1. State of the art, project management and documentation#
This week I started setting up this website and wondered what the hell I’m going to focus on for my final project.
What I’ve been thinking about this week#
I’ve always been into tessellations, but this week I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and read a lot about hinged tessellations and hyperbolic geometry.
Here’s a really nice tessellation gif by Shonk
My Fabricademy goals (aka things for future Jessica to remember)#
Machines and tools#
- Learn to use the digital embroidery machine (update: this happened, see my final project for details)
- Properly learn laser cutting and 3D printing (update: laser cutting - yes, 3D printing - not so much)
Techniques#
- Try to dye (bleached) hair with bacterial pigments (update: never got around to this!)
- Try different bioplastic recipes - think of ideas to make learning chemistry interesting for young kids (update: never got around to this either but it’s still something I’d like to try)
- Go deeper into electronics, and come up with a new way of combining electronics and crafts (update: I did this! See my final project for details)
- Try and make one or more of: hinged tessellation, hyperbolic tessellation, Miura-Ori fold, etc (update: I did this! See Week 6 & 7 assignments)
Possible project themes#
- Craftivism and critical making: I really like projects that use making to take a critical look at aspects of society, or as a way to raise awareness of / comment on gender inequality, reproductive rights, and the stigma around menstruation
- Making maths and physics accessible / tangible: I also really like projects that make ‘hard’ subjects like maths and physics open to more people, by making concepts visual, or relating them to everyday life.
Documenting documenting#
Over the course of Fabricademy I learned a lot about documenting my work. In my final project diary I’ve written about how I did it, including photos, gifs, and filming / recording sound for my final project.
Documentation is super important, both so that you can share your work with other people, and also to remind future you how you did things (because you will forget!). If you take pictures of everything and document as you go along, it saves a lot of time later on!