I have been invited by Ethan Lasser of the Chipstone Foundation to take part in a forthcoming exhibition, The Tool at Hand, to be held in the Milwaukee Art Museum later this year.
To take part, the invitees have been asked to produce an object using one tool and to produce a short video describing the process and our relationship with the tool.
I chose my MacBook Pro, the thing that I'm using right now to write this.
As I'm sure you're aware if you have followed my occasional ramblings over the past few years my interest is how the skills that I developed as a potter can be transferred to the world of digital technology, so Ethan's offer was definitely not to be missed.
Here's the video:
I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, I'm not sure how well it has communicated my relationship with my MacBook so any thoughts would be appreciated.
Wednesday 26 October 2011
Monday 16 May 2011
Post Craft? Post Digital?
I took part in the excellent FutureEverything Festival in Manchester this weekend. I was invited to take part in a discussion titled 'Post Craft'.
Now I know what you're thinking, because that's exactly what I thought - what's that supposed to mean?
This is how the Festival described the notion:
"Post Craft
In an increasingly post-digital world, there is a move towards a pre-industrial landscape. Eased by global connectivity, cottage industries are sprouting up everywhere. People are creating their own products, services, and art. They are rediscovering the satisfaction of creating a tangible product, the process of making, the lessons from making by hand.
This session brings together four people working at the edge of craft — a leading practitioner in modern ceramics, a design researcher, an interaction designer and a curator — to look at what craft can learn from digital behaviours, and the lessons it has to offer.
Session presented by Andy Huntington, James Boardwell, Michael Eden and Sally Fort"
And there's the other phrase -'post-digital'. Sat here at the keyboard of my Mac, I didn't know that we live in a post-digital age, did you?
I can understand that people need more than screens and mice in their lives and there's an inbuilt desire to express our creativity through whittling sticks, gardening, even walking on the hills, but to call this era 'post-digital' is so far from the truth. We've hardly got started; in my particular field of Additive Manufacturing we have hardly scratched the surface. To paraphrase Geoff Hollington 'If this was the First Industrial Revolution, we are now in the year 1800'.
There is so much potential for this technology, it is going to change the way we think about many of the designed objects that surround us. It allows for individualisation, customisation, distributed manufacture, repair of broken equipment. The list goes on...
However, when I hear of the 3D printing of human organs I am both excited and concerned. Yes, it could help to solve the shortage of organ donors, but surely it's not such a huge step to then change the DNA of 'living' printed structures? After all the human genome is likely to be Open Source if it isn't already.
Or is this science fiction?
Anyway, back to 'Post Craft'.
Sally Fort, the chair of the panel, asked for our understanding of what the term means. There was some scratching of heads, but we all basically agreed that it doesn't exist.
Craft is Craft is Craft, regardless of the tools or technology the maker chooses to use. It's the idea that should be at the forefront of the maker's mind, not the tool. In my experience as a potter, the tools 'vanish' when I'm throwing a pot on the wheel. I'm trying to capture the energy of an action, the tension in a line. And it's those qualities that I try to achieve through the mouse in my recent work.
So for me, it's all about whittling voxels.
Having said that. I choose to use new technology because it allows me to create 'impossible' objects, ones that I can't make on the wheel or with other conventional methods.
But both the starting and end point is the story that I'm exploring and attempting to communicate.
If you would like to read more about the discussion follow this link to the mini-site that Sally published.
And if you haven't been to Manchester, I would highly recommend the place. OK it's wet, but it's a great 21st century European city that looks forward whilst embracing it's past. It has a really creative buzz, but without so many of the posers that you find in postcodes beginning with EC.
Now I know what you're thinking, because that's exactly what I thought - what's that supposed to mean?
This is how the Festival described the notion:
"Post Craft
In an increasingly post-digital world, there is a move towards a pre-industrial landscape. Eased by global connectivity, cottage industries are sprouting up everywhere. People are creating their own products, services, and art. They are rediscovering the satisfaction of creating a tangible product, the process of making, the lessons from making by hand.
This session brings together four people working at the edge of craft — a leading practitioner in modern ceramics, a design researcher, an interaction designer and a curator — to look at what craft can learn from digital behaviours, and the lessons it has to offer.
Session presented by Andy Huntington, James Boardwell, Michael Eden and Sally Fort"
And there's the other phrase -'post-digital'. Sat here at the keyboard of my Mac, I didn't know that we live in a post-digital age, did you?
I can understand that people need more than screens and mice in their lives and there's an inbuilt desire to express our creativity through whittling sticks, gardening, even walking on the hills, but to call this era 'post-digital' is so far from the truth. We've hardly got started; in my particular field of Additive Manufacturing we have hardly scratched the surface. To paraphrase Geoff Hollington 'If this was the First Industrial Revolution, we are now in the year 1800'.
There is so much potential for this technology, it is going to change the way we think about many of the designed objects that surround us. It allows for individualisation, customisation, distributed manufacture, repair of broken equipment. The list goes on...
However, when I hear of the 3D printing of human organs I am both excited and concerned. Yes, it could help to solve the shortage of organ donors, but surely it's not such a huge step to then change the DNA of 'living' printed structures? After all the human genome is likely to be Open Source if it isn't already.
Or is this science fiction?
Anyway, back to 'Post Craft'.
Sally Fort, the chair of the panel, asked for our understanding of what the term means. There was some scratching of heads, but we all basically agreed that it doesn't exist.
Craft is Craft is Craft, regardless of the tools or technology the maker chooses to use. It's the idea that should be at the forefront of the maker's mind, not the tool. In my experience as a potter, the tools 'vanish' when I'm throwing a pot on the wheel. I'm trying to capture the energy of an action, the tension in a line. And it's those qualities that I try to achieve through the mouse in my recent work.
