0:13

thanks Ryan um really amazing conversations this morning everybody thus far audience and

0:18

uh participants uh and I’d like to thank uh Ryan and Remco I’ve been to a number of art engine events over the years and

0:24

they’re always very thoughtful and very kind of ahead of the curve uh so I don’t know I think uh our hosts deserve a bit

0:30

of a hand of some Applause here for some great work [Applause] yeah great uh so my name is Greg Smith

0:38

I’m uh I’m a writer and editor uh I guess I got in trouble from Tom uh who

0:43

presented earlier he’s uh my former thesis advisor and I need to get the fact that I used to be an architect back in my bio apparently

0:50

um so I did a bunch of research um but I basically I kind of I’m active in the media media art space and uh as

0:58

you know I decided to like okay great you know I come to kind of craft from the uh perspective of like artists are

1:03

using 3D printers and what does that mean Etc et cetera it’s exciting I’m going to read a bunch of old texts on like Ceramics and stuff like that and

1:09

and dial back in a craft space and I found this essay by uh Rose I don’t know how to pronounce the name silvika called

1:15

the new uh Ceramics uh presence and essentially it was like this 1961 essay

1:20

on ceramics and there’s all this energy around modernization and kind of the ascent of industry and it sounded

1:26

exactly like the way that we’re talking about you know 3D printing and Manufacturing today so some interesting perilous there

1:32

um and one of the things that I thought about this morning and that nobody he has really mentioned that much we heard the word confusion a lot we heard the

1:39

word anxiety less I think a lot of these conversations about Rapid technolization or technolization

1:46

of fields or automation are accompanied by anxiety and you know if we just look

1:51

around like just three days ago in uh Pittsburgh Uber launched what is essentially the First Fleet of automated

1:57

cars in the world it’s a hundred car Fleet of modified Volvos they have human

2:02

assistant drivers that are basically there so the people in the cars they can grab the wheel if anything bad happens

2:09

and also the person the passenger has the right to say can you please drive and there’s also a big stop the car

2:16

button there’s a red button that’s literally like stop stop I’m nervous I’m not comfortable with this

2:21

um so I think that that button is an interesting button anybody that’s been in a machine shop and seen a CNC mill of course there is one of those buttons

2:27

because things can go horribly wrong CNC CNC machines are essentially like Old Testament Gods they’re very unforgiving

2:32

they follow you know instructions quite well um so yeah the big red button I think that’s what we’re going to talk about a

2:38

little bit today and interestingly the mayor of Pittsburgh and ushering Ann Uber and he’s trying to retool Pittsburgh is a new high-tech City he

2:44

said you can either put up red tape or roll out the red carpet when it comes to Capital I Innovation and maybe either of

2:50

those positions is a little bit suspect um so hopefully today we’re talking about some something in between those two receptions

2:57

um so this is amongst my kind of digging into more can I call this traditional craft this is a project uh by uh Dave

3:03

Cole um Mass mocha from 2005 called knitting machine uh excavators obviously those

3:09

are giant aluminum poles what you can just see at the edge is a cherry picker so essentially he was up there as an

3:15

operator like somebody working on like a telephone line with this big needle hook doing doing knitting and I think so this

3:22

is like acrylic mesh and I think there’s something like a 500 or 100 stitches and

3:27

they basically made the the flag on July 4th interesting project I mean not just because it’s performative but just in

3:33

super sizing the scale it it takes Something That We’re familiar with and defamiliarizes it you know it’s

3:40

mechanized I mean using knitting needles is of course mechanized but it somehow

3:45

abstracts something that’s somewhat familiar so I a lot of these Technologies we’re talking about now they perform very much in the same sense

3:51

as this um and this is a great project maybe some of you have seen this before

3:56

um another thing that I looked at um uh When I Was preparing for this is I finally got around to reading Bruce

4:02

Sterling’s book shaping things from 2005. uh and anybody that’s enjoyed today I would highly recommend tracking

4:08

down this book because it’s kind of Sterling at his um Meandering best kind of thinking about products and in it he

4:14

talks a lot about he basically lays out the schema of of of objects in the world

4:19

and kind of put pontificates and what he calls the techno-social relationships we have with them and he talks about things

4:25

that are essentially artifacts which are made by hunters and Farmers machines which are made by or for customers

4:32

products which are made for consumers and then gizmos which are made for end users so you know our cool new Apple

4:37

watch would be a Gizmo and our toaster would be a a product so Thomas twaites

4:43

who’s a designer who describes himself as a designer of the speculative sort he

4:49

doesn’t want to be called a specular designer but he Affiliates himself Loosely with that approach to practice came out of RCA in London several years

4:56

ago and essentially what he did was he’s like I want to make a toaster I want to learn how to make a toaster so he picked

5:03

this model uh it’s called the Argos value range and he started researching

5:09

it so he bought a couple and took them apart and looked at other parts and thought about its assembly and thought about its materiality and very quickly

5:14

realized he couldn’t make it there was over 100 materials in it which was not feasibly obtainable by one individual so

5:21

obviously in exploding that toaster he revealed a very complex relationship with the supply chain and you know Rare

5:26

Earth minerals etc etc a manufacturing processes that many of us don’t have to deal with any capacity what he did was

5:33

make a toaster in five materials which was iron copper plastic nickel and Mica and as you can see

5:40

it’s a strange creation but it did work in some sense and it’s neat because it’s

5:45

kind of it’s It’s he’s alluding to a product but it is an artifact because it’s artist made so I mean there is a

5:51

craft to this in some sense right there’s also an Aesthetics to it that we won’t talk about but it’s it’s a very

5:58

interesting project uh oh I’m missing a slide

6:05

anyways I had this really lovely slide of this Arab machine component um that I saw on Twitter a little while

6:12

ago and there’s kind of a backstory too but air up in you know um like Autodesk

6:17

who will hear about and many companies kind of interested in kind of um communicating their Innovation uh with

6:23

their within their practice um essentially they created this way to make algorithmically optimized

6:30

structural notes so it was the Super organic and sinewy looking like connector which was about four times as

6:37

much to produce as like a standardized part but the idea was that you could take an engineering problem you know run an algorithm on on what’s going on

6:43

structurally around it and make a connector that was kind of optimized and uh the the resulting form had kind of

6:49

nothing in common with um with traditional kind of off-the-shelf Parts it was exactly as it needed to be and

6:55

the aesthetic was almost alien so it was very interesting because there’s almost this removal of the hand from the process

7:00

um you know I don’t know it might be an over exaggeration to call it co-creation with an algorithm but it’s an algorithmic design line so one of the

7:06

things I do think we’ll talk about today is is exactly that kind of the alien Aesthetics and new Aesthetics that

7:11

emerge from the digital uh and then one last thing which I’m happy to follow through on uh just

7:17

Joanna mentioned the Jacquard project which is a Google and I should have this is a close-up of exactly the type of

7:22

things she was talking about it was a little square of conductive thread on a new Google Levi’s Commuter jacket

7:29

um and I’m happy to report I do know what it does what it does is a jacket intended for cyclists so the conductive

7:36

threat is under that little toggle and essentially what that is is it’s like a USB power thing and like you can do

7:42

gestures on your arm and you can hook it up to anything running through your phone so your jacket essentially becomes

7:47

a media controller for your phone and you can assign you know like open Google Maps or read directions out Etc or

7:55

delete that email or read that email to me audibly the type of stuff that was imagined with Google Glass and stuff but

8:01

I mean this is this is so interesting because categorically it’s so problematizes the idea of what a piece of clothing is once you’re once you’re

8:07

kind of making it a an interface for your computer so this is even you know it’s one thing to talk about making things digital but once you’re kind of

8:15

combining different craft and maybe even computation paradigms things get weird and

8:21

um I don’t know I mean Joanna talked about this is productification of things and I guess this is definitely an example of that so this is the new

