Small But Perfectly Formed

crystals grown on nylonI am used to engaging with people by developing an online presence, most recently in an academic research context when I co-ran a research cluster on design and computation. I will keep an online research journal combining images, including photos video and scanned drawn sketches, links, audio where appropriate (as I often audio record interviews when researching) and texts.

Show and Tell: Public exhibition of Model Landscapes (London Gallery West; Cheltenham Science Festival; The Harris Museum; Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery) has highlighted how interested people are in the new ways objects can be made, and how drawing attention to the structure of an object can result in us questioning or changing that object’s meaning. This is particularly true of rapid prototyping as evidenced by the large number of questions I have received regarding how small trees and hearts are made. I was surprised when people were equally excited by the cut book but after discussion found they were struck by the destruction of an academic text, and the fact that a ‘tree’ was made from paper, thus the object and the material from which it was made formed a circuit. A number of people expressed an interest in making cut and reformed objects from paper. I will run some ‘show and tell’ events to discuss the objects as I make them, drawing attention to the underlying concepts and how they are made.

Downloadable 3D objects: While it is not economical to enable the public to make their own rapid prototyped objects, it is feasible that they explore the structure of everyday three-dimensional objects, by making sliced forms. These forms structure 3D information in a similar way to many RP machines, building an object up in horizontal layers. Information on specific slice forms can also be made as printable downloadable kits for people to make at home. Documentary: alongside making the RP objects I plan to document the stages that are necessary in order for these objects to come into being. I will shoot HDDV and still images to present online and as a standalone video work, that document the different stages, from sketching, to three-dimensional modelling or medical imaging, to translating data into a file format that a rapid prototyping machine can read, through to the actual rapid prototyping technique itself. This is something that most people have little understanding of, and are very intrigued by.
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