Everything seemed to be going as planned.
Midterm Progress
For my midterm in Piecing It Together I initially chose to make a model of a mech I designed in 3D some years ago. Considering I have not yet kicked the tires of the CNC Router yet I figured it would be best to tackle this in some form as a final project. Learning from the issues I experienced with my irregular box project and trying to maximize my time utilization, I decided to buy a vinyl cutter so I can do most of the prototyping at home.
For my project I decided to make a 3 or 4-tone illustration using transparent material like acrylic. My other material would probably be wood. I am envisioning making an enclosure for the image and it being at least 4 layers deep. I included some examples of this illustration style below.
My first steps are to reduce my picture to 3 or 4 colors. Create each color in a new layer in Photoshop. I’ll then import these layers into Illustrator and trace them out with the pen tool. To prototype I will cut these patterns on thick paper and plastic sheets with the vinyl cutter. After the prototyping phase is complete I’ll model the sculpture in my 3d software and determine what materials to buy this weekend.
Aftermath of Material Connexion
We went on a class trip to Material Connexion.
I found this combination of laminated glass and resin to be a very pure canvas. I had a slight interest in suspending objects in resin but never pursued it.
I like art pieces, so I think working with a material like this can be very rewarding. There’s a timeless aesthetic caused with it being still life, but also the beauty of it being a engineered transparent rectangle .
This is definitely a stiff material. The manufacturer is Livinglass. They also seem to handle the distribution portion, or so it appears so from their website.
This may be out of range price wise, but I would be interested in tackling this on my own if needed. I don’t have a subject as yet so I will need to think about what I would do with these blocks.
Irregular Box Assignment
For this assignment, my inspiration was the limited methods I had to construct an irregular box.
I decided to approach this project in Softimage with extruded polygons. This works well because the methods we have available to fabricate also depends on flat surfaces with a uniform thickness. Or so I thought…
Softimage has no real world base unit to modify (as far as I could tell). The designer has to keep in mind 1 unit in XSI is 1 inch, for example.
I exported my model as 10 objects. Then imported them into 123D. That process was okay but not so obvious for beginners. I made a critical mistake which would come back to haunt me. For some reason the scaling feature is automatically enabled. When I exported the Vector cuts they were not proportional to my other pieces.
I converted the EPS files into the AI formats that the laser print driver natively reads. The actual laser cutting process isn’t too complicated once you’ve gone through it a few times.
I knew prototyping is very important but due to unexpected constraints I went with acrylic and learned an expensive hard lesson. Next time around I know what to expect from this process and will be sure to prototype.
Score
Thoughts on “Technologically Mediated Artisanal Production”
This was an interesting read. The writer was aware of some of the issues that stems from the “maker” movement. It’s a strange thing to digest as it still depends heavily on the exports of 3rd world countries to succeed. As $19 cups of coffee take over Brooklyn, what does the end of maker cities look like?
Looking forward to the class discussion.
Homework #2 – Pen tool in Illustrator
Part of our homework was to practice using the pen tool in Illustrator.
Manifesto
I see music as history. It is a old message to be received by someone who doesn’t exist yet. In the future I would like the music I create to have hands in the realm of analog and digital music. I want to incorporate my background and personal experiences into the songs I create.
In the future I see music as less and less constrained to a particular medium. To get the full performance to the user, the music should be packaged with other sensory media that play concurrently.
I want to have my own brand or genre that I am easily associated with. My music should be chaotic in a controlled format. I want words in my songs, because ironically wordless songs get repetitive to me. I think it’s important to collaborate. So I would like to record with other like minded musicians as well.
I don’t see my music as being mainstream, at least that is not my goal. I do want to reach a lot of people. But I want them to influence me as much as I influence them.
Piecing It Together – Assignment #1
This is a picture of the object I used for our first exercise.