8:27

reality and I don’t know how much of this exactly is going to butt up with our two presenters um but we’ll see we’ll see what we can

8:33

cook up and one more comment that share could have been for a librarian that was something I realized this morning

8:38

because I almost felt like the librarian was our M.I.A other person that has something to say about fabrication so maybe we’ll try to ask a question or two

8:45

on their behalf later um so our two speakers today I’ll let them introduce themselves in their talks but very briefly cerebrin is a currently

8:52

Los angeles-based curator you know nomadic okay no no fixed address uh just

8:59

having recently spent a bunch of time setting up the Pier 9 Residency program at Autodesk which was also mentioned earlier so we’ll hear about that I’m

9:05

sure and James Hayes you’re a Carlton based PhD in architecture uh doing work

9:11

in and around what kind of interesting affecting traditional craft and stone work with digital fabrication techniques

9:18

and also like Tom beside earlier kind of thinking about architectural practice in light of this changing tool kit and

9:24

James Sheriff up first

9:30

let’s make sure this is on everybody can hear

9:40

yeah so I mean I think one of the most important things to get across at first is just that

9:48

um I’m coming from the position of an architect so um again everything that I’m going to be

9:53

talking about is through that lens so don’t despair if I uh disparage your

9:58

favorite technology or whatever but uh you know again I think there’s a lot of technologies that are doing some

10:03

interesting things and I think some work in the realm of architecture and uh and others don’t

10:10

um so I’ve seen my slides are a bit large but um

10:16

I think the main difference between architectural making and just kind of making in general there’s many different

10:23

forms of making is it the idea that there is a translation process in Robin

10:28

Evans has a famous essay translations from drawing to building and in in a sense there are two kinds of

10:35

uh translations um and if you see uh you know I’m saying

10:41

that Robin Evans makes a statement drawing the building but really there’s a whole bunch of translations that happen from

10:47

floor plans to sketches to watercolors and an architect might do a sketch and hand it off to somebody else and then

10:53

they turn it into a Bim model or they turn it into a rendering and then someone actually writes a specification

10:59

and then there’s a giant translation and that giant translation happens when someone collects all these things

11:05

together turns them into contract documents and then hands it over to a

11:10

contractor and then that gets translated into uh into a building it’s not entirely unique to architecture there’s

11:16

a other we heard I heard the the uh the fashion one of the first speakers I

11:22

apologize for not remembering the name but that you know the fashion designer comes up with something and it

11:27

disappears and comes back fully fully formed as a dress um but in general makers are dealing

11:34

with the medium and the final outcome uh quite immediate to them and Architects

11:39

on the other hand are doing a bunch of virtual activities that then get translated into a into a large uh into a

11:46

building now the digital fabrication uh I think

11:52

brings two um can kind of exacerbate that that

11:58

notion of translation in a couple different way more than two but I’m going to talk specifically about two and

12:04

one is um I should also say that I’m also an architect but I’m doing my PhD and I do

12:11

some teaching as well at Carleton and uh so a lot of this is is directed maybe in

12:17

some of the observations I see of the way students are approaching uh some of these Technologies so one of them being that there’s this idea

12:24

that you can just have this thing in the computer and print it out and it’s just

12:29

this one-to-one thing push the button it’s very easy and I think that that is a bit of an illusion uh you know

12:37

propagated a lot by 3D printing and again if you are not taking into consideration

12:44

that that thing that you just 3D printed isn’t the building itself the thing that you just 3D printed then leads to a

12:49

building and so there’s a pro it’s kind of problematic thinking about this kind of one-to-one it’s so easy push a button

12:55

and I’m afraid that a lot of students are going to leave uh the schools you know with this idea that building is

13:01

actually quite easy uh the other one and uh it’s kind of uh I’m going to kind of facetiously blame

13:08

uh Plato uh for this one uh but it’s this idea that um

13:13

and so I see these kind of two these two conditions where so on the one hand it’s easy here’s my idea here’s a physical

13:19

reality which is usually generally garbage plastic and uh on the other hand there’s this idea that

13:27

um anything no matter what you have the idea and any time that it gets brought into the real world there’s some kind of

13:32

degradation or the word that I’ve been hearing lately is that it gets sullied I heard um a musician talking on the CBC

13:40

which I found really strange considering the difference between architecture and music but he was saying you always start

13:45

with an idea and then when you turn it into a song that idea gets sullied and I just find that a strange kind of way to

13:51

think about things and I think a lot of people actually think think that way um and I guess I’m challenging and and I

13:58

think it’s the wrong way to think about architecture because if that translation process isn’t working then maybe that

14:04

you need to have a different approach I think this is a translation that a lot

14:10

of people can appreciate um and this is a common I guess internet

14:15

meme of the of uh kind of failed Pinterest someone sees some great thing on Pinterest and they try to do it and

14:21

it doesn’t work um so this is one kind of failed translation um and I think something that’s kind of

14:28

I think bubbling under the surface today is this idea of where does skill fit in all this if you’re a digital fabricator

14:34

or a digital um digital maker and I just want to back up a couple slides like this is just on

14:40

the on your left is something I sculpted by hand inside the computer and then that’s a 3D print on the right

14:48

um so but obviously if we actually look at this image seriously you can see that

14:53

this person actually had no clue what they were doing uh trying to ice these cupcakes while they’re still in the Hot

14:59

Tin um and so I think one kind of translation and one time one kind of

15:06

degradation of that of an idea to reality is just a lot of people just don’t have the skill or the knowledge to

15:11

do it and that’s not to say that they can never have it but that it actually takes practice and it takes time to

15:17

develop skills and knowledge and to make things but there’s other ways that things can be translated

15:22

I mean and not be a success uh this as well so um

15:27

this is a project on the west block the point of this was to engage with stonemason so on the left is a real

15:33

Stone capital on the right is a 3D print at a one-to-one scale so you might be

15:38

able to detect some seams because we had to print it in a couple different pieces but I’ll uh

15:46

essentially from a metric standpoint it is a perfect replica but on the other hand it was completely rejected by the

15:53

stonemasons because of that the materiality of it it was so alien to them it was so different from Stone and

16:00

other materials that they use plaster and clay that they just rejected it out hand so again this is kind of a failure

16:05

of a translation even though it looks pretty much identical this is a one that’s maybe more

16:10

successful this is the tympanum that’s the interior part of the arch on the west block and this was a CNC cut out of

16:18

MDF and this is something although they were still kind of reluctant they could actually the material was more analogous

16:24

and they kind of they could see that the opportunities that this is maybe something that we could work with

16:32

another aspect that concerns me about fabricate digital fabrication and architecture is this idea of control

16:38

that it’s actually quite messy uh construction and there’s actually a lot of people involved so there’s a

16:44

diversity of character or diversity of actors and a diversity of materials and I think that a lot of Architects are

16:50

thinking of digital Fabrication in a way that says great I can get rid of all these guys in the orange vest and just

16:56

print something out or CNC cut something without their input at all which again I think is incredibly naive way to think

17:03

about it so now that’s kind of the you know some of my I guess position I’m going to just

17:10

kind of run through really quickly three projects um uh they’re fairly different and it’s not

17:16

to say that this is the right way to do things but these are just three projects that I had a hand in and um some of the

17:22

experience I guess that that I got from that so this just very quickly is on the East block this is working with Public

17:28

Works Government Services Canada Heritage conservation directorate and parliamentary precip branch and this is

17:35

a project through the Carlton immersive media studio and the main person that we worked with was someone called the

17:40

Dominion sculptor he’s a very very talented um Stone uh stone sculptor wood sculptor

17:46

bronze castings everything so this is and this is just kind of well

17:51

it’s fast here uh it’s just going to kind of uh elucidate I think some of the workflows going back from digital to

17:57

analog digital analog so this is the sculptor sorry this is the sculpture it’s a relief sculpture it’s very badly

18:03

deteriorated we digitize that I’m also going to kind of use generic technical

18:08

terms and maybe those we can talk about that after very kind of specific but we digitize it

