Cast plaster myriorama.

The plaster myriorama was done a few months after the felt and wax pieces. Although the aim of the project was not to make anything final, I really wanted to reach a better resolution. Firstly, I wanted to make more blocks than just 4. Secondly, the hand made nature of the other pieces made them time consuming to put together and they are very delicate to handle. I wanted to make something more inviting to an audience and something more replicable. I chose to cast them in plaster. It's in contrast to the felt and it's quite tactile.

Above: Tesselating marbled plaster blocks.

This version has been designed on Rhino 3D but I've simplified which has solved some of the issues I had with network surfaces. There are 4 different blocks but the aim was to make 16 in total, so I had to find a way to vary them other than their shape.

By experimenting with different ways of pigmenting plaster, I decided to marble white raw plaster with plaster coloured with Paynes Grey acrylic paint. A messy and playful approach, in stark contrast with 3D printing. It's surprisingly fast too. I dried them all out in my oven.

I like how they've turned out. They look more organic - like a snowscape.

Silicon mould making and glass wax.

I made the silicon moulds with a view to the following process: 3d printed model - wax model - polish wax model - plaster mould - glass model.

Glass takes time and money so I've made prototypes using glass wax. It's delicate and impermanent but it transmits light like cast glass.

I found that the surface of the glass wax can be polished with white spirit. It has to dry off so the silicon moulds are perfect to keep the pieces upright.

Constructing the felt pieces.

Constructing the modules was straightforward. The 3d printed blocks act like registration pegs and held the felt in the correct position. I used UHU glue in a bottle with a small nozzle to construct it. The main issue was working out what went where. I printed out the laser plans and used them like a puzzle solution. 

I used fewer of the larger areas of felt as I needed less of them to create the height I wanted.  I worked on them all at the same time to ensure the profiles joined up.

123D Make.

I used Autodesk 123D Make to split my .stl files into layers.  I had chosen the thinnest felt to make the most of the contours. I used a micrometer to check and it was indeed, 1.2mm. The fibrous mature of it means that the layers don’t sit really close to each other so I knew that I wouldn’t need as many layers to build it. 

Above: The 123D interface.

Cutting the felt was straightforward with the laser.  The edges got burn a little bit. I thought this would happen. It’s partly why I chose a mid to dark shade. I think it works okay. It helps define the contours and is subtle enough against the gray. 

I put all the pieces for each module in sepearate bags but it did look like an impossible puzzle!

Above: The resulting layers are output as an .eps file which can be sent straight to the laser cutter.

Playing with LEDs.

I enjoy working with light in my practice. I use it as a way of inviting closer inspection of my house pieces. It gives them some life in the way that lighting works with a dollshouse. 

I made a light module circuit as a source for a small prototype lightbox to display my model houses on. The PCB is a kit from Kitronic. I really enjoyed soldering it.  

Arduino has made electronics accessible for artists and designers. LEDs are both low temperature and low voltage. This fact means that they can be used in places and in ways that traditional lightbulbs couldn't previously. The potential of these technologies is really exciting.

Arduino: Playing with sensors.

The tech lab was one of the reason I started the MA course. I have a number of ideas which might involve using Arduino to control sensors and actions. The weather project is one. I would also like to use Raspberry Pi to access weather data online.

As an artist/designer using technology, I'm interested in how programming and robotics could be used within my practice. As our environment becomes immersed in technology, we are accessing more and more data. As art schools fill up with digital natives, increasingly, atrists and designers will want to access this raw data to use as inputs for their projects. I’ve managed to teach myself Rhino and 3d printing and having been freelance for years, I’m used to having to learn software. 

Above left: The Arduino breadboard for prototyping circuits. Above right: The Arduino programming interface is very simple.

The workshop took us through some quite basic stuff. The aim of the day was to make a Rube Goldberg inspired machine to get a ping-pong ball to do a circuit of the workbench. We worked as a group and put our minds to the problem. We used movement sensors to activate servos - using the momentum of the ball to activate levers and gates.Having a tangible problem to solve makes learning anything new much easier. I have always learnt new software through a need to use it on a job. It gives the learning a focus. 

