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Intro

Fab Academy Challenge 3

In this challenge we demonstrated and practiced the use of molding and casting, electronics, and other techniques.

The Concept

For the third Fab Academy challenge, I partnered with Roger Guilemany again, joined by David Wyss to create a mechanism to visualise and promote the evolution of a team or studio's design practice over time. We call it the Design Practice Assessment Board. Building on the agency measurement scale I worked on with Jose in the first challenge, this would go further to incorporate electronic components that enabled quantitative data gathering and display. Working with Roger and David was a good fit because we could cast a wider net to divide and focus on different components of the object we designed and because we all had a developed a subject matter interest in shifting the perceived values and success metrics of design to more post-humanistic ones. Therefore, the result of this challenge came from a mixture of theory and philosophy, a wide range of fabrication techniques and tools, and the use of electronics and software to enable interactivity. See the project repository here.

The Process

For our division of roles, Roger focused on the electronics, I focused on the enclosure, and David focused on using molding and casting techniques to create buttons for our device. As a team, we each reviewed our progress with each other and had a chance to diagnose and understand the issues we collectively faced. One of the best and most memorable aspects of this challenge was when the three of us collectively decided against using virgin plastics (acrylic would have been the prescribed norm) for the face-plate of our Assessment Board. For this, we worked together to utilise the Precious Plastics process to make our own plastic sheet from shredded PPE bottle caps. The shredded pieces were arranged on a square aluminium frame, sandwiched together and pressed using a hydraulic press. The resulting board had an interesting look and feel and created a sense of pride for us in avoiding the use of virgin plastics. It was also very fitting for the post-humanistic values represented in our assessment and started a great philosophical dialogue about the need to shift perception and tolerance for what "quality" looks like, how to appreciate the natural tendency a certain material and process has, and changing the relationship we have with perfection and expecting certain aesthetic outcomes every time. The result which was CNC milled (since laser cutting is not safe for PPE) was very well suited for the function we had and aesthetically had an interesting stone-like quality to it.

As always, I used my obsession with the vinyl cutter to apply labels and titles to the device which were then sealed in place to the PPE faceplate using a clear-coat coating. In the future I would like to consider making entire enclosures out of one material to emphasise the recycling aspect even further and avoid the use of coatings and mixtures of material to enable that.