18:14

we created replica with a CNC machine and then if you notice the detail

18:19

between this the owl here and this owl and that’s because after we cut a replica of it on the CNC machine

18:25

we give it to the sculptor he applies a layer of clay by hand uh to to bring out

18:31

the details again um and I think one interesting thing about the translation this is clay and

18:37

you can see he used a specific tool to apply that clay but that is not necessarily the effect that he wants to

18:42

have in stone so there’s kind of another translation process that happens and along the way there’s the digital

18:48

which can cause strange artifacts again depending on whether you’re whether you know what you’re doing or not and

18:54

whether these things are good or how if there’s opportunities for weird things to happen might be good or bad or

18:59

whatever but at this time we were kind of new to this digitize it again after the sculpture

19:05

applies as clay so now we have a virtually kind of restored version and then we approached a robotic fabricator

19:12

this is a test again out of foam and this is another big thing there’s a big difference between Milling with foam and

19:18

this is what I’m talking about how easy it is to print something you just hit print and it appears or CNC mill

19:23

foam it is actually quite easy when it comes to Stone it’s actually quite difficult and he actually misled us into

19:30

believing that he had worked with stone and so there’s this whole process of I’m trying to figure this out and it

19:35

took way way longer than it would have if it had happened by hand but this is the final result from the

19:42

robot then it goes back to the sculptor and you can see on the left that’s his work by hand so he’s adding a whole

19:47

another layer on top of that and this is still kind of divided in half on the left is his work and I always say when I

19:53

show this image it doesn’t do it justice is actually uh what hit what his work brings to this is actually tremendous

20:00

um tremendous to the final part and I just wanted to put this encounter two in

20:05

this project that I found online um this is someone who set up a robot to do sculpting and I just kind of abhor

20:14

this idea this is the designer has developed the robot so it only needs to rely on people from menial tasks so I

20:19

think that we like to take the kind of opposite position that the robot is there to augment or to not to supplant

20:26

but to augment the skills of the of the craftsperson as opposed to just making a person uh come back with clay

20:34

this is a this is a very different project it’s a much more commercial it’s a condominium Lobby I worked on this

20:40

with Jason Grant Henley of Charles Fort basically this was the the design image

20:45

that they came up with I actually did the rendering but I had no no input in the design so I just kind of distance

20:51

myself a little bit from the design But ultimately they it’s kind of the age-old story they come up with this interesting

20:56

image and then they sell their condos and then it’s like okay this thing needs to get built they couldn’t find anybody to do

21:03

it and I don’t think it’s necessarily for the sake of skill but more kind of

21:09

liability and and and anyways so they asked me to help them this is a scan of

21:14

the space so again digitizing that space this is the lobby before any of the finishes so this is raw concrete uh so

21:21

we came up with a structure out of plywood also um so for a hand applied plaster finish

21:28

and they were very concerned with how the walls that they wanted actually curved walls so we did top and bottom

21:34

plates out of plywood for the uh for someone to build studs over top so again

21:40

that this very kind of precise curve um and then you know you can test this

21:45

out as a model I actually did this after the fact but um you can you can do that instead in

21:51

reality we went straight to the plywood it’s fire rated plywood this was erected all the pieces had numbers and because I

21:59

had scanned the mechanical system the plumbing and everything everything kind of fit to well fit well together and came together all at once and no

22:05

problems and so most of that stuff is actually going to be hidden and I cut in a way I

22:10

kind of like that because the digital fabrication doesn’t have to be on the Forefront it can be

22:16

something that guides people in their work it doesn’t have to be the thing out there on its own but there was one

22:22

element that we used a water jet cutter to do a stainless steel grill and I just bring this up because again working with

22:29

I don’t I’ve never used a water jet and uh if you see there’s some scoring that is not it’s not just Cutters but there’s

22:35

some scoring and at first the water jet operator said no we can’t score we can only cut then he came back and actually

22:40

doing some research and said actually I can control the acceleration and deceleration of the CNC and we can actually do scoring so without him uh

22:48

again I think and uh I think it’s important to be kind of taking a collaborative position this is the final

22:54

product the person actually kind of doing final touch-ups with the hand applied finish this is the last project very different

23:00

again um I had the pleasure of going to arhus school of architecture in Denmark with

23:07

Professor Stephen FYE and another PhD candidate Ken Percy and we put on a workshop they’re using some of the

23:14

technologies that I just showed you and the idea was that there was this alley that we became familiar with in a former

23:21

Chocolate Factory complex and we just asked the students they were second year architecture students so they had never

23:28

some of them had done kind of 3D printing but they’d never done any photogrammetry or laser scanning and we

23:33

asked them to do kind of a hyper-contextualized installation for some place in this

23:39

alley that they wanted to they found interesting and uh um we wanted to push we didn’t

23:46

want just kind of 3D printing or CNC cutting or whatever we wanted it to be part of a bigger process or a more

23:53

interesting workflow so we’re using 3D printing to make cast this is just a plaster cast and sometimes they work

23:58

sometimes they didn’t but I’m going to show three you know fairly successful projects here

24:04

this one they identified this kind of weird collection of wires I don’t have a photograph of but a weird collection of

24:09

wires in this alley and conduits they they digitize that much like the the owl

24:15

project but again we’re encouraging not to be afraid to kind of get uh down and

24:20

dirty with their hands so they’re sanding this is after the CNC cut using sandpaper this is the final result the

24:26

idea was they’re going to cast something then they decided that they would rather make a latex mold so in putting latex

24:32

and then this is the final kind of weird alien uh project and again this is not per say an architectural project but if

24:40

they hadn’t have done um if they hadn’t done MDF and I don’t

24:45

know if you can see it but there’s a lot of this kind of residual sawdust that’s in the uh that’s in that latex that kind

24:51

of added like a strange patina and it actually looked like it should belong in this alley in a weird way another

24:57

project was very different there was on one side of the alley there’s a brick missing and that’s this kind of wood

25:03

brick that you see so they digitize that missing piece of wood CNC cut that and then on the other side

25:09

of the alley there’s brick missing on one side this side the mortar had been worn away so they actually digitized that area very precisely manufactured

25:17

these pieces that could fit into there and then the the point was to kind of build a uh I guess a bridge that

25:25

connected the two and so this is the little connecting piece that they sculpted in the computer

25:31

and then they put together and um and there was other kind of we had a little

25:38

kind of I guess vernessage in that alley and there was lots of other projects so in closing you know some of the

25:44

questions that were asked of us were what happens when you know Computing bumps up against the real world

25:50

um and I think that you know I think it’s very important especially for students uh to understand that it should

25:55

happen actually quite often uh that there shouldn’t be any fear between going from the digital to the to the

26:01

physical and back and uh and and I think there’s lots of opportunities that can arise from that and lastly about this

26:07

there’s a question about Aesthetics whether that this will lead inevitably to a new aesthetic is that important or whatnot but I think that um

26:15

ultimately my interest in digital fabrication lies in the fact that I think that Architects have gotten to the

26:21

point where they it is so difficult to the point where there’s almost a complete inability to affect

26:27

architecture at a very kind of small scale and I don’t mean small-scale buildings I mean like details and

26:33

textures and things like that and so I think that it’s very important um right not that it’s very important

26:38

but I think that these Technologies I think can point us into it in a direction that can lead Architects to

26:45

being able to affect architecture at a much kind of finer grain detail and

26:50

bring you know I think skill back back into it thank you

26:59

[Applause] hi everyone

27:06

I’m Sarah Brin I am a writer and curator

27:11

um I you know I put together these slides uh mostly as as background so

27:18

don’t try too hard to make connections from to the words that I’m saying and the pictures you’re seeing but to give

27:24

you a little bit of background about my prior work is I’ve done a lot of work with artist made video games which you

27:29

can see some of these here but the work that I’ve done that’s probably the most relevant to what we’re talking about

