Week 6

Reading
Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop, from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication,
Neil Gershenfeld. A standard text book for my area, some great projects from Fab Labs around the world and how people have embraced making using the skill base of others.

Universal desktop manufacture, T.Vilbrant, E.Malone, H.Lipson, A.Pasko, 2008. Interesting extension to reading around the Fab Lab’s and what documented objects have started coming out of them.

Richard Sennett, the Craftsman, 2009. An interesting read looking at more of the philosophy behind making and crafting. There are some interesting references that cross over from the history of architecture and its components, definitions of CAD, motivations of crafting, replicants and robots, the notion of hand made and many definitions of what it means to make.

Doing
I have been planning a design workshop for the Artefact Café, a project that I am a member of at Brunel. It is part of the horizon group and is interested in fabrication by users and how they engage in this process. Also prototype of Design Probe turned up from the printers, simple clean and clear, a few tweaks then they will be sent out with SD cards or digital cameras to varied selected users to start to define the meaning of ‘making’ from first hand research.

Talking
A good discussion with interaction research studio Goldsmiths, a very fresh point of view supporting the direction of focusing on people and letting them inform the process and direction. They are the for runners in developing design probes for research. I am now looking at various making, non-making and practical groups… several groups of interest are wine makers, bee keepers, members of the Women’s Institute and thinking very openly about people that make.