new technologies and their effect on the making and teaching of art, craft and design
This image shows some of the possible combination of materials and colours I played with for the 2nd series of this light object. Basically all 3mm materials could be used as a base. Ponoko has many exciting colours in their materials catalog.
Obrut light colour variations 1st set
I designed this light object with the idea to further integrate web2 based fabrication with my craft practice. The shade, base and fixture for the light emitter (LED) are all laser cut by Ponoko. I look forward to try a variety of materials for the base including acrylic using ‘iMacy’ colours, bamboo and metals. The shade is white felt or polypropylene.
The shade simply snaps into the base and forms a dome covering the warm-white 1 watt LED. A metal fixture holds the LED the switch and functions as cooling surface.
Base - black acrylic, shade ploypropylene
Shade close up with switch
Environmental aspects of this object: The LEDs used are highly energy efficient and have an expected life span of about 5 years of continuous operation till reaching 70% of their original brightness. All parts can be dissembled for recycling.
Anyone interested in web2 based fabrication, here is a ‘growing’ collection of bookmarks. You will need to have a ‘delicious’ account though. If you are logged onto ‘delicious’ search for designartsanu and you will find these links.
bookmarks for designer maker
These links are added for their relevance for making things from digital files eg images, text, vetor-based drawing (Illustrator) or 3D files in .dxf format. I have referred to these services in earlier blogs about making a catalogue or a light object. If you know about any further relevant links please let me know and I will add them.
While sorting photos of a recent exhibition using iPhoto on an Apple Mac I explored the ‘book’ option in this free software. After selecting one of the many layout templates it was easy to populate the pages with images. The basic image editing tools in iPhoto also helped to improve the look of the pictures significantly. After tweaking the templates and adding the images and some text, I only needed to press the ‘buy’ button and through my Apple account the prove of my catalog was on its way to be printed. This is just another example of a web2 based production method.
iPhoto book interface
The price of about $25 (Australian) for each copy is good if one needs only a few copies instead of hundreds to make a traditional print-run viable. I also used a pdf export of this catalog to get 20 copies printed locally, the price was comparable but the quality of the ‘Apple’ print was superior. You can download (500KB) a low res pdf of this catalog.
I have now a lasting document that helps with promoting my work and a little giveaway for everyone who supported my work. In the process I also registered as a publisher and this booklet has an ISBN. This might sound like a lot of effort for a little 30 page publication, but this catalog documents my recent ‘highlights‘ exhibition, which in turn represented the outcome of an intensive period of research and work as part of my professional practice.
Based on web 2 technologies, a growing variety of production processes are becoming easily accessible for anyone.
An online interface makes highly specialized technologies available. Once you setup your account, payment and shipping options are selected you can start producing and in some cases have access to a network of like-minded users or potential customers.
Companies like Ponoko (laser cutting and engraving), RedEye (Rapid Prototyping) and blurb (bookmaking) can successfully contribute to a designer/maker practice. A competent level of computer skills are required to address these services to achieve the best outcome. For waterjet or laser cutting, which are essentially two dimensional processes, of flat or sheet materials the mastery of a vector-based graphics program like Adobe Illustrator is essential. To use the RedEye ‘factory of the future’ one needs to generate a .stl file of a virtual 3D object that had been modeled in a CAD program.
The underlying specialized technology, for a long time the domain of the manufacturing industry, is expensive and usually out of reach of a single craft practitioner. If acquired, such equipment would ‘tie’ the individual maker to this technology for a long time and introducing a high level of risk to their business. Not to mention high running cost and that these digitally based technologies become obsolete within a few years.
I have used several of these processes while designing and making the ‘desk light‘, it has a waterjet cut stainless steel plate, a lasercut lamp shade (Ponoko) and Rapid Prototyping parts. Using these technologies has led the design process to new solutions and made the making of this light relatively easy.
Some contemporary craft professionals refer to their practice as designer/maker. Eight different models (designer/maker niches) of this approach to practice had been defined by Noris Iaonnou. (1) I like to add an other variation here, with a raised level of information literacy and competency, identifying today’s designer/maker practice. A literacy that goes beyond using email and ordering materials online, it will include administration, development, presentation, promotion and (partly) production of projects.
Much of the Design Arts degree at the Australian National University, School of Art is based on matching changes in craft practice, education and digital technology with the expectation of this contemporary designer/maker model.
The core of any craft practice has to be the skills of the maker in his/her respective field, using traditional processes and materials. If these skills are paired with ‘digital’ competence both hold great potential to inform each other and merge into a contemporary designer/maker practice.
from www.cinnamonlee.com
Canberra based jeweler Cinnamon Lee can be seen as an example of this approach. She applies a series of technology based processes together with a high level of manual finishing to make unique rings only possible through the application of high-resolution rapid prototyping together with casting.
(1) Noris Iaonnou, ‘Old paradigms for new: designer-maker models and the dilemma of globalism versus regionalism’. pgs 23 -29
‘Designing Minds – Contemporary issues in craft, design and industry’ Symposium, University of South Australia, 2000
My first solo exhibition since 2001 called ‘Highlights’ opened in February 2009 at Craft ACT in Canberra and then in May at Metalab, in Sydney. Many thanks to Catrina Vignando, general manager Craft Australia and Grace Cochran who have opened those shows respectively. Highlights represents a change in my practice with the focus on light objects as well as highlighting how combining making processes (manual, digital and distributed) can address the designer/maker model as a contemporary approach to craft. See earlier post of the design/making of the light ‘Desk 30′.