27:35

today is I work for two years as the public programs manager or in-house curator at the Autodesk peer 9 Workshop

27:43

um and it’s been fun over the course of the day I think maybe at least half of the projects that have been spoken about

27:49

today have come through the Pier 9 space at one point or another um which is which is pretty neat um so

27:55

so I do a lot of work with with art and technology and I’m very very interested in

28:01

um work that happens in the corner so that might mean working outside of traditional Arts institutions or working

28:09

with folks who aren’t necessarily catered to or Target demographics for

28:14

Fields like Tech or even traditional Arts institutions

28:19

I spoke earlier in the week at Carlton and I’m going to try to not be too

28:25

redundant to what I said over there but basically I shared anxiety I have about

28:33

how I often find that especially in the Realms of digital fabrication but also art made with technology in general is

28:39

that form tends to dwarf personal experience and context and that that

28:45

makes me nervous so uh uh this is this is a image of our water jet cutter so

28:52

we’re connected we have things in common and um at the water jet over at Pier 9 and

28:58

uh so so I want to talk about this you also spoke about Plato which I thought was really relevant too folks have human

29:05

beings have always had utopian Tendencies and I think when we think about technology it’s really hard to not

29:12

be utopian um when we think about how technology can improve our life because it has it

29:17

has most certainly um you know vaccines Refrigeration all that stuff but as long as there’s

29:23

technological innovation for growth and creativity there will continue to be technological advances and tools for

29:29

Destruction and War um so on that positive note I want to I want to dig into the prompt that um Ryan

29:37

Ryan shared with us for this presentation so it starts with uh the world inside the

29:44

computer is one built on rules that we have written the world outside is more complicated and largely out of our

29:50

control so okay so I would say that part of that is is for sure true

29:55

um you know we we do build the world inside the computer and subsequently that means the world inside the

30:01

computers has bias just like we do um we see that bias articulated in

30:06

systems here’s just a this is more work being done if you’re nine um yeah that’s a good one and so uh some of

30:14

these examples of biases include uh how if you look at this was recently

30:20

corrected if you look at Google image searches for black folks you see them tagged as gorillas or if you look at um

30:28

when the Microsoft Connect was first launched it had problems doing facial recognition detection for for folks who

30:35

were not white Caucasian um so so that’s those are just some of the examples in which uh human biases

30:40

get articulated into digital spaces um and so

30:47

I also want to talk about the the world that is purportedly out of our control

30:52

so something really exciting about makers is that you know there’s this kind of entrepreneurial individual

30:59

Spirit of Discovery and invention that we see in uh in in maker culture but

31:06

also um it’s extremely extremely dependent and rooted in community so all you folks

31:13

who are in here today I I have reason to believe that you are in one way attached

31:18

to a specific Community whether it is a university or a maker space or

31:25

um an Arts institution so we are all cultural producers as Remco well I want

31:32

to talk about the idea of cultural produce production as Remco mentioned earlier in the day

31:38

um so okay um I want to talk about our role in cultural production especially

31:44

specifically as it pertains to uh digital culture and making so and one

31:51

thing that I want to talk about is uh this idea of of safe spaces and so this

31:56

might be a term some of you have heard before and this might be a new term for some of you basically when you’re

32:02

working within a community some communities have what are called safe space policies and that’s a shared

32:09

set of values and guidelines for that Community to agree upon

32:14

um and of course when you have a community of smart adults as I think of most of you or not all of you are

32:22

um I should hope so I think so I’m getting Good Vibes um it’s why why would you expect someone to

32:29

to do something wrong why would you expect someone to to you know come to your your work or your community and and

32:35

and do something hurtful uh that’s because I think most most people don’t most people don’t do bad things on

32:41

purpose I genuinely believe that however uh if you don’t mutually agree in your

32:47

space What types of behaviors are agreeable or or not okay when something

32:53

that’s not so great happens uh when some something that makes someone feel uncomfortable or bad happens uh that

32:59

places the burden of responsibility onto the person who’s been hurt and if you want to cultivate a diverse

33:07

space which is I would argue an Innovative space you need to make that

33:12

space as welcoming as possible for folks from different backgrounds and cultural experiences

33:18

um so okay so so I mentioned you know diverse space is an Innovative space why why do I think that

33:24

um and that’s because um the philosopher Ludwig wittenshine

33:30

spoke a lot about how language frames organize thought and so I think that’s

33:35

that’s pretty true and I think language frames our relationship to disciplines so for example uh we know what a horse

33:44

is and we know what iranoceros is and subsequently because we have these two bodies of knowledge about what these two individual things are uh we can imagine

33:50

what a unicorn will be and so subsequently I believe if we want innovation in our Fields whether it’s

33:56

Innovation for a product or social Innovation or technological innovation we need to combine fields and we need to

34:04

combine sphere experiences um and when we draw experience from uh

34:10

only a specific group of folks I think we’re really eliminating uh eliminating

34:16

a a lot of potential so okay so that’s that’s me on diversity in these spaces

34:22

oh yeah this is a great project this is this is Aiden Robinson and he created this hand in collaboration with an

34:29

artist named Kobe Unger and actually this is really relevant to uh the next question in the prompt which is what

34:34

kinds of errors and opportunities arise when these two worlds meet the digital and the physical so one of

34:41

these uh opportunities is collaboration so this is not an example of project enable but what project enable is it’s a

34:48

really really cool group that designs and 3D prints uh prosthetic hands for

34:55

kids who don’t have them um and 3D printing and Prosthetics is actually one of the most exciting part

35:01

of parts of 3D printing for me because I you know there’s a lot of a lot of those Yoda heads out there in the world but if

35:07

you you know give a kid a hand that’s arguably pretty good and so uh something that’s also really

35:14

cool about 3D printing Prosthetics is that kids grow all the time traditional Prosthetics are extremely expensive

35:20

if you heat up the material on these Prosthetics you can kind of grow the prosthetic along with a kid for a little

35:26

while which is I think really really exciting um and subsequently it’ll and it also means uh collaboration so you know uh

35:34

instructables is which is a how-to website is part of Autodesk and so if you look at instructables there are

35:40

how-to instructions for do for doing all kinds of projects including this arm for Aiden um and he requested a Lego attachment so

35:46

that’s what you’re seeing there there’s also one for playing the violin and the Nintendo we

35:52

so uh so uh you also you know we see folks who are struggling with technical problems

35:57

and you have people from all over the world contributing uh feedback and helping each other which I think is is

36:03

just super super super cool um and so um the last two questions in the prom

36:09

yeah this is bananas Rahi um I think bernas’s work is is really really really

36:14

gorgeous but this is part of why I get really concerned about um form and experience

36:21

um because this is a beautiful beautiful object but um I have anxieties about it and this is

36:27

John Edmark um also really really exciting project [Music] um

36:33

yeah okay so uh so the last two questions are about Aesthetics um so what kinds of errors and

36:39

opportunities arise when oh I’m sorry is a new aesthetic always bound up in formal exploration of algorithms or is

36:44

there something else that can happen and is it important for there to be a new aesthetic or is it inevitable

36:51

um so I want to talk about a concept uh from a scholar named Ian bogost and and I know a lot of Ian’s work from games

36:58

and he comes up with this in one of his his texts he he talks about this idea of

37:03

rhetoric um and he defines rhetoric as persuasive expression and so he explains that different media

37:10

have different rhetorics so certain types of media are better at emphasizing

37:16

particular types of information and other media are less effective at communicating that types of information

37:21

so he gives the example of games and he says that games are especially productive for communicating

37:27

um what he calls procedural rhetoric which is the language of systems so if you think about it if you’ve ever played a

37:32

game winning a game means understanding and mastering and working within a system if you take for example

37:38

film or television prioritizes the the visual Marshall McLaughlin talked about

37:45

that a lot in terms of his hot and cold media discussion if you look at the JFK Nixon debate on TV what kind of made or

