printing technology the medical field, including a 3D printed titanium spinal invertebrate replacement that was porous so natural bone can grow through it over time. I am looking forward to spending a quarter exploring this idea and its manifestations because it has the potential to improve the human condition and because its cool as hell.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/3d-printed-heart-saves-babys-life-as-medical-technology-leaps-ahead-9776931.html
Works Cited
22, Aug et al. “How 3D Printing Will Revolutionize Our World.” Business Insider. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
28, Kevin Loria Aug et al. “This 3D Printed Vertebra Is A Huge Step Forward For Medicine.” Business Insider. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Boren, Zachary Davies. “3D Printed Heart Saves Baby’s Life as Medical Technology Leaps Ahead.” The Independent. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
“Congenital Heart Defects.” Text. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
What sort of significance can be found in a rubber duck? Clearly, a question that has been asked by scholars the world over for the past several centuries. Rubber ducks aren’t really important enough to talk about, is what most sensible people would say. I, however, am idiotic and determined.
This idea came to me as a result of my recent obsession (for lack of a better word) with Rubber Ducking (rubber duck debugging, teddy bear debugging, rubber duck problem solving, etc). It’s a process where somebody takes something that is not human, personifies it, and explains their problem, in detail, to that thing. It could be a rubber duck, a teddy bear, a cardboard cutout of a celebrity, it could be anything. I, personally, have a plastic skull named Ichabod. Because, however, I first learned about this with rubber ducks, that’s what the focus is on.
The idea is to make a rubber duck model that people can 3-D print for the purpose of this problem-solving method. It will be designed with a couple of things in mind. Firstly, it needs to be easy to personify. There are some design techniques I can employ to make a plastic monochrome duck easy to personify. Secondly, I am going to design it with size in mind. If it’s too small, a person may as well be talking to the air, and if it’s too large, than there’s no effective way to store it while not in use, and it may become more of a hindrance than a help. I’m thinking around the size of a baseball. Lastly, I will design it with the knowledge that I am designing a plastic rubber duck, and that nobody will take it as seriously as I am. If somebody has access to a 3-D printer, and they need to use this method of problem solving, they can print a duck to which they can explain their problems, once my design is finished.
This is important for a couple of reasons. It’s more about what the duck symbolizes and its function than the duck itself. Sure, it’s a rubber (plastic, I know, but I will continue to say rubber because it sounds better) duck, but it is the ultimate tool for problem solving. It’s because, when we think, we use different parts of our brains than we do when we try to explain or when we try to ask questions. Therefore, explaining to a rubber duck, or asking a question to a rubber duck causes us to think through the problem more logically, and in wider more understandable terms. On top of that, one of the questions we’re working with right now has to do with our relationship to objects, and in a way, this is a different kind of relationship to objects. People don’t try to explain things to their phones, and blind people don’t try to explain things to their sticks.
Now, this is a pretty recent thought. The idea of understanding something better through trying to explain it isn’t new, in 1980, an education method known as “learning by teaching” was developed by a foreign language teacher in Germany by the name of Jean-pol Martin. It’s largely the same idea, that explaining something allows a person to develop deeper understanding of the concept. Using inanimate objects to problem solve, however, is still fairly new, and largely dominated by the field of coding and programming. The first instance I could find of it was in a book called The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas, which contained a story about a programmer who would carry around a rubber duck and force himself to explain his code, line-by-line, to it. However, there are stories of the same logical tool being used in other fields. I found a story online, in which a man working with automatic fire sprinklers, stopped by his boss’s office to ask a technical question, and was referred to a dead duck hanging on the wall. Halfway through asking his question, he found the answer. There are also stories of people using teddy bears, and pictures of political figures.
The real question that stands to be asked, is what will be gained from exploring this concept over the next several weeks? I believe that by exploring this concept and looking deeper into the psychological reasoning behind it, I will be able to find some incredible fact about the way the human mind relates to objects. How can something like a rubber duck become so important that somebody carries it around with them while they’re working?
Bibliography
“Creating Passionate Users: Rubberducking and Creativity.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/01/rubberducking_a.html.
Hunt, Andrew. 2000. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley.
“Hwrnmnbsol – Ask the Duck.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com/148664.html.
Kernighan, Brian W. 1999. The Practice of Programming. Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
“ Re: Not an Awk Question.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html.
“Rubber Duck Debugging.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://www.rubberduckdebugging.com/.
“Rubber Ducking.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking.
“Rubber Duck Problem Solving.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://blog.codinghorror.com/rubber-duck-problem-solving/.