The exhibitions were well received and successfully set up by Jason Hugonnet, curator and exhibition manager Craft ACT and Cesar Cueva, director of Metalab. Please find Jason Hugonnet’s exhibition review here.
Highlights at CraftACT, Canberra, Image by Creative Image Photography
Highlights at metalab, Sydney. Image 'Indesignlive.com'
Many of my posts share findings about two particular prints published in Albrecht Dürer’s 2nd edition of the Painters Manual 1538 (Unterweysung der Messung). In order to see these woodcuts in relation to their descriptive texts and their ‘context’ within the book, I had to travel to Melbourne, Nürnberg, Munich and Vienna.
I could have had a very good ‘preview’ of this book on the “Rare Book Room” site where a good quality, page by page, reproduction of the Manual is available.
On the intro page of this fantastic site it says: ‘The Rare Book Room site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.’ And it is a pleasure to turn the pages of these special books.
You can see the two prints by Dürer I referred in some of my posts in the rare bookroom here:
The Draughtsman of the Lute and A draughtsman drawing a reclining woman.
My blogs about the ‘Lute’ print are:
‘Did Albrecht Dürer get it wrong, a surprise discovery in one of his prints’
‘Ist Albrecht Dürer ein Fehler unterlaufen eine überraschende Entdeckung in seinem Holzschnittes der Zeichner der Laute’
‘Further to Albrecht Dürer woodcut The draughtsman of the Lute’
My blogs about the ‘Reclining woman’ are:
‘A page out of Dürer’s own copy of the Painters Manual’
‘Male or Female? One of Dürer’s prints in the context of gender, feminism and other theories.’
‘Dürer lost in translation? German Klartext and English translation of one page of Dürer’s handwritten manuscript of his 2nd edition of the painters manual’
I visited several print-rooms in Europe in April this year in the hope to find evidence in support of my theory of the ‘misaligned perspective’ . (see earlier blogs: ‘Blog 1 English version’ , ‘Blog 1 Deutsche Version’ , ‘Blog 2′). Using funds from the Carrick Award, I saw original versions of the wood cut of ‘Man drawing a lute’ at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nürnberg, Germany) and at the Albertina (Vienna, Austria) as well as high quality ‘Ektachrome’ slide at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (München, Germany) this slide held the biggest surprise for me, but more about this slide later.
In Nürnberg I was able to see a copy of the print in question as a single leaf (proof) and several (historic) books holding references to this print. In Vienna I got presented a copy of Dürer’s Manual which was cut at the margins and included also some drawings about medieval defense installations from an other book by Duerer. It was a special moment when these original Renaissance works were brought out of the vault and presented for close inspection.
None of the works I saw at either location could provide me with any further inside about my theory. The senior curator at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Dr. Rainer Schoch, made me aware that the Bayerische Staatsbiliothek in München holds a copy of Dürer’s own copy of the 1525 Manual with handwritten comments and additions, an advice which let to very exciting new insides about this Manual.
My visits to Nürnberg and Vienna were prearranged so I could see the original artworks, however the visit to München was spontaneous with only a few hours to spend allowing not enough time to retrieve Duerer’s own copy of the Manual from the air conditioned vaults but I was able sight an ‘Ektachrome’ reproduction of the page with ‘Man drawing a lute’. As this Ektachrome shows the book opened, two pages are visible. On the right side is the print of ‘Lute’ but the left page is covered by an inserted loose leaf with a hand written text and sketch by Dürer himself.
On this loose leaf he has described the use of an additional drawing system to achieve a perspective drawing. The published print of this sketch is usually referred to as the ‘(Daughts) Man drawing a reclining woman’ or in German ‘Ein Mann zeichnet eine liegende Frau’. It was printed in the 2nd edition – the 1538 edition of this Manual which was published by his wife, Agnes Dürer, 10 years after his death, it appears in a significantly altered version. Here is a low resolution of digital reproduction of this slide. I will blog a translation of the text and some further thoughts on Dürer’s sketch and its printed version in the near future.
One page out of Dürer
Ektachrome Signatur: 4 L.impr.c.n.mess. 119 (http://www.bsb-muenchen.de) (I purchased a digital reproduction of this Ektachrome and have permission to publish it as part of my research)
I like to thank Frau Barbara Fellner for her assistance and her skillful navigation to make the findings in Munich possile.
Further to my last blog, Preparing for Highlights, 2.
Yesterday, my first Ponoko laser cut pieces arrived and it was worth waiting for. After peeling off the protective sheet, that still showed the impact of the laser’s heat, clean clear pieces popped out of the cut Perspex sheet. I had used the clear 2mm thick Perspex material out of Ponoko’s material catalogue.
Peeling off the protective layer
The edges are clean and appear almost polished and do not show, as I had expected, some ‘burn’ marks. As Ponoko suggests in their ‘starter kit’ the dimensioning of interlocking pieces might need a bit of fine-tuning, I found that while having a good fit the slots I had designed have been a bit too wide. This will be easily fixed in Illustrator, as I have in mind to get more of the same parts cut in different colours for further variations of this lamp.
close up of the lamp
These parts form the ‘head’ of the desk-lamp for which I had already made all other parts. The assembly was straight forward as everything, the rapid prototyped and laser cut parts fitted very well together. I used sandpaper to make the surface of the parts opaque as the clear was ‘too’ transparent. Now the LED’s make the whole head light up.
Prototype put together
Opaque surfaces
I am very pleased about the straight forward way Ponoko’s system enables me to include precision cut pieces as part of my designs. Living in Australia made it a three week turn-around-time which was somewhat testing. But I already look forward to the next shipment with parts that will combine laser cutting with laser engraving. Ponoko has great instructional videos about this on their site.
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