Ideation Sketches – Kettle

For Assignment two, we were tasked to come up with 40 ideation sketches. The biggest challenge for this assignment is to break up the archetypal components of an object and reconstruct them into a new form.

Here is the anatomy of a kettle, its made up with three important components, the kettle body, handle and the spout.

Kettle Anatomy

I deiced to use the “Destruction” approach for this project.  For organic forms, I was inspired by elephant and penguin, some of the similarities they shared is the chubby body(kettle body) and interesting organic lines (elephant trunk).

Organic Forms

For the sketches inspired from geometric forms, I drew ideas from Architectural buildings, perfume bottles and daily objects that I observed.  The sharp angles and edges in these sketches gives a modern vibes of the kettle. However after I draw 10 sketches (from left t0 right), I deiced to incorporate organic and geometric forms together to create a interested composition.

Geometric Forms

Overall I do really enjoyed this project, its challenge us to really think deeper and let our imagination run wild.

Research Critique – Critical Making

Concept Critical Making
The concept of Critical Making is merging two concepts ‘critical thinking,’ and “making’. In Ratto’s terms, “It is the glue that uses combines conceptual oriented thinking and physical based making with the emphasis on introducing hands-on activity to those that primarily work with language eg. those in the communication or science field.”

Critical Making has similarities to the practice of Critical design, comes from the background of industrial design and builds objects that work to challenge the narrow conventions and biases that products play in daily life. The differences between critical making and critical thinking is, Critical design is object-oriented; critical making is process-oriented. Critical Design is focused on design and building the prototypes that reinforce a banal and comfortable status quo by being efficient, optimised or comfortable , instead pushes users into more complex emotional and psychological territory by questioning the social norms and stimulating discussing and criticism of design. 

Critical Making resembles the filed of ‘value in design’, which it strives to unpack the assumptions behind technology designs and increase understanding in how technological objects shape social values. 

Critical Making is a constructionist approach to work through values in design, information studies, or science and technology studies. 

Issues with Standard Methods of Technological Design

The issues with standard methods of technological design is that the product does the job however it lacks of a goos user experience.The concept of standard methods of technological design is often produce systems that lack cultural richness, emotion, and human-oriented values, often overemphasises principles like efficiency and productivity that contributes to a consumer- oriented culture that overworks, overproduced and over consumes. However, the concept ofCritical Making considered the complex emotional and psychological territory by questioning the social norms and focus on the user experiences, thus Critical making is one that tackles standard methods of technological design that poses problem of the lack of emotional and human oriented values. 

Critical Making x Designers x Public
Critical making intervenes by giving designers and the public an opportunity to break out of this cycle, step back, reevaluated the assumptions and values being embedded into the design and mindfully reconsider a broader spectrum of human experience.

Critical Making

The Transparency Grenad

In my research assignment, I was given the topic,The Transparency Grenade, it was a project developed by Julian Oliver to comment on issues of transparency in the world today.

The work is a translucent resin model of a Soviet F1 Hand Grenade. Encased within  a tiny computer, microphone and wireless antenna, which captures network traffic and audio where it is placed. When the pin of the grenade is pulled, the information is streamed to a dedicated server where it is mined. The server uploads the data onto a public site with a map that shows the location of its ‘detonation’.

Components of The Transparency Grenade

The Transparency Grenade is designed with a sleek exterior and translucent encasement that advert to the transparent nature of affairs that arises as a result of this project.

The Transparency Grenade can be seen as an example of a product born out of critical making. The reason for this: it is a product made with the intention of showcasing an important issue that needs tackling which is the lack of Corporate and Governmental transparency today.

Oliver feels is prevalent amongst powerful government and publicly-owned companies make decisions behind guarded doors that impact the lives of many, often leaving us feeling powerless to effect change, both in and out of a democratic context. by presenting a tool that  seeks to capture these important information and allows one to leak information that would otherwise stay behind closed doors. 

In my opinion, critical making is a concept that I would definitely encourage and can be extremely applicable to us, art student, when we want to design a product with the concern of human-oriented Values or it can even be social issues and not forgetting the functional aspect of design.

 

Blibliography:
What is Critical Making? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://current.ecuad.ca/what-is-critical-making

Metalwork by. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://transparencygrenade.com/

Marquis. (2016, April 05). The Transparency Grenade. Retrieved from http://www.digiart21.org/art/the-transparency-grenade

Micro-Project 3 : Together Split

Hey guys!! Here’s my third micro project for Experimental Interaction. Desiree, Fenella,Siti and I staged a “music video” using split-screen video chat features on Instagram. Enjoy:-))))

https://youtu.be/__Ycbr6y56c

Project
 We decided to perform a couple of simple moves with the music beats and translating these moves from one screen to another as fluid as possible, which also the main challenge of this project, as it was hard to get the right timing for the objects to be in the right place.

Objective
The objective of this project is to experience the possibilities of the third space and able to create a work that incorporated four person smoothly.

Outcome
We had quite a hard time coordinating with one another, our initial idea was to use music beat as a signal for the movements then we realised that our sense of rhythm are different. Through this micro-project, we were able to explore the essence of time in the third space, and how it can pave way to creative ways for more collaborative art performances that are no longer limited by the physical boundaries.

Out of all the 3 Micro-Projects
1. Which project did you feel you had the most creative control? Why?
Micro-Project 1
The brief of the project was simple and straight forward, Photograph the space or object, post your photo in the Instagram describe it and include the #1010adm hashtag. We were given a lot of “freedom” in this project as compare to the other two Micro-Projects.

2. Which project had the most unpredictable outcome? Why?
Micro-Project 2
Micro-Project 2 had the most unpredictable outcome as it allowed the audience of the work to have a huge amount of control in the next action of (ME) and I  had to follow. Our concept was to let the crowdsourced community experiencing their fear through the participant, our objective of this project is to see how the crowdsourced community  react when they have two extreme options to choose from, the  Angel” VS ‘Devil” options, when its not themselves performing the actions. I was surprised that the  crowdsourced community (my insta followers) chose all the “Devil” which are the nasty options, I thought they will choose the “Angel” options….

3. Which project best illustrates the concepts of DIWO & Open–Source?Why?
Micro-Project 1
Both concepts of Do-it-Yourself (DIY) and Do it with others(DIWO) were best illustrates in Micro-Project 1. Every participant had to contribute their own interpretation of the project from their perspective. Posting it on Instagram using the hashtag #1010adm is a collaborative effort of every participant is communicating(in the comments). It felt like everyone was working towards a common goal by contributing their own interpretation of the project.

Vis 1: Orthographic Drawing Exercise

We were tasked to produce a pictures of the object chosen (layout of object in 3rd angle projection views), drawing of the object in 3rd angle projection and isometric view and  2 point perspective drawing of the object.

We were tasked to produce a pictures of the object chosen (layout of object in 3rd angle projection views), drawing of the object in 3rd angle projection and isometric view and  2 point perspective drawing of the object.

Orthographic Projection
2-Point Perspective

The challenge of this exercise for me is to pay attention on the cleanliness of the lines, not choppy lines!!!!!  I was happy with the 3rd angle projection and isometric view, but not the 2 point perspective drawing, I think I can do so much better. Overall I think this is a goos exercise forces us to pay attention with the scale, details of the product and also to have deeper understanding on how products are designed.