37:51

break broke the uh discussion was was Nixon’s flop sweat so uh so a question

37:57

that I’m really curious about when it comes to this conversation about digital and physical and and rhetoric I want to

38:04

know what is the radical rhetoric of digital fabrication what types of information

38:11

um what types of ideas is digital fabrication really really good at

38:16

communicating and what are some of its weaknesses what gets lost when we think about digital fabrication so in that

38:23

note I’d like to open it up to to Greg who can open up to discussion I can

38:29

reopen um you circled around everything we’re gonna do um and and I think a good place to start

38:36

because I I’m gonna strain a bit here to find a bit of a thread between the two presentations I mean there were several

38:41

but one that jumped out to me um James you talked a lot about like you you know you you have an anxiety about

38:47

Architects just kind of thinking they can replace those individuals in the orange jackets and kind of make the the

38:53

trades go away or have maybe a diminished role in the creation process and you thought about safe space and

39:00

diversity and inclusion um I mean Once Upon a Time if you were learning a craft whatever it was metal Smith or painting you know you’d

39:06

apprentice and you’d go learn the Master’s ways and you know put in many years and then and then make as they

39:12

make and you’d maybe be in a guild there’s been a few conversations today uh about you know if you’re if you’re

39:18

say like learning software art and art school or something like that you’ll be like on GitHub and looking at tutorials

39:23

and sharing sharing mock-ups and stuff like that and it’s a completely open type practice so what

39:29

type of kind of optimism do you guys have about kind of knowledge sharing outside outside of disciplinary silos

39:35

specifically because you know you talked about the people in the orange jackets and The Architects but they’re still different camps is there opportunities

39:41

for them to kind of merge in some sense absolutely I think that um

39:48

there are well I mean number one I think the number number one thing one of the terms

39:56

that we prefer to use at SIMS is uh rather than just talking about digital fabrication is the notion of what was on

40:02

the slide a digitally assisted fabrication and that that it’s not just

40:09

um about uh just just the machine but it’s about how this machine can work in

40:14

existing contacts or existing uh uh schools of thought or in different

40:21

traits so for this for the stone masons I do think I’m not I’m not suggesting that

40:26

um it’s not going to you know there is the potential for radical change to happen uh within this within Stone Mason

40:33

uh or stone cutting Industries um there is already kind of a uh

40:39

before the stone arrives on site there’s this entirely this huge uh industrial process that it happens beforehand

40:45

before it gets to the guy and then he kind of does his hand uh hand thing uh

40:51

on site but I do think it is going to change for instance um

40:56

the notion of what a stone Mason is you know in the same way that has changed the way people do welding and all kinds

41:03

of other things um uh and so yeah I think that

41:09

using collaborative tools um I think Bim is a is a big one that we also are doing a lot of research in but

41:16

having a platform that multiple people can communic can communicate in and not just entirely digitally and I

41:23

think that’s one of the important things is with the Masons as well they’re so kind of digitally uh illiterate that

41:30

it’s important that we’re able to go from kind of the analog world to the digital world and that as Architects you

41:36

can be working digitally and you can be working with someone that is not necessarily so digitally literate but

41:43

the kind of tools and Technologies can allow you guys to still communicate by you know digitizing and outputting and

41:49

having kind of a back and forth so and and right off the bat there are two types of optimism that I could identify

41:55

when it comes to this type of knowledge sharing and one is is rapid prototyping I think that there’s some really

42:01

exciting um work being done in that regard that I think can be very helpful to some folks

42:06

you know so I uh earlier on the week I spoke about this um naloxone delivery device and I

42:12

believe that’s no action uh it’s it’s it’s a medication that can be delivered

42:18

uh to bring people back from heroin or opiate overdoses and traditionally the

42:23

mechanism for delivering if you’ve seen Pulp Fiction yeah like if they just they

42:28

they stab her with that that um syringe that’s that’s kind of similar to what that is but also in in real life

42:35

for a very long time and probably in some places now um it’s there are like caps you need to

42:40

take off and like nibs you need to like open and close and so if you’re in a high stress moment and needing to

42:45

deliver this life-saving medication there’s like nine separate parts of this device to fit together and so this

42:51

design can still frog put together this really really beautiful simple easy to use

42:57

delivery tool for this this drug and just got a cap and you pop it right off and you just shoot it up your nose

43:02

um which I think is is is the result of many many types of and it’s 3D printed I

43:07

should mention that so it’s 3D printed and that’s how they were able to prototype the design they spent a lot of time watching medical professionals in

43:14

hospitals and and that observation uh help them make a better thing uh so and

43:20

another thing that I’m really optimistic about is that uh digital fabrication means that we can

43:27

more easily share particular types of experiences and bodies of knowledge in specific ways so I’m thinking

43:33

specifically about an artist named Moorish and aliari you may be familiar with her work

43:38

um what she does is she she created her own 3D models through lots of research

43:45

and communicating with folks all over the world of sculptures that were destroyed by ISIS

43:51

um and so not only is she kind of recreating these objects that otherwise would have been gone forever but there’s

43:57

a there’s a drive containing the models within the sculptures as well so she’s she’s kind of

44:03

um sharing this information but simultaneously the aesthetic qualities of the object are the new object are so

44:09

different from the original destroyed object um there’s there’s also simultaneously like a feeling of a real feeling of loss

44:17

um that she’s articulating in a in a very very real and meaningful way

44:22

and that’s a really great project I mean um one thing that came to mind I was researching like the lotites uh in

44:28

advance of my technological anxiety um talking I saw a funny line on Wikipedia may be written by hack Wiki a

44:34

Wikipedia editor to talk about how they weren’t anti-technology per se but just labor strategists which maybe is a

44:39

little bit of a embellishment on their position but I was wondering like when you’re engaging with stone masons like you talked about at some point in the

44:45

process they talked about we can’t work with this we can work with this like did you find them resistant to change or flexible or because I mean yeah I mean

44:52

earlier I was asking about like Mercantile and guilds and kind of established ways of working and like what are the kind of frictions you come

44:57

up against when you’re dealing with a a kind of solidified profession when

45:03

you’re bringing them new new workflows yeah definitely I mean I think again uh I think it’s important that the digital

45:08

bump into into reality because uh as a case in many many situations

45:14

there’s always or there’s Technical Solutions are often uh easy to find but

45:19

then when you’re actually working with people the solutions are not necessarily so

45:24

easy so yes we we did get a lot of uh resistance at the beginning but that being said

45:31

um as with any group The Masons are not a homogeneous group so we kind of assumed they all were kind of in the

45:38

same camp but over time and you know part of it was building trust so proving

45:44

the maybe I’ll start I’ll kind of back up a little bit we did those kind of 3D prints and some CNC stuff to kind of

45:51

present to them again they were they’d never seen anything like that and so they basically said very interesting but

45:58

we’re not that interested that being said uh there was two kind of specific Masons who have a very kind of specific

46:06

position on technology and not just technology in stone cutting but in Heritage stone

46:14

cutting but then we learned that there’s other there was other Masons who we again as we kind of all grouped them

46:20

together when in reality they all have different positions who are more open there’s a difference again the Dominion

46:27

sculptor that we worked with he he considers himself a sculptor the Masons consider themselves Stone Carvers

46:34

so he was much more open and I think that’s the tradition of sculpture where there’s a sculpture’s workshop and where

46:40

there’s multiple apprentices and he might do some maquettes and and then have somebody else do it and have

46:45

somebody else cast it but he’s ultimately responsible so he’s much more receptive that being said after we did

46:51

the owl project then the Mason some of the Masons came back to us and since

46:57

that time we’ve done now a few different projects and there’s other projects that are coming in in the future so I think

47:04

it was a part of it was about building trust there’s some that some of the Masons that will never convince that this is appropriate and others who just