“The Concept „Learning by Teaching“ – Ldl-Engl.pdf.” 2014. Accessed October 21. http://www.joachim-grzega.de/ldl-engl.pdf.
How is jewelry – something that could arguably be considered a “tchotchke” – important to create in a world that’s already full of it?
The central question of this program is, “In a world already full of so much stuff, what is truly worth creating?” For a while, I was stuck on this question. I couldn’t think of a single viable thing to make via the 3D printer. One day, however, I was playing around with Tinkercad and eventually made a bead of sorts that I thought looked really cool, using solely the thin torus shape.
With this bead in mind, it suddenly occurred to me that I could make many different beads and print them out, and eventually string them together to create jewelry such as necklaces and bracelets. This bead is just one of many possible designs – although I ended up being so satisfied with this one that it may be the most printed and used bead. The possibilities really are nearly endless, considering how accessible Tinkercad is. Although it’s not the most powerful software, it will be more than effective for this project.
Some, including whoever had the audacity to slap a “NO TCHOTCHKES” sign near the 3D printer, would argue that these beads – and the jewelry that they would turn into – are the very definition of tchotchkes. I would argue the opposite. Jewelry certainly can be considered useless trinkets – however, many other cultures, including our own, consider jewelry to have incredible value, both monetary and sentimental. I would argue that for a lot of people, jewelry is bought and kept for its sentimental value – things such as wedding and engagement rings, and other Many family heirlooms are pieces of jewelry that have been passed on from generation to generation – for example, in my extended family, there’s a ring that has been passed from daughter to daughter for generations.
Jewelry has had a profound effect on many, many cultures. In the words of Lois Sherr Dubin, for many Native American tribes, “[i]n the absence of written languages, adornment became an important element of Indian communication, conveying many levels of information.” After European imperialists arrived to the “New World,” jewelry and other “…signaled resistance to assimilation. It remains a major statement of tribal and individual identity.”
Native Americans all over the country proudly adorned themselves with jewelry, made from a wide variety of materials. The Northeastern Native Americans used wampum shells – both white from the channeled whelk and purple from the quahog clam. In the Northwest, walrus ivory was used for the carving of bracelets and other items for many years until the 1820s, when a massive quarry of argillite was discovered on Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia. These stones proved easier to carve and had the benefit of coming in multiple colors.
Copper was also a commonly used material, even before European contact. Tribes near the aptly named Coppermine River would trade it down the Northwestern coast, and it was worked into many different kinds of jewelry, although bracelets, which were given away at potlatches, were by far the most common. Silver and gold became popular materials later.
Although some people – definitely whoever put up that horrible sign – would feel that these beads and the subsequent jewelry are useless tchotchkes, I feel that the value of jewelry is entirely subjective, regardless of the actual cost. A relatively cheap engagement ring can mean the entire world to one person, while exorbitant, lavish necklaces and bracelets could mean absolutely nothing to another. We as individuals assign value to these trinkets and baubles. While monetary value is something that is definitely accounted for among all people, and is arguably the closest one can get to assigning objective value, sentimental and emotional value carries far more weight.
I hope to create at least one full piece of jewelry – whether it’s a necklace, ring, or bracelet. I will probably need to create several different bead models, although I already have one design that I’m very pleased with. I would also want to work in a few of the beads I made during our retreat to Deception Pass. I feel like this would made an interesting juxtaposition – the handcrafted beads paired with the mechanically made, although still originally designed beads. Whatever I create, however, will mean more to me than a simple, replaceable “tchotchke.” I feel like there is a lot of inherent sentimental value towards something that one created themselves, and I hope to get that same feeling out of making 3D printed jewelry.
Shearar, Cheryl. Understanding Northwest Coast Art: A Guide to Crests, Beings, and Symbols. Vancouver, B.C.: Douglas & McIntyre, 2000. 30-3-. Print.
Dubin, Lois Sherr., Togashi, and Paul Jones. North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment: From Prehistory to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. 170-71. Print.
Dubin, Lois Sherr., Togashi, and Paul Jones. North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment: From Prehistory to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. 169, 174. Print.
“‘What’s with the jungle-gym?’ It really had been something, fun and Martian-looking.