Above: Stills from the film of our Rube Goldberg inspired machine.

This was excellent fun. We really benefited from learning together.

Thoughts about design: Staying with the problem.

A thought often leads to an immediate notion or idea, like something seen in the fog. I usually fix my gaze on it and try to bring it into focus.  Then, there is a slow process of the thought or thing becoming clear and then concrete.

At that point it feels like a Eureka moment and it’s really tempting to just pursue that one idea until it feels like you’re done with it. But, its a bit like starting at the end?! 

You have to retain that original thought and keep coming back to it. It can get lost really easily. That is the impetus for the work and it is how you can measure whether the work is successful. 
Like Tom said, the process must be divergent at the start and only converge at the end.

Above: I'm finding these flowcharts useful.

Thoughts about design: Finding a playful approach.

My first training was in fine art.  My work is defined by that. It’s the reason that I look usually look away from the research before making anything. I want the work to have be more liminal than just rendering the results of the research. There has to be a leap of imagination.

I’ve been thinking about the language that fine art often uses. The language of minimalism. Take a notion or idea. Render it simply making objects which have little or no tampering - found objects, juxtaposed or raw materials with few marks made. Repeat and hone it down - distilling the language to convey the original thought. Repeat and repeat. There is value in the iterations. Fine art exists in a formal space. The formal space is what defines it.

Above: I’ve started making mindmaps on my iPad. It is really helping me to think through some issues. These diagrams are not fixed. I expect I will be returning to them and creating new ones as I work this journey.

Right now, this design process feels messier. I can’t rely on a formal space to present the work. It has to function in a different context. It has to actually work. I’m visualising things in great detail and trying to create them exactly as I see it in my mind. I’m getting into the detail before I’ve understood the point. I’ve missed out the crucial process of making and failing.

This is why I’m caught in the trap of procrastination and worrying if I’ve done it right!
Until the latter stages of a project, DETAIL is the enemy. Use a broad brush.

I need to spend time in a playful space, interrogating my ideas in a playful way - thinking while making. By making tangible prototypes I can hold and turn around in my hands, I can find the pertinent point of the object and the ideas themselves.
 

Problem solving in Rhino 3D

I could write here at length about the particular challenges I had in Rhino. I tried for a long time using various operations - patch, drape, sweep, network srf, working with curve memory etc - trying to get the small individual hills and dips to be exactly as I wanted them. In the end I’ve used network surfaces. It works but it is very labour intensive. It’s more useful here to think about what I got out of the experience. I learned a lot. Not just about Rhino, although I did learn a lot about that.  

I got to the stage where I really hated the project. I started treating it like a freelance animation job which I wanted to see the back of, and got very frustrated.  

I learned that speaking to people helps! Both Paul and Peter were really kind and helpful. It always helps to talk stuff through. 

I’ve thought a lot about my design process. I do tend to choose a way forward and stick to it. It’s probably a hangover from the years working freelance with horrible deadlines. You’d show a client a storyboard and then work really hard to make it in time for the deadline. I’ve chosen to spend time and money doing the MA and I have to try and be easier on myself. I have no problem reflecting on my practice. It’s just that I forget that I can change what I’m doing based on those reflections. I would like to try and see if I can learn Grasshopper to set up some parameters for the edge profiles and see if I can create sliders to build the terrain int between. It won’t be this side of Christmas though. I’m going to step away from network surfaces and try something else.

Above: Various stages within Rhino 3D

I could write here at length about the particular challenges I had in Rhino. I tried for a long time using various operations - patch, drape, sweep, network srf, working with curve memory etc - trying to get the small individual hills and dips to be exactly as I wanted them. In the end I’ve used network surfaces. It works but it is very labour intensive. It’s more useful here to think about what I got out of the experience. I learned a lot. Not just about Rhino, although I did learn a lot about that.  

I got to the stage where I really hated the project. I started treating it like a freelance animation job which I wanted to see the back of, and got very frustrated.  

I learned that speaking to people helps! Both of my tutors were really kind and helpful. It always helps to talk stuff through. 