47:11

say that if this is uh you know they see it as a valuable tool and it could be

47:17

useful to them and that they’ll make use of it I mean there’s all kinds of like you know we could talk about through the

47:24

lens of our uh our uh art through the lens of this or that or that but there’s also health and safety concerns they

47:31

um they have to wear respirators silica Sandstone silicosis is a kind of like asbestosis it gets lodged in their lungs

47:39

um and there’s all kinds of uh things that you could debate uh about whether this technology is is appropriate or not

47:46

but I think the main thing that we’re trying to get at is that you can use this this technology and not diminish

47:52

skills sometimes those skills are going to change no doubt it’s going to change but that you can in fact use it and it’s

48:00

not just about crushing the stonemasons never just about pushing a green button yes exactly make project go now

48:07

um and of course you didn’t necessarily like Autodesk which I know we’re Beyond and maybe I want to ask another question

48:13

about it um you know it’s kind of a Nexus of various industrial stakeholders and and traditions how did you find

48:20

um activating that technology for essentially an engineering company through ART like how what kind of

48:27

challenges did you encounter there yeah I think I think that uh uh the the

48:33

service that and and the benefit that Pier 9 provides is of

48:40

um of great importance when it comes to the field of digital fabrication including art made with technology

48:47

um and uh because if you look at traditional Arts institutions especially in the US that support isn’t really there in the

48:54

same kinds of ways Autodesk provides stipends training um all kinds of stuff uh so

49:01

um there were some moments in which I I was really pleased by how how ready they

49:07

were as a brand to just be like okay like now now we’re going to have an art exhibition and now we’re going to do

49:12

public installations and now we’re going to have calls for proposals um and that was that was great because

49:17

especially having worked in traditional Arts institutions for a really long time and just having like really tiny budgets

49:24

um and having to go through a lot of bureaucracy as they’re also conversely

49:30

there are some moments at Autodesk in which I felt like um not everyone necessarily understood

49:37

the intentions behind my projects um because I was there because I came

49:45

from a different background than everyone else and so one of the projects that I was really excited to support was something called the experimental

49:51

research lab which came directly from mine and Morrison Ali Ari’s uh concern

49:56

about the dominance of form over context or discussion or criticality

50:02

um in certain digital fabrication spaces and what that was is an interdisciplinary research group that we

50:08

supported that is really really really excellent work both fabricating objects and producing traditional research uh

50:14

surrounding software companies in the Bay Area and their interconnected histories with the military-industrial complex and that was really really

50:22

exciting but you know as I told Greg the other day uh there were there were often many moments in which folks my

50:29

colleagues would come up to me like why are they why are they in this building oh and I feel like we should ask them you should

50:35

so so you know it’s it’s really really easy to talk to talk about collaboration

50:40

in your spaces but it’s it’s something different to make it happen and I think that it takes some doing it takes some

50:46

some conversations that takes some work it takes some beer sometimes or patchakuchas or you know group sailing

50:53

uh outings but um it’s not just so so like a switch for a lot of people so so

51:00

part of doing the work part of doing this Innovation is is is not only that like perfecting the technical skill but

51:06

also refining the relationships between the different experts you have working in your space

51:11

I like that bit about not necessarily just the beer but the conversions disciplines I always find whenever

51:16

you’re at kind of a multi-disciplinary event the beginning of it everybody is speaking their language just you know and then by the end you kind of have

51:22

like a common the common tongue um so that that interests me a lot this idea of bringing people together

51:28

um this is a tough question and I don’t know how to ask it and I don’t know if either of you can answer it um but you know looking at some of the earlier

51:33

projects that were discussed I think it was Joanna that showed that sailor cellular autonoma 3D printed shoe and

51:39

like the easiest example I could think of like a digital vernacular Aesthetics would be like I don’t know how many of you are familiar with data mashing which

51:46

is like kind of like a video technique using the codecs that are in YouTube and

51:51

essentially video artists were like fooling around with this about 10 years ago and like essentially if you run it too low on video and then the scene

51:57

changes you get kind of this gobbledygook that spreads into the next scene it’s it’s a very pixelated digital

52:03

native kind of aesthetic uh you know and it was you know kind of the the um preview of software artists for a bit

52:09

and then like Kanye West released a video in 2009 9 or 11 welcome to heartbreak using it you know and that’s

52:15

an example of like a digital born artifact that has aesthetic qualities and you know you wouldn’t come to that through oil paint or stonework or you

52:23

know insert medium here so in digital fabrication maybe you speaking of work you’ve seen or know of and you kind of

52:28

thinking in the architectural space I’m trying to reconcile that that workflow with with belt form and the people in

52:34

the orange jackets um what what are kind of like what is the the what to what degree can we kind

52:40

of see or do we want to see like the grain of the digital in things that are fabricated either through 3D printing or mass customization

52:46

and again that’s a tough question so we might this might even be the moment we like include the audience uh we’ll see I

52:54

mean I think that um I’m most interested in I I’m I don’t want to rip off uh Johan your idea of

53:00

intention but uh actually um uh who’s the someone help me out here

53:06

the Australian architect that works on Sagrada Familia Mark Murray sorry Mark bury and uh

53:12

digital or and uh scripting cultures he he kind of takes a position against just

53:18

uh the kind of um generative architecture where you’re using algorithms to kind of just

53:23

generate form but that behind your scripts there should be some kind of intentionality so he’s using algorithms

53:30

and parametric software to rebuild uh or

53:35

not rebuild but to continue to build the Sagrada Familia so I would say that I kind of share that kind of idea that I’m

53:43

not so interested in the kind of generative architecture where people are running algorithms and oh look at that

53:49

that looks cool I think that it’s more I’m more interested in kind of intention and harnessing digital tools to

53:58

um to do something that uh not that not that there can’t be some kind of exploration and and Mix-Ups and

54:05

sloppiness along the way but that nonetheless you start with an intention and work with that just to drill another

54:10

one specific example like so I was reading James’s paper on the stonework restoration type stuff and there’s one kind of moment when you’re kind of

54:16

identifying a mesh artifact because you’ve done a scan and then you’ve got the relief and then you essentially like

54:21

clean it up and then you know the clay is applied but that I guess I’m asking about like at what moments does that

54:26

mesh artifact become a feature rather than a bug and yeah I I don’t have an

54:31

ant like I can’t say oh this is one or this isn’t but in this process it’s something that kind of well

54:39

it was obliterated by the handwork right like so the the sculptor removed

54:44

basically all the digital Trace we’ve had internal discussions at SIMS about so for instance also when the when we

54:51

were doing the original um CNC of the existing condition so this was at a foam it took so long to cut it

54:58

on the CNC like literally days that the CNC um lost steps so basically it didn’t

55:03

know where the tool was it thought the tools in one place just slightly so the difference between a roughing pass and

55:10

then the finishing pass it was leaving these kinds of strange lines and we again we had this discussion like well

55:16

this is this is part of the process and wouldn’t it be interesting that there’s this building built uh the owls actually

55:22

early 1900s so wouldn’t it be interesting that when it gets replaced that there is these kind of digital

55:28

traces in there in that particular instance it didn’t it didn’t actually manifest itself but I think that these

55:35

things um I’m not going to say good bad whatever but they’re they’re I think that they should be kind of analyzed

55:41

further I guess yeah yeah uh I there are a couple material qualities that I have

55:47

Observer sensory qualities at least that I’ve observed that are kind of um consistent artifacts within certain

55:53

modes of digital fabrication uh what is styration right depending on the type of uh 3D printing or additive manufacturing

56:00

process you’re using you you might be likely to see kind of layers emerge

56:06

um also similarly just this kind of active of or the the idea of slices of thinking of a 3D object as like a just a

56:13

a stack of slices of things on top of each other um also burn marks right if you’ve taken

56:19

something off the laser cutter and you’ve got the heat up too high also to see that kind of crispy Edge um also also this idea of of particular

56:27

smells like a resin smell or a laser cutter smell um and also dust like MDF dust or or