‘That’s the big one,’ Tjan said with a big grin. ‘Most people don’t even notice it, they think it’s daycare or something. Well, that’s how it started out, but then some of the sensor people started noodling with jungle-gym components that could tell how often they were played with. They started modding the gym every night, adding variations on the elements that saw the most action, removing the duds. Then the CAD people added an algorithm that would take the sensor data and generate random variations on the same basis. Finally, some of the robotics people got in on the act so the best of the computer-evolved designs could be instantiated automatically; now it’s a self-modifying jungle-gym’” (Doctorow 100)
Sometimes the best investigative technique is to just ask, as Suzanne does about the jungle-gym. During the CST lab observations, I took a similar approach to hear about classmates’ Blue Rabbit projects. Watching these groups of similar minded ideas form to collaborate reminded me of how the jungle-gym came to be, and I am excited to see what comes from it. I have finally decided to aim my project towards building a 3-D scan platform that will allow detailed 360 degree scans of small objects that can then easily be replicated. I want to take this a step further and try to duplicate a house key to test the real-life application of the objects we produce.
How can I make people feel more connected with the earth, with creativity, and with themselves in an easy, practical, and sustainable way?
In a world of so much stuff, what idea is worth making in a 3D printer? This question threw my mind into loops and holes and took me into a new world of thought. I jumped around and toyed with many ideas, but I knew I wanted to create something that reminded people, or helped people realize their connection with nature, their connection with themselves as energetic beings, and connection with each other. I want to demonstrate in a beautiful way how we have moved into a makers world instead of a growing world, and how we need to balance our creations and our earths creations. Somehow, in the midst of a walking meditation in the woods with David Loy, I arrived at my idea, making terrariums.
Hanging terrariums
Terrarium in a Light Bulb
In a world of so much stuff, I think art should always be created, especially sustainable art. When I look into a terrarium, I look into a little world, similar to a snow globe, and feel myself a creator of the world, but also know that the plants are growing themselves and that I can only seed or transplant them, but I cannot physically create them. In my project, I want to create a series of three different terrariums; The first terrarium will be completely filled with plants and pieces from the earth, to shape a romantic natural setting. The second will be a mix of earth objects and 3D printed objects, to form a setting that we are more 
accustomed too; the mix of plants and our man made objects. The third will be a terrarium of entirely 3D printed objects, creating an artificial and hopefully futuristic scene. Looking at the sequence of the three terrariums, I am hoping the audience will experience the beauty of the natural world and the man made world, and see we must stay in the middle terrarium, where balance between us and nature is present.
Terrariums are a practical, easy way to bring plants into our homes with very little maintenance. The more people are able to work with the earth and connect with the growing nature of plants, the more they are able connect with the growing nature within themselves and within the earth. With a terrarium, you don’t need a garden, or a certain climate, or in the case of air plants, you don’t even need soil. For the basic terrarium all you need is a container of any size, soil (except for air plants), plants, water, and a spot near some sunlight, and boom! You have a little ecosystem growing! In some cases, people even put lizards or small animals in their terrariums.
The way I am going to construct my terrariums is by 3D printing the outside container, adding the soil and plants, and then 3D printing the objects inside. The first won’t have any 3D objects inside, but the container will be 3D printed. The second will have plants and 3D printed objects inside, and the third will be completely filled completely 3D printed objects atop soil. The great thing about terrariums is you can make them entirely out of found objects, but the 3D printer allows much more freedom and creativity for this project. I have not fully decided upon the exact scenes I want to portray in each terrarium, but I going to allow that to grow through practicing what I could actually make in the 3D printers.
Rudolf Steiner said. “Art is one of the healthiest, most direct ways to arm and strengthen ourselves against the harmful influences of modern life.” (Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom. Lecture) In the book The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tomkin says, “The true matrix of human life is the greensward covering mother earth. Without green plants we would neither breathe nor eat.” (Tomkins, Intro viii) Scientists, philosophers, shamans, healers, and many more people agree that working with the land in any way increases healthier lifestyles, but not everyone has the time or space to work with, or even be near the land. For centuries people have seen art and creativity as a way to develop and heal, but not everyone has time or access to the arts. Terrariums are an easy way to blend gardening and art together, and can be done sustainably using recycled materials. While researching my project I found a Meditation and Ecology Center in Richmond, BC that is, “dedicated to inner and outer peace through meditation and to caring for our internal and external environments.” (http://www.sos.org/can/western/page/meditation-ecology-centre-richmond-bc.html). They are a multi faith organization that helps people better themselves through meditation and gardening. Their leader, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj, has a poem on their website that described what I want my project to bring for me; a practice of meditation and transformation, while representing my idea in an artistic fashion. I want to show people an easy, practical, sustainable way they can incorporate this into their homes.
Ecology of the Soul
“There is a perfect balance in nature. Our
world, our environment, and nature itself form a
living interdependent system.
The perfect balance of nature which has
maintained life on our planet for millions of years
is being threatened by the very technology that
has transformed the world.
