Work from Fall 2021 Digital Fabrication Class
Project 4 (Final) Progress
Some examples of underserved communities that I started to research about when nailing down my topic for this project are: homeless people, low income, medicaid eligible communities, farmworkers, native americans, and more. I felt a bit stumped thinking about how issues relating to these communities can be solved through a physical 3D printed object.
A project that helped inspire me when brainstorming for this project is Olafur Eliassons Little Sun from 2012. https://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK107424/little-sun
This project was very successful at offering lighting to folks that did not have electricity, and uses plastic which inspires relation to this project.
Another inspiring project is the thisables line from ikea https://thisables.com/en/new-developments/ which helps support people with disabilities by making products that assist in daily actions. They are specifically made for different ikea products.
After finding these pieces to offer inspiration, I had a few ideas. First is a bit larger scale, creating some sort of puzzle piece design cot so homeless people do not have to sleep on the floor. Another idea is small mobility increasing designs… I am still trying to nail down an idea of what I can bring into a full scale design but this is where I am right now.
While continuing to ideate, I think I want to go with a design that will relate to helping the community with mental health struggles. I went to a high school where there were 5 suicides during my years there, as well as 3 other people from my personal life. I want to do something that can help.
I have been looking into mental health, and it doesn’t seem like there are many physical products that directly assist with mental health. One physical product I did see (and I personally own) is a happy light. I am thinking about creating a composition that encompasses this product, while presenting other tools that may be helpful for depression – for example a notebook to journal to doodle in and written reminders about life.
November 10: During an in progress place, I have a functioning model that I am not completely satisfied with. I like the idea but am dissatisfied in the lack of function with my product, and how I am having it function as simply a placeholder for other objects. This can be seen below.
After continuing to ideate with this model, I arrived at wanting to create a box that serves more as a puzzle, and a phone jail. This would serve as sort of a mental health break and a way to escape from technology. Back to modeling.
Project 3 Process
Ideation: For project 3 working to create two 3D printed models, with thingiverse parts, interacting with each other and using surrealist methods, I went to my dream journal for inspiration. I have an ongoing “note” in my phone where I write down dreams as I remember them when I wake up. My dreams are all very boring and lifelike but more exaggerated than real life, so i want to encapsulate this feeling of exaggeration but still possible in my pieces. A few ideas that came into my head were a home with exaggerated dream topics spewing out of it – like gummy worms, apples, people at the gym, crayon drawings. Some quick sketches are shown below
This idea process continued into me finding different models that I liked, and bringing them into tinkercad to alter them to my liking. I then made my first, and second practice prints (and first 3D prints ever!!) to see how things would turn out. These can be seen below
As can be seen, there was a lot I learned from these prints and how I could improve for the final version. The open edges of the house proved to be pretty weak, so I thickened them. The stringyness of the supports also irritated me a bit, but I learned that they singe away easily and the larger scale of the final helped decrease these pieces. Overall I learned a lot along the way and I am happy with how my project came out.
Speculative Everything Reading 2
While reading these two sections of Speculative Future, I found many interesting elements that stood out to me. First, I liked the idea of how separation from the marketplace creates a sector of design without market pressure and offers the ability to explore more ideas/issues. enjoyed the point that we must rid ourselves of the preconceptions that something conceptual is only an idea – because the idea itself IS important. Another point I liked was “The speculative prop designer needs to be skilled at triggering an imaginative response in the viewer but the viewer already has to be open to imagining other ways life could be.”
These elements stood out to me because I feel that all of these points really embrace how different speculative design is from real life on hand design projects. Creating to make a decipherable physical object is very different from creating to create or come up with ideas that aren’t necessarily logical. I feel this is relevant to digital fabrication because the subjects and materials we use in this class and with these mediums are things that do not necessarily have to be “readable” and understandable to the everyday viewer, and should have that level of imagination. It also feels very applicable to project 3 where we are creating such surreal creations where we should let the mind run free. Overall I found this reading very informative on keeping an open mind in design.
