Thematic Case Studies on Material and Fabrication Studio for New-Media-Art Students
Project-based teaching and learning plays a vital role in the creative education sector. In art and design-related courses, such methodology not only brings out more creative, accomplished, and independent designers, but fosters innovations and new applications in the field. In the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, we created and conducted an Art and Science Studio course on Smart Materials and Digital Fabrication embedded in a collaboration with the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) and the Maritime Museum (MM).
The project provides an opportunity to define new pedagogical strategies through the translation of established concepts in making, in the form of craft methodologies from the collection on the UMAG and industrial design processes from the turn of the last century from the MM artifacts. It created an active research environment into how to use digital scanning and manufacturing tools, and their implementation into project-based learning in larger classes ‐ transferring the hands-on to a digital experience ‐ as dearly needed in the current COVID-19 situation. This teaching initiative allowed students to explore how additive and subtractive technologies and materials could be used in combination with precise 3D printed substrates, based on hands-on working with museum artifacts ‐ transferring techniques and methods.
Instead of restricting the teaching of design to the communication of the subject via figures, graphs, and energy consumption diagrams, we delivered a real-world experience with a high degree of student autonomy, loosely based on Lockheed Martin's managerial concept of Skunkworks - a highly independent research-based unit from the company, responsible for breakthrough research such as the Blackbird airplane. Through transforming hands-on workshops on various fabrication techniques and materials by a series of digital tooling workshops, the course established an understanding of design processes in relation to the manufacturing, material and digital, computational necessities that are most relevant to contemporary sustainable design.
Some of the discussed projects include:
Nature 3.0 - How to work with plants as a material - exploring the potentials of a growing and expanding material? Nature 3.0 explores a speculative sensorial based understanding of a new Nature - to work in the synthesis between animate and inanimate materials.
[keyword: time, expansion, growth, water, air, light]
Chemical Autopoiesis - How can we work with reactive materials and set-up controlled choreographies - articulating a reaction chain for materials and document a time based reaction?
[keywords: reaction, visual, audio, tast, smell]
Synthetic Organic Ornaments - How to transfer traditional methods and material knowledge from craftsmanship to a digital realm, creating hybrids between existing crafted and digitally made objects.
[keywords: culture, heritage, skill, tradition]
Enchanting the Mundane - How to apply sensor technologies to enchant a material and electronically enhance it to become programmable?
[keywords: programmable matter, motors, forces]
Machine Landscapes - how to work with scale and mechanisms of a landscape in the small and minute scale of an object. What is the notion of a simulation or a model? Can we transform dislocated signals into the work.
[keywords: model, complex, live, telepresence]
The project provides an opportunity to define new pedagogical strategies through the translation of established concepts in making, in the form of craft methodologies from the collection on the UMAG and industrial design processes from the turn of the last century from the MM artifacts. It created an active research environment into how to use digital scanning and manufacturing tools, and their implementation into project-based learning in larger classes ‐ transferring the hands-on to a digital experience ‐ as dearly needed in the current COVID-19 situation. This teaching initiative allowed students to explore how additive and subtractive technologies and materials could be used in combination with precise 3D printed substrates, based on hands-on working with museum artifacts ‐ transferring techniques and methods.
Instead of restricting the teaching of design to the communication of the subject via figures, graphs, and energy consumption diagrams, we delivered a real-world experience with a high degree of student autonomy, loosely based on Lockheed Martin's managerial concept of Skunkworks - a highly independent research-based unit from the company, responsible for breakthrough research such as the Blackbird airplane. Through transforming hands-on workshops on various fabrication techniques and materials by a series of digital tooling workshops, the course established an understanding of design processes in relation to the manufacturing, material and digital, computational necessities that are most relevant to contemporary sustainable design.
Some of the discussed projects include:
Nature 3.0 - How to work with plants as a material - exploring the potentials of a growing and expanding material? Nature 3.0 explores a speculative sensorial based understanding of a new Nature - to work in the synthesis between animate and inanimate materials.
[keyword: time, expansion, growth, water, air, light]
Chemical Autopoiesis - How can we work with reactive materials and set-up controlled choreographies - articulating a reaction chain for materials and document a time based reaction?
[keywords: reaction, visual, audio, tast, smell]
Synthetic Organic Ornaments - How to transfer traditional methods and material knowledge from craftsmanship to a digital realm, creating hybrids between existing crafted and digitally made objects.
[keywords: culture, heritage, skill, tradition]
Enchanting the Mundane - How to apply sensor technologies to enchant a material and electronically enhance it to become programmable?
[keywords: programmable matter, motors, forces]
Machine Landscapes - how to work with scale and mechanisms of a landscape in the small and minute scale of an object. What is the notion of a simulation or a model? Can we transform dislocated signals into the work.
[keywords: model, complex, live, telepresence]
In the context of today’s emerging digital revolution, the traditional analog object, ranging from toys to watches, art, and entire architectures, is slowly fading into the background of our daily life. These aforementioned objects are gradually being replaced by networked and environmentally reactive objects that, though trying to become de-materialised or digitally enchanted, require more knowledge of materials and their fabrication than ever before.
These new products integrate state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques, with smart materials, sensory elements and are large physical copies of digital processes using Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing software. However, knowledge of these materials and fabrication technologies is still mostly reserved to the engineering sector and as a result, the products are augmented by technology, rather than being integrally designed from the start with an understanding of material behaviour and its potential.
In the course, Materials and Fabrication, we collaborate with two of Hong Kong’s museums (the University Museum and Art Gallery and the Maritime Museum) and their collections to give shape to new art and design with globally available manufacturing and fabrication technologies. These collections have been the starting point to develop, framed by a series of digital tooling workshops, an understanding of design processes in relation to the manufacturing, material and digital, computational necessities that are most relevant to contemporary sustainable design.
Instead of teaching information abstractly, the course asked the students to digitally archive the museum collections through 3D scanning, refine the 3D-scanned results, replicate the scanned artefacts, and finally create the enchanted version of the artefacts using emerging fabrication techniques and materials. This collaborative process also encouraged the students to actively contribute to the local community in Hong Kong with impactful project deliverables, such as contributing to the digital museum archives and physical exhibition.
These new products integrate state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques, with smart materials, sensory elements and are large physical copies of digital processes using Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing software. However, knowledge of these materials and fabrication technologies is still mostly reserved to the engineering sector and as a result, the products are augmented by technology, rather than being integrally designed from the start with an understanding of material behaviour and its potential.
In the course, Materials and Fabrication, we collaborate with two of Hong Kong’s museums (the University Museum and Art Gallery and the Maritime Museum) and their collections to give shape to new art and design with globally available manufacturing and fabrication technologies. These collections have been the starting point to develop, framed by a series of digital tooling workshops, an understanding of design processes in relation to the manufacturing, material and digital, computational necessities that are most relevant to contemporary sustainable design.
Instead of teaching information abstractly, the course asked the students to digitally archive the museum collections through 3D scanning, refine the 3D-scanned results, replicate the scanned artefacts, and finally create the enchanted version of the artefacts using emerging fabrication techniques and materials. This collaborative process also encouraged the students to actively contribute to the local community in Hong Kong with impactful project deliverables, such as contributing to the digital museum archives and physical exhibition.