Overview
To view term one in retrospective helps to reflect on the possibilities and challenges offered, the personal goals set and the professional growth achieved. It becomes clear that, through offering a broad range of inspirations, this first term opened my eyes metaphorically to not only one but three new categories of applied design, all of which are interconnected. Besides visual design or user experience design, both which I practiced in the past, I now had the chance to discover what it means to use design to build machines and products, to use design to build speculative prototypes, which often share many characteristics with art, and how ethical design and open programming are closely related and dependent on each other. Combined with the early intro to fabrication, which will be extended in the coming term two, an understanding begins to form what 'from bits to atoms and from atoms to bits' could truly mean. This, of course, is not purely limited to inorganic matter, such as 3D printed PLA, but it explicitly extends to organic matter as well. This is where an incredible potential lies in my eyes: Using technology to help mend our broken relationship with nature.
Collaboration and its Context
Reflecting on the collaboration within the first term and especially in the context of the final term one intervention, the potential of working together among a shared set of ideas and ideals is undeniable. The group projects during the regular seminars where very fruitful and fun – with the final intervention project being no exception. Working together with Joaquin and Didac was a pleasure all around and the final product shows how much effort and passion went into producing it. It became clear, that within the goals of our intervention, to enable a inter-species jam session, every one of us could engage in what he could do best, while exploring what each of us wanted to dive into deeper. Didac for instance, was keen on going further with fabrication technologies and exploring the intersection of natural and technological design solutions. Joaquin on the other hand, wanted to immerse himself into the potentials of music-making in combination with technology. Together with my interests for hardware and the conceptual possibilities of the project idea, a wonderful collaboration came to be. To evaluate the collaborations that were and the collaborations that could be, it’s important to also view it in the context of the collective design space built and expanded during the design studio seminars and classes. There a strong relationship with other intersecting project ideas highlights the potential of future collaborations within the group and within the whole class.
Placing my term one experiments within the collective design space.
Iterative Prototyping and Spirale Development
Another interesting contextualization of the experiments is to visualize it as spiral development. This shows, to some degree, that all the efforts made within the first term are strongly relating to each other, as they play in a shared contextual field. The inform each other, they form strange symbiosis and magnify each other’s potentials. By reflecting on the first term’s experiments that way, a possible leading idea can be isolated, which is shared amongst all projects.
Illustrating this year's experiments in a spiral development context.