So for me, it's all about whittling voxels.
Having said that. I choose to use new technology because it allows me to create 'impossible' objects, ones that I can't make on the wheel or with other conventional methods.
But both the starting and end point is the story that I'm exploring and attempting to communicate.
If you would like to read more about the discussion follow this link to the mini-site that Sally published.
And if you haven't been to Manchester, I would highly recommend the place. OK it's wet, but it's a great 21st century European city that looks forward whilst embracing it's past. It has a really creative buzz, but without so many of the posers that you find in postcodes beginning with EC.
Thursday 3 February 2011
yet more actual and virtual.....
These last few months have been both exciting and frustrating in equal measure. I have been continuing my investigations of the actual/virtual theme in my work with the design of a new piece, or pair of pieces called Amalthea. They are complex cornucopia like pieces, one filigree, its companion a solid version with raised surface decoration.
To begin with, I generated a type of QR code known as a ‘blotcode’ which links to a page on my website when scanned by a barcode reader, available as an App for some smart phones. I then extruded the 2-dimensional image into a 3-dimensional form using Rhino 3D software. The cornucopia shape of Amalthea refers to the wealth of knowledge available on the World Wide Web whilst the cryptic symbols within the filigree refer to the consequences this may have on society.
Objects often have stories attached to them. They can commemorate an event; they are often transformed into family heirlooms and passed on with the stories associated with them. Amalthea also tell stories, but these stories are online, so have the potential to include text, video, image and music. They can be added to over time, creating a repository of memories and information.
So when the viewer scans Amalthea with a barcode reader mobile phone App, it connects to a page on my website telling the story, providing additional information thereby creating a simultaneous actual and virtual experience.
I plan to offer a series of similar pieces where the QR code is generated for a client linking the piece to information specific to that person. So, as heirlooms, the virtual experience could tell the story of the journey of that object through the generations.
In the making of Amalthea I have become increasingly aware of the complexities of Additive Manufacturing and selective laser sintering (SLS) in particular. The machines are complex, with a myriad of controls that the operator/technician must become as attuned to as any craftsman does to their tools. It's certainly not a case of 'pressing a button' as some people think. And though I am not the highly skilled person operating the machine I need to have both a reasonable understanding of the technology and a good working relationship with the operator.
When my work was produced in France, it was made on a ZCorp 3D printing machine. This is far simpler than the SLS technology as it employs a liquid binder rather than a laser to build the layers. And it's one of these machines that we are going to use in an attempt to print objects in clay. This is the dream that I have had since I first heard of Rapid Prototyping quite a few years ago. Our project at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London will build on the excelent work of Mark Ganter and his team at the Solheim Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle. We are also grateful to Ronald Rael and the ceramics laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley for providing us with a detailed technical report of his team's thorough testing of ceramic materials.
The Open Source philosophy of this research is fundamental; thanks to the generosity of Mark Ganter there is a growing community of like-minded groups all ploughing the same furrow. By bouncing ideas of each other the momentum is increased and reliable materials will be available for the many, rather than the few.
Though printing the Amalthea in clay is probably a little way off, I am very excited by the prospect of being able to bring both my experience and knowledge of ceramics together with the emerging technology of the 2!st century.
To begin with, I generated a type of QR code known as a ‘blotcode’ which links to a page on my website when scanned by a barcode reader, available as an App for some smart phones. I then extruded the 2-dimensional image into a 3-dimensional form using Rhino 3D software. The cornucopia shape of Amalthea refers to the wealth of knowledge available on the World Wide Web whilst the cryptic symbols within the filigree refer to the consequences this may have on society.
Objects often have stories attached to them. They can commemorate an event; they are often transformed into family heirlooms and passed on with the stories associated with them. Amalthea also tell stories, but these stories are online, so have the potential to include text, video, image and music. They can be added to over time, creating a repository of memories and information.
So when the viewer scans Amalthea with a barcode reader mobile phone App, it connects to a page on my website telling the story, providing additional information thereby creating a simultaneous actual and virtual experience.
I plan to offer a series of similar pieces where the QR code is generated for a client linking the piece to information specific to that person. So, as heirlooms, the virtual experience could tell the story of the journey of that object through the generations.
In the making of Amalthea I have become increasingly aware of the complexities of Additive Manufacturing and selective laser sintering (SLS) in particular. The machines are complex, with a myriad of controls that the operator/technician must become as attuned to as any craftsman does to their tools. It's certainly not a case of 'pressing a button' as some people think. And though I am not the highly skilled person operating the machine I need to have both a reasonable understanding of the technology and a good working relationship with the operator.
When my work was produced in France, it was made on a ZCorp 3D printing machine. This is far simpler than the SLS technology as it employs a liquid binder rather than a laser to build the layers. And it's one of these machines that we are going to use in an attempt to print objects in clay. This is the dream that I have had since I first heard of Rapid Prototyping quite a few years ago. Our project at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London will build on the excelent work of Mark Ganter and his team at the Solheim Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle. We are also grateful to Ronald Rael and the ceramics laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley for providing us with a detailed technical report of his team's thorough testing of ceramic materials.
The Open Source philosophy of this research is fundamental; thanks to the generosity of Mark Ganter there is a growing community of like-minded groups all ploughing the same furrow. By bouncing ideas of each other the momentum is increased and reliable materials will be available for the many, rather than the few.
Though printing the Amalthea in clay is probably a little way off, I am very excited by the prospect of being able to bring both my experience and knowledge of ceramics together with the emerging technology of the 2!st century.
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