Concern for ecology has become one of the
main preoccupations of the world. Through the
simple process of meditation, we can bring peace
and ecological balance, not only to ourselves,
but to the whole planet.
It is my dream to bring about this harmony
on our earth.”
–Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
Biblography:
- Website Title: Meditation & Ecology Centre
- Article Title: Science of Spirituality
- Date Accessed: October 19, 2014
Tompkins, Peter, and Christopher Bird. The Secret Life of Plants. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Print.
Steiner, Rudolf. “Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom.” Switzerland, Dornach. 14 Dec. 1914. Lecture.
Michael Baur
Arlen & Sara
Making Meaning matter
16 October 2014
3d Scanning and ‘The Evergreen Natural History Museum’
With the mission of the Evergreen Natural History Museum being “an accessible educational and research environment for students and faculty of the Evergreen State College while developing and preserving the collection of museum specimens for future generations,” (The Evergreen Natural History Museum) 3D scanning technology implementation only seems like the next logical step in both expanding at low cost while preserving forever fragile and irreplaceable specimens. Students at the Evergreen State College produced this last summer a report and exploration into D.I.Y. three dimensional Scanning implementations crafting several models from DSLR cameras to Microsoft’s Kinects. Already this fall: lines of communication have been established and test scans have taken place in museum with one of these same students using some of the specimens. A focus on creating a digital library of scanned specimens and having the 3d models open to the public under our institution as well as printing out reproductions using the Computer Application Lab’s Makerbots.
John Grieco writes about the global ‘take a penny, leave a penny’ mantra of the open source and maker communities at large, how,” This idea of taking and giving within the maker community is based on the development of software and physical designs in which the original creator has purposefully given up ownership.” (Grieco) In this case the remains that have been preserved have already given life to so much education, with several of the most valued items dating from the early 1970’s, yet no amount of attentive care can truly preserve any physical object against the rigors of time. To use the collective time to document and preserve the items today digitally will ensure lasting files that will not corrode away and will be able to be recreated both digitally and physically in the form of 3d prints.
3D modeling with Microsoft’s Kinect is used from everything today,”[its] perfect for hobbyists, makers, artists, and gamers …[it] shows you how to build … with inexpensive off-the-shelf components, including the open source Processing programming language and the Arduino microcontroller.” (Borenstein) This intersection of talents and interests will also have an insatiable quench for knowledge especially that of the natural world. The creation of a library will make access to the current specimens available to anyone who has an internet access forever without having to charge the institution anymore because of the relatively small size of the files in comparisons to the overheads associated with the current ‘physical library. This will be done with considerably care and skill as both the process of scanning the the handling of specimens are delicate in their very nature.
Key considerations such as lighting, scale of model to distance from scanner, system requirements of computer hardware and software all must be taken into account. While “the movie industry may afford a 3D modeling pipeline system with special purpose hardware and highly specialized sensors that require manual calibration,” the quality of images produced does not need to be limited. (Srivastava) Patience and proper setup and preparation for specific scans will ease problems further downstream and avoid having to rescan and reengage with fragile items. A working report must remain established between the museum and the scanner as often the process does not avail itself to the individual.
With these challenges in mind the hurdles to cross in order to create a digital library at low cost should be quite feasible for the remainder of the quarter. The chance to engage with rare and exotic specimens from the globe is an alluring draw to this project, but will also provide some of the greatest learning opportunities that are immaculate examples of interdisciplinary work. Both the arts and the sciences have combined into an opportunity to not only expose the world to a small but beautiful corner at the Evergreen State college but also the ability to preserve and even retire seasons specimens will avail new space for new specimens to be collected and processed . Our ability to add to the global take a penny tray with the creation of a digital library was crafted by the same making communities that taught so many already how to create these 3d printers and scanners.
Works Cited
The Evergreen Natural History Museum (The Evergreen Natural History Museum)
http://blogs.evergreen.edu/naturalhistory/
Grieco, John. Physical Computing: Programing, Electronics and The Maker Community. Olympia, 0. Print.
Borenstein, Greg. Making Things See 3D Vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2012. Print.
Srivastava, Daoudi Anuj. 3D Face Modeling, Analysis and Recognition. Remco Veltkamp, 2013. Print.
Throughout observation of the Blue group, I got to observe people testing their ideas of what parameters they could practically print. I really enjoyed being able to first observe others create their coins, as this gave me a better scope on what to test for myself. I really found it interesting to see the personal interpretations of what each would have on their coin. And although the learning curve on something of this matter would seem to be very large, every person in the class had a good grasp of the general idea. Overall, I can’t wait to see what our class produces with their minds, as the printer does with its mechanical hand.