I’ve thought a lot about my design process. I do tend to choose a way forward and stick to it. It’s probably a hangover from the years working freelance with horrible deadlines. You’d show a client a storyboard and then work really hard to make it in time for the deadline. I’ve chosen to spend time and money doing the MA and I have to try and be easier on myself. I have no problem reflecting on my practice. It’s just that I forget that I can change what I’m doing based on those reflections. I would like to try and see if I can learn Grasshopper to set up some parameters for the edge profiles and see if I can create sliders to build the terrain int between. It won’t be this side of Christmas though. I’m going to step away from network surfaces and try something else.

Modelling roads and hills in Rhino 3D

I’m using roads to join all the junction points on the landscape. It is the perfect way of joining up all the junctions on the blocks . It creates the infrastructure of the work and should be quite pleasing as a device. The flat part of the profile will be the road. There will be 4 junction on each block - one on each side.

Above: The profile of the blocks and placement of the road.

I started with a basic chequer board design and marked where the road junctions should be. It’s then a straightforward Illustrator job to draw the road  and expand the paths, ready for import to Rhino - or it would have been straightforward if my updated Illustrator had worked properly. I fought with it for days and then managed to re-install the CS6 version. Very frustrating, as it slowed me down in getting to the next stage. I also tried to draw it in Rhino. For some tasks I really like drawing directly in the 3d space but I could not get this to work at all. Once I got stuck into the job in CS6, it almost drew itself. 

I was a bit worried about whether the roads took up too much space.

Left: Once I got everything into Rhino, I got to work, trying to figure out how to make the terrain surfaces. Using network srf, patch or it was easy to create a basic surface between the edges in various ways. The terrain created was quite boring though. 

The challenges are in making the terrain surfaces interact with the road and crating an interesting variety of blocks. There is also the technical aspect of making sure all surfaces are closed polysurfaces for printing.

Above: Developing surfaces in Rhino 3D.

Investigating materials.

I have decided to try and make the buildings and land out of 2 different materials. Above is my investigation into how to approach this. 

My initial idea was to make the terrain out of wood and the buildings out of glass. I had a long chat with technical staff in the workshops about the possibility of using the CNC router to cut out the terrain but there were too many constraints. The woodwork technician was unsure how to achieve this, Michelle was about to go on leave and given the short amount of amount of time available, we decided against it. It is something I’d like to try in the new year though. 

Above: Sketchbook pages.

I considered felt by accident. I was looking for something to photograph my glass pieces against and found a piece of gray felt in the laser studio.  It was a bit of a Eureka moment! The contrast with the glass was really satisfying.  They are opposites in lots of ways. 

Hard and soft. The contrast in how they do and don’t transfer light.The acoustic qualities.Flexibility and brittleness.

Based on my experience with glass casting I could use wax as a middle stage. If I make silicon moulds I can explore more options. 

Designing the myriorama.

The idea is to create an array of blocks which can be rotated and placed in any order to create different landscapes. 
I deliberately exaggerated the undulation of the landscape in the 4 puzzle pieces I made below. It’s a terrain most unsuited to build on and gives the whole thing a poetic drama.

These grid blocks will have to have a gentler profile or I’ll risk making the undulations across the whole grid too obviously regular.  

Above: Initial sketching and some possible profiles before testing in Rhino. The profile on the edge of the block will determine the height at that edge ONLY. The top surface can have areas, both higher and lower that the profile edge. Note that the profiles are NOT symmetrical. If I make them symmetrical then the overall piece will have a very regular appearance.

I want the profile to have a little variation so that each variation has some unexpected elements - a bit like the way the Thomas Martin piece works. 

Above left: By having a non symmetrical profile, a compromise has to be made. Above right: I have designed the blocks to tessellate like a chequer board. The blue blocks are a mirror image of the pink ones.

This changes it from being completely freeform to having a slightly more predefined structure. The interplay and possibilities are still very wide so I think the pay off is worth it to have a less regular surface.