56:34

dust from any dust collection system um and you know it’s very easy for me to

56:40

equate a lot of these um artifacts in some ways with with failure

56:46

right so like there is certain a certain aesthetic of um failed 3D prints which

56:51

I’ve seen a lot of which uh can be kind of cool but also a very expensive and and in some ways

56:59

like extremely tragic um because you know like you know especially if you’re using something ABS

57:05

there’s a significant ecological impact but also um a lot of these printers use proprietary resin that’s just extremely

57:12

costly and not recyclable um so that’s that’s the the aesthetic of

57:17

the failed print is something I think about a lot too um and as well as this is almost almost

57:23

like a badge of Pride but like the gash and the materials bad like one of my favorite artists that I used to work

57:29

with at Autodesk we had a big big DMS Mill and like one time I guess he just

57:35

goofed up his tool path or something and instead of like moving the the Hat into his his material he just like gouged it

57:42

right into the the bed and everyone in the workshop was like yeah you should autograph that you should sign that uh

57:47

he was so worried that he would get trouble but everyone just gave him high fives and I you know I guess in certain spaces uh we really really

57:54

reward this idea of pushing things to their Edge um trying our best and being as

58:00

experimental as possible although I do find this is exclusively limited to um formal experimentation and not

58:07

necessarily social experimentation in spaces but some some risks are easier to

58:13

take in certain circumstances because also there’s this um just this

58:20

idea of skill and um and the tool tools um kind of leaving their mark

58:26

but I also find it interesting working on the parliament buildings that um we had this idea that everybody in

58:32

the past all these stone masons were these highly skilled Craftsmen and in reality in Ottawa in the time that these

58:39

were built there was not a strong uh Stone uh carving tradition and there was

58:44

actually tons of horrible work on the parliament buildings um now there are beautiful buildings uh

58:50

and there is a lot of great work but just the way the construction of some of the build like how the stone is actually

58:58

um put together in the wall the the stone should actually be like uh say a foot deep and then they find they remove

59:04

the stone and the stone is a foot deep on one end but it actually tapers to like an inch or so on the other end and

59:09

this is just a big cavity that water is getting into and and um and what was the other so there’s

59:15

another example I was going to think of but um but yeah I just also think that in this idea of arts and crafts and

59:21

skill that to always kind of say that you know the handcraft was always better

59:27

and that the digital is different and I again I don’t think it’s either or I think it’s they both exist together so

59:33

and but back then I mean I’ve got some more questions but maybe we’ll see if anybody

59:38

in the audience sure I’m going to jump in because I get to grab my microphone um and I had two things just before we

59:44

open it up to the question uh one being um I’d like to propose a show that’s like when algorithms go bad but it would

59:50

be sort of architecture and art I think there would be a really exciting terrifying uh kind of predictive

59:56

policing and I affected that uh the other was just to to

1:00:02

um uh Sarah in terms of what you were going through the the sort of provocation for the panel and the text

1:00:08

and not and uh I thought it’s really great to pick up on the idea I think um the way it’s written it it kind of

1:00:14

sounded as if it was really about just formalism in some ways it was about a formal idea of what happens to materials

1:00:20

and projects and objects As you move them back and forth in space but I think picking up on the idea that

1:00:26

that in that uh is is this sort of social political economic context of

1:00:32

what it means so that there’s you know I wouldn’t uh assert anything quite so simple as there’s two cultures between

1:00:37

an analog and digital but but those are considerations the culture of the workshop the culture of uh of the

1:00:43

environment that it’s made in um but also the the sort of those biases built into the technology itself and and

1:00:49

we think of it well everything is this collection of technologies that you’re always working with these layers and

1:00:55

layers that it’s that that some of those things are are invisible and what can make them visible is actually this

1:01:00

process of moving things between the physical and the digital so that was

1:01:05

just a comment I thought I was fair because you you know were picking apart what I said so um do we have any uh questions from the

1:01:13

floor or questions you want to articulate

1:01:20

nope I’ve got another one um I mean and this is this is this is something that was kind of touched on

1:01:25

earlier um um Tom when you’re talking about setting up your lab and that student that helped

1:01:31

um essentially this idea that oh well maybe it should be a little more open and people not quite can see under the hood of the machines but see how we use

1:01:37

them um uh just thinking like at ours Electronica this year there’s a piece a

1:01:43

little problematic by this artist Crayola using I mean there’s lots we could talk about that but specifically using robot arms to Mill like

1:01:50

Michelangelo’s stature statues out of foam um and there’s performative you know what I mean it’s not like the statues

1:01:55

were displayed but the the fabrication of them was displayed and maybe that was gimmicky or maybe that was Savvy I’m not

1:02:00

sure um but what what opportunities are there to kind of foreground this process I mean in in architecture I guess in a lot

1:02:06

of design it might be just something that happens in a shop or happens on site that is never seen again but in curating like I know I know you can you

1:02:12

can use them in a performative sense what are the opportunities there do you guys have any thoughts yeah that was actually one of the best things about

1:02:17

working at Pier 9 I you know I had worked in traditional Arts institutions for a while before heading over there

1:02:23

and um you know especially when I was in grad school and curating school there was a

1:02:28

lot of talk about you know what does it mean to remove the object from the context in which it was produced you know this idea of the artist studio and

1:02:34

so and and the site specificity so really like what the way an artwork looks and fits within context within an

1:02:41

artist Studios really really different than putting it in a y cube right or

1:02:46

alongside artworks made by other folks um so context is something that I I

1:02:52

think about a lot and I think about okay well what can we communicate um to the public to the viewers about

1:02:58

you know where stuff comes from and so that was something really cool but we did what we did in Autodesk is that at

1:03:05

the end of each artist and residence cohort there’s an exhibition and so what we did is we didn’t run out of gallery

1:03:11

we installed all the artwork that was produced on or in or near the machines

1:03:16

that produce the work so the 3D printed objects were on or inside the 3D printers we put boards on top of our

1:03:22

water jet and put something you know industrial cut felt sure that had been made on that machine on there

1:03:28

and it was it was really cool and really successful because folks instead of just being like oh here’s like a shiny

1:03:34

plastic thing you could see like oh this is a thing that made it and this is like the gestures it had to do in order to

1:03:40

like apply the material to the object um and and especially as a curator you get

1:03:46

to have more conversations about those things as well um and that was super meaningful of

1:03:52

course it was extremely laborious I worked with a team of over 20 people to

1:03:57

Baby proof our Workshop which meant deblating every single machine and de-energizing most of the workshop and

1:04:04

and putting Plexi over like lots of our drawers or shop sharp things in them um

1:04:09

but it was it was totally worth it because I think that people walked in without understandings of how things got

1:04:16

made and left with a little bit more and um I think I think that was our

1:04:22

objective I get maybe I’ll um my latest

1:04:28

architecture background will show through but I guess I’m not that interested um

1:04:35

I’m mostly interested in working with highly skilled people and making uh really interesting things

1:04:40

um uh that being said uh uh yeah I I don’t think that I I am I

1:04:47

want to be secretive but I just I’m more interested in collaborating with you know highly talented people and whether

1:04:53

other people are interested or not you know I can make myself available at events like this and talk about it so

1:04:59

there we go do we have any questions in the audience so yeah there we go we got a hand

1:05:11

you you comment when you were showing us a slide of a wearable artwork that we also

1:05:16

saw this morning um where I believe it reacted to people looking and so you talked about being a beautiful piece but

1:05:21

then in the same sense we’re talking about your anxiety about it just wondering if you because I think I read about that piece earlier and I had some

1:05:27

thoughts but I’d like if you could do expand a little bit Yeah your complex reaction to it most definitely um well if you know it’s called caress of the

1:05:33

gays and I think from a theoretical perspective and critical theory the the gays is kind of a loaded term and so

1:05:40

um it was interesting for me for a piece to kind of like own that usage of the word gaze and have it be a very

