Studio Exercise 1:
When making the building block, I found that it was pretty simple since it really only required about 5 steps (including assigning sizes to the length, width and height). I felt as though the most difficult part was waiting for the final product to come out of the 3D printer and being disappointed when the 3D printer messes up during the process.
The multi-block model was a lot more difficult to build than the single building block because there are more components to it and to add the components together, it would sometimes require rotation which on sketchup is a really tough function to fully grasp and often leads to many periods of frustration. Another reason why the multi-block model was so difficult was because of symmetry, sometimes on sketchup a model’s symmetry would be in your own hands and often it doesn’t turn out quite symmetrical (human error, etc) or takes a long time to reach symmetry.
Studio Exercise 2:
5 Forms x 5 Materials (ppt spreadsheets)
3. Real World Assignment:
The exhibits in MAD NYC Makers were different in that it felt like they were more focused on how the exhibit as a whole looked instead of maybe a meaning behind how it looked. My favorite piece was Fredericks & Mae’s 100 Arrows. This was my favorite piece because it felt really chaotic but beautiful. What I mean is that when I looked at it, it felt like I was standing in a hail or arrows in the middle of a battlefield but the arrows weren’t moving in a downwards motion but rather in a horizontal motion so it looks like a current of arrows/orbit of arrows rather than a rain of arrows. Also, each arrow was hand crafted using different feathers and other materials to make every single arrow different which adds to the beauty of the “current of arrows”. I learned that exhibits or maker pieces are not limited to objects but can be whole environments such as Nick and Julie’s Confetti System. An observation I made was that there were exhibits that were focused on appearance as well as exhibits that had functions. My last observation was that sometimes multitude makes up for lack of complicated materials. This exhibit informs me that there are already people who are making impossible-like things that don’t seem simple to make without 3D printing but by having 3D printing, that list of impossible-like things is getting bigger and more possible.
4. Personal Reflection:
In the course so far, I have learned that nothing is impossible forever. I say this because I never thought that printing 3D objects was possible. Although 3D printing has actually been around for a while, right now is the time where it can really grow and become something that we only used to believe could happen in science fiction and fantasy. For me, the process of crafting a 3D design was easy and difficult. What I mean is that it is really easy to begin a 3D design such as creating a cube on sketchup but it starts getting difficult when you want to customize, refine and make something different than what preset such as vases and cookie cutters. Through the process of making a 3D object, I have learned that a successful piece takes time and lots of thought before even beginning the 3D process. To make a successful 3D object properly reflect your ideas, it is necessary to draw preliminary sketched out on paper as well as setting down dimensions because that helps set up a solid plan for you to follow while making the 3D object. It was challenging for me to properly size my objects but by drawing them out first, I was able to be more precise. Whenever I come across a problem in sketchup, I fiddle around with it until I can come up with a solution and often those solutions work but are unexpected. So I guess the ability I will bring to my group is perseverance to work out issues and obstacles.
5. Future Vision:
In all of the readings that I have done from Fabricated, the topic that grabs my interest the most would have to be bio printing. Bio printing is so interesting to me because it feels like we as humans are playing as gods. The emergence of bio printing is surprising and hopeful in that there may be a day when 3D bio printing is so advanced that we can 3D print human organs or body parts and that could save many lives if not make those lives easier. There is already experiments in 3D bio printing with human tissue that have been successful and that shows that the first steps towards the aforementioned are already being taken. As much as I am interested in how helpful this technology could be for humanity a a whole, I am also interested in how humans will deal with it if it becomes an issue. What I mean is that 3D bio printing could become dangerous, shady people could print out faulty organs to people who need them, people may have ethical issues with printing out human body parts, etc. how will people deal with or regulate something like 3D bio printing if it ever becomes advanced enough to print functioning human body parts? Will we also be able to print out whole humans and if we are indeed able to, what does that make us? All these aspects of 3D bio printing are important and it will be interesting to see how things unfold.