Either end of the profile is at the same height. This means that I can alternate the edges at the corner. If the heights had been different then each tile would be sloping.  I’m hoping that this will give it balance.

Sketchbook pages.

This first page is reflective of my thoughts on the planning process. This is something I’ll interrogate further; probably during the dissertation module. It informs what I’m doing here though. My thoughts are being drawn to how one can engage public discussion using objects and materials. For this project though, I’m staying with the concept of creating the Myriorama. The time left is limited and I think I could learn a lot from making this piece. I’m hoping that the explorations I’m doing towards it can be derived from an aim to create interactions.

Above, are some first thoughts about how the  choices of materials I can use, could be informed by the qualities of what they represent.

A myriorama.

Myriorama originally meant a set of illustrated cards which 19th century children could arrange and re-arrange, forming different pictures. The early myrioramas were cards with people, buildings, and other images on compatible backgrounds, and could be laid out in any order, allowing a child to create a variety of imaginary landscapes. (Wikipedia)

Above left: 19th C Myriorama cards from France. Like most of these cards, this set works on just the
X axis with fixed points on the edges, forming invisible junction points.

Above rtight: By artist Thomas Martin. These work on both the X and Y axes. The junctions are at the centre of the edges of each tile so they fit in any combination. The means of tessellation is simple. The visual complexity is down to the non functional decorative elements. 
I do remember as a child, playing a simpler game with card tiles that joined in any direction. I’ve searched all over but I haven’t found it.

Above: “Ants Go Marching”  a game from Imagine Games USA.  The blocks join on all axes because again, the junctions are in the centre of each vertice. It’s deceptively simple. 

My piece is going to be flat to remain a standard landscape although the idea of a full 3d puzzle is really interesting.

A puzzle or game.

Following on from the 3d printed piece I did in the digital fabrication workshop, I have been thinking along the lines of a tabletop puzzle. I don’t want to make a traditional puzzle. My Cumbernauld trip  threw up lots of new issues in my work. My focus has shifted from just the architecture of the town. 

I’m thinking about planning as action and interaction. So, I’m not going to make a puzzle in the traditional sense. I’m going to invite the participant to make their own landscape. A puzzle is didactic in that there is a right or wrong answer. I want to create a situation where the viewer can interact with this piece and explore a myriad of solutions. 

I am going to attempt to design a potentially endless landscape....

Digital fabrication workshop - day 2

I've been thinking about ways to use data from google earth in Rhino and found a technique using Sketch Up as an interim stage. I used this technique as a starting point for this workshop.

Above: I think it’s quite astounding that you can just choose anywhere in the world and get the terrain information.

Above left: I saved the terrain as a SketchUp version 4, file and opened it in Rhino.  I thin had to resize it and change to texture map to default, so I could see the texture.

Above right: Then I expanded the Z axis to exaggerate the hills. I tried a painstaking experiment with patching to add the sides, but Andy suggested the drape function. You lose a little of the resolution but that didn’t matter for this job. 

Above left: I added some very basic buildings. Above right: Using basic boolean operations I split the block into 4 smaller ones.

Reflecting on the processes, I’m excited about how the process of laying down the plastic in layers creates levels to describe the terrain in exactly the way a contour map does.  In fact, printing with a lower resolution gives better results than a finer print. 

Digital fabrication workshop - day 1

Today was an introduction to Rhino 3D. I have been using Rhino for about a year so none of the information was new to me. The aim of the workshop was to get some files to lasercut so just got on with playing with some of my vector files from my paper cut pieces. The file was based on a hand cut paper piece which took a couple of weeks work to handcut. I edited the file and split it into layers. I imported it into Rhino and extruded the curves to create solids. Obviously it is just as easy to cut from the original Illustrator files but I enjoyed viaualising the piece in Rhino. It was very cool to cut it out of birch ply in about 15 minutes. A very satisfying outcome.

I’m happy with the results from the laser cutter. I think this could form the beginnings of the chandelier piece, I’d like to make. I can imagine it hung from the ceiling with gaps between the tiers - largest at the top and smallest at the bottom.  A bit like the formation of the chandelier here.