May 3-7, 2005
Thesis Presentations
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| body/object/code : a framework for toolmaking | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Carlyn Maw | |
| Instructor: | Zurkow, Marina | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar | |
| URL: | http://www.23longacre.com/thesis | |
| An model for empowering artists and designers who want to create tools that harness kinetic, material and logical intelligences. | ||
| The plasticity of new media allows artists and designers to create a range of innovative interactions, and yet the most common tools to make digital work are claustrophobic to use because they keep us slumped over a desk. Historically bad tools could be immediately addressed by the artist or artisan him or herself. A painter could trim the bristles on their brush, mix their pigment differently, decide to use a found object as a canvas, etc. In contrast, technology products can seem like black boxes that are either hard to mold, too expensive to risk breaking, or they are simply flat-out locked down by their manufacturer. I wanted to know if I could develop a scaffolding which would help artists and designers feel comfortable “popping the hood” or even designing from scratch the tools they are using. I approached the problem by setting research questions for myself, starting with isolating what skills I considered relevant to making creative tools with rich interaction styles. I also addressed how best to teach the skills and get the information to other people. From my research I decided that any successful approach to toolmaking needs to emphasize kinesthetic, material and logical intelligences as equals, thus the term body/object/code. | ||
| Personal Statement: | There are so many blocks in the creative process, starting with just getting past the blank page. You may need to get through a desert of ideas or control an impossible swirling flood. There are the thoughts that sulk and hate you and hide while you try to catch them. Even more painful, though, can be the concepts that are full and bursting but have no extant path to escape the boundaries of your mind. Computational media and physical computing are the closest I\'ve gotten to a natural language for expression that can hold some of those ideas trapped in the corners of my brain. They are perhaps also, of any media I\'ve tried, the least satisfying in which to engage. For example, slotting a microchip into a circuit isn’t close to being the same dramatic, physically satisfying act as smashing a lump of clay onto a potter’s wheel... [more at website] | |