1:05:45

deliberately sexualized piece you know he’s like you know there’s there’s lots of Exposed Skin it’s it’s a it’s

1:05:52

um it’s about eye tracking right so you have in the image or other in the

1:05:57

promotional video there’s there’s a video of um you know a figure just like staring

1:06:02

at this woman and the Garment response um so it’s hard for me to get amped

1:06:08

about staring at Women’s chests um although uh I you know I I completely

1:06:14

understand and I have observed the immense technical scale involved in the production of that object it’s all you

1:06:21

know it’s also it is of some critical weight to me to note that that piece was made on the

1:06:27

object printer that object you know that that resin is proprietary resin it is not recyclable uh that is extremely

1:06:34

expensive um you know like like so many artworks

1:06:39

um it had to be prototyped multiple times so um as as someone coming from my

1:06:46

particular set of biases like I have immense respect for it as as a as an

1:06:51

object as a design object but as a as a scholar and a Critic I I have criticism

1:06:58

um so yeah and the attention of the artist was in European was it to highlight the issue

1:07:04

that he gave or was it playing into them so something something really interesting about the Artisan residence program at Autodesk is that uh it

1:07:11

welcomes folks who don’t necessarily identify as capital A artists so there are designers Architects

1:07:17

um folks working with food and so um Banas I believe comes from partially

1:07:23

an architecture background um so I would let her it’s really a shame that

1:07:30

she’s not here to to dialogue with me um but um

1:07:36

one thing that I will say is is that in commercial spaces there’s not a lot of room for for critical dialogue and

1:07:43

that’s part of why we started that experimental research lab program so perhaps I’ll give my two cents worth

1:07:50

so I know banaz and anuka I’ve visited the Space it’s amazing uh so I mean one

1:07:56

thing I can say about wearables if we are to talk about culture is that it’s like the one technological space where

1:08:03

basically women kick ass you know so when you are at a meeting with fashion

1:08:08

Tech it’s like there’ll be one guy to 12 women now I think there’s a number of like we could pull that apart in terms

1:08:15

of why that is is it because other spaces are less accommodating is it because there’s a kind of a more

1:08:22

intuitive interest in the body um I don’t know like I don’t have that answer I think that’s a whole book but I

1:08:27

do know Bernard she’s doing a PhD she’s from a media arts she’s really smart and actually she’s sort of building on a

1:08:33

piece that Ying GAO had done which also was using tracking the Gaze and kinetic movements

1:08:39

um I can’t speak for her but I know that she’s certainly doing it in a very aware she’s like you know American Iranian

1:08:47

feminist hardcore and so she’s not certainly not doing this naively and

1:08:53

she’s probably questioning but again I can’t speak for her and it it makes me

1:08:58

deeply yearn for more formalized spaces to have these types of discussion

1:09:04

because I’d like you know the way the internet works it’s so easy to just be like here’s this cool video it hears this article and we’re going to talk

1:09:10

about like the things that are immediately apparent about the object and not necessarily like make space for

1:09:17

the artist to talk about these were my intentions as opposed to this is what the thing does which is which is tragic

1:09:23

frankly I mean anybody in the room have a beer with me later and I’ll talk about that

1:09:28

at length that’s a that’s a that’s a tragedy that like um blogification of design Praxis into like you know um PR

1:09:35

reproduction essentially press release republication with with the photos of a project and that’s what gets circulated

1:09:41

and most of the design press with with some exceptions it’s really really unfortunate um I actually I got a good good thread

1:09:47

to follow up on from earlier for feature panelists pet peeves in and around fabrication so we’ll wrap

1:09:53

up with the pet peeves and then we’ll take a small break and on a sour note

1:09:59

other event performing systems no uh uh well I think it’s actually not

1:10:05

um not unlike your last comment but um well number one is

1:10:11

um well I

1:10:16

trying to put my thoughts together here but I mean again it comes back to part of this is my PhD right so I’m so into

1:10:23

my PhD that that’s all I can see but that um this idea of translation and

1:10:29

architecture um I hate um when the kind of artifacts of design

1:10:34

so you know whether it’s sketches or whatever or now with the 3D prints is an

1:10:40

Architects kind of holding up those things as as art and there and this notion of Architects holding exhibits on

1:10:48

these artifacts when I guess I have the position that these artifacts are something that you know um I don’t think

1:10:54

they’re art in and of themselves but I think they’re part of a process that leads to a building and so it’s the

1:10:59

building that should be the focus and um and so yeah so I think that holding up kind of especially with the digital

1:11:05

fabrication holding up these kind of small pieces as art as opposed to things

1:11:10

that that are process work that lead to a building I think that’s kind of a kind of artification I artifying of of

1:11:19

architectural making I guess sure but I mean I mean lots of lots of Studios incubate and kind of that space

1:11:24

for 15 or 20 years of just making those artifacts and it’s it’s about meditating on the process and then eventually you

1:11:30

know they’re suddenly dealing with a lot of commissions so it’s different different speeds of practice almost but I get your point and I think there can

1:11:35

definitely be a really awkward place in between art and architecture you know because sometimes it’s just pick a side please anyways yeah um I touched on this

1:11:44

earlier but one of my personal puppies which is certainly not like pet peeves are not facts they are not

1:11:49

like Universal truths this is comes from my own personal bias and subjectivity which

1:11:54

um well let’s all remember every institution is is imbued with subjectivity regardless of it is uh

1:12:01

forthcoming about that or not um and and that is an emphasis on on

1:12:08

form uh exclusively and and and separating form from from Context

1:12:15

um and and personal experience uh there there’s a phenomenon I see a lot in in

1:12:20

our technology that I sometimes refer to as the the mechanism or the apparatus dwarfing content and it’s kind of like

1:12:27

the science museum effect where you like you press a button and a volcano explodes and it’s just like yes that’s awesome that’s so cool but then you

1:12:33

don’t necessarily stick around to have the conversation about like why did the volcano explode like what just happened here um and and you know as I was

1:12:39

talking with someone about this earlier it’s totally cool and important to

1:12:45

um to have those moments of just like in inspiration and excitement and enthusiasm you know I I love James

1:12:51

Terrell’s work and if I’m you know in in one of his his installations I’m not like what is this about

1:12:56

um but instead I can and allow myself to have an experience um however uh especially considering the

1:13:03

fact that I am very close to artwork made with technology and I’m very invested in furthering and developing

1:13:10

the art historical critical discourse surrounding um art made with technology I’m I’m

1:13:17

really invested in having those conversations about like where do the materials come from who is

1:13:24

this person why are they making this object how is it received critically or or by members of of just the General

1:13:30

Public because if we don’t have these conversations

1:13:36

um who knows what the archive is going to look like uh who knows who knows what the the future of art history is going

1:13:41

to be like who knows what the future of value of these works it’s gonna be like how are these people gonna get paid will their work accrue value over time gosh I

1:13:48

don’t know but I’m really invested in in creating Frameworks for talking about these things and um

1:13:55

and I don’t think they are to be taken lightly um and another thing that I have a kind

1:14:00

of a pet peeve about is this idea of um being very particular about uh

1:14:05

divisions of of a field um and I think it’s really easy to be like no I’m I’m not I’m not an artist

1:14:14

um I I or oh no no I’m sorry I think people should be able to identify as whatever they want but do people be like

1:14:19

oh no that’s not art that’s design like you know like and I see that happen all the time and I think it’s it’s when we

1:14:26

make divisions between High culture or low culture or everyday objects or specific objects those are political

1:14:33

decisions and uh I think that sometimes we feel the need to make these

1:14:39

distinctions um when it’s not completely necessary to uh and uh but that’s you know that’s

1:14:45

just my boysian Klaus Alden bergy and hippie dippy Lefty Californian

1:14:50

perspective there we go well anyways because conversations can be picked up later

1:14:56

um so thanks to our panelists and thank you thank you

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