Project 2 Idea:
For project 2, the shirt that i have settled on to work with is a simple Nike tee with a box logo like this:
This logo is on a grey shirt, so i plan to use black pen to draw around the edges. I want to create a fun little scene, including all sorts of different animals playing sports. I initially thought I might want to go with a more deep, meaningful topic like the insider issues of the company, but thought a fun image would work well for the simplicity and lightheartedness of this tee.
I thought about a bunch of different animals I like and sports I like to create this digital sketch below. After creating it I realized some edits i want to make while bringing it into illustrator, like how I would like to increase the scale of the animals to make sure they still come out clearly with the fabric markers and cover more space on the shirt.
Project 2 Progress
As i continued to develop these ideas, I decided I wanted to go with more meaningful, deep commentary about nike as a company. They are known for some big flaws in how their products are created – from the sweatshop low wages, poor working conditions, use of pesticides, and overall lack of care, there is a lot to talk about. I went back to the drawing board and came up with a few ideas.
After nailing down that I wanted to go with a bit more of an extravagant piece using both the back and front of my shirt i went to do some digital sketching and found what I wanted to go with. While looking at a variety of artists, I was inspired and decided to go with a Basquiat style mosh of ideas to have one overall commentary. The topics I aimed to include are: poor wages, climate killer, pesticides, cotton sourcing, and the focus on profit. Below are my original sketches that I then went and edited in Adobe Illustrator to finalize my design
Reading 1:
Chapter 1 Scoping the Territory: Design, Activism and Sustainability in Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World by Alastair Fuad-Luke
Three points that stood out to me were:
- The definition of design: Design is the act of deliberately moving from an existing situation to a preferred one by professional designers or others applying design knowingly or unknowingly.
- Concepts of how design comes from both trained professional designers and those that have simply experienced and practiced design, what does that mean within this world?
- Motivation to activists – how are goals and different motivators taking roles in the final outcome.
The importance of these points:
Defining design is challenging, because it seems to be such a broad topic when trying to explain, so it is important to have a common definition that all readers will understand and relate to.
As someone who is currently being trained in a design world here at DU, it’s interesting to think of the different complexities of design from people who dont have the traditional base training. Are we stuck in a mold of design that we cannot escape from education??
Different motivators have a huge impact on the final outcome. A person who is trying to design something to genuinely improve the world is different from someone working to personal monetary gain.
Project 1 Idea:
My idea for project 1 is to create an Exquisite Corpse art piece displaying the three sections of the body with varying complexities in quality of art. I plan to make the top one with a childlike crayon quality (maybe using a crayon in the plotter if possible?), the middle body with an intermediate drawing quality and simple levels of detail, and a small background, and the bottom section with extreme detail, shading and assets from the noun project.
This idea comes from how I used to make these pieces with my grandmother and my cousins, each of us taking a section. I was very young when we started doing this activity as a family (representing the top section), and my cousins are all a few years older than me (the middle section), and my grandmother was an art teacher and actively created a lot of art (the top section). I dug through my art and haven’t been able to find any of these from my childhood, but I am going to keep looking for those as inspiration.
Week 2 Progress
This week was a big focus on hunkering down to work on my Project 1: Exquisite corpse. I spent a lot of time trying to develop ideas on how I would properly display the progression of different age people working together to create one bigger drawing.
Breaking down each section: For the childish head section, the biggest challenge was finding the right tool to do the drawing. I really wanted the crayons to work, but I just wasnt getting a dark enough line. I tried the crayola twistables crayons which worked a bit better, but my final piece ended up being a collaboration of twistables and marker. The mid body section was challenging to find the right brushstroke. I wanted the airy sketchy line quality that I oh so remember from my childhood – trying to perfect each line by drawing it over and over. I opted for a brush pen with a svg line file that included many iterations of the same lines to have this quality. Finally, I had trouble finding any of my grandmothers artwork in a timely fashion, so for her foot/leg section I went with a depiction of her that I most strongly remember. She had a big green chair in her living room that I often remember her sitting on – this is what I showed in her 8×8 square.
Photos from Critique
Emily Axtell Art 