TOPIC: Embodied Fabrication

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Guest inputs:
Luke Franzke
Marcial Koch
Lucy Dukes

Office hours by appointment

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The course proposes an examination and speculation of technologies as they related to Embodied Interaction (ie. mobile computing, wearable interfaces, location-based interactions and digital fabrication...).
This examination covers societal, ethical and social influences.

This year, the course puts an emphasis on 'Embodied Fabrication', where digital fabrication methods are approached from the perspective of embodiment.
With more flexible and more accessible modes of fabrication and of generative design, and with interactive aspects of materiality and biodesign emerging in recent years, we have the opportunity to investigate ways that we can transform our physical selves and environments. This course will let us through a journey of interfacing the analog and the digital, with the body as mediator between the two.

During this module, we'll uncover some of these possibilities by designing and informing our bodily environment increasingly influenced by data tracking. By group work, you'll propose interactive forms of body extension/representation/mirror/sense.
Design factors have to include:
• material intimacy
• processes of fabrication
• data tracking & mapping / generative design
• wearability or extension or external or sensorial apparatus
• performative aspects
• interactive components
• political / environmental / societal context

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Workshops

Thursday Workshop 17.11
Tutorials for scraping Instagram, scraping Tinder, using database from Google Location History in kml format in Processing, using Real Time location with GYROSC, and using socket.io with localhost.run to connect web sockets are here::: & 18.11
- Introduction to consuming API's via https://nodejs.org/en/
- Storing Data
- Processing Data
- Exploring Data Sources
  - API's
  - Sensors
  - Data Scraping
  - Real Time Location GYROSC: Tutorials_scraping_gps_and_more_avt.pdf
- Sending Data from and to Arduino using https://www.shiftr.io/
- Consuming multiple API's
- Composing Data
Workshop Tuesday 22.11
- Data in Processing
- 3D in Processing and exporting into .obj for 3D printing
- evtl. Grasshopper

Deliverables

Collection Exercise I: Analogue Data Collection
Look for sources of your personal body data in the real world. What traces do we leave behind that give us indications about our movements, vital signs or emotions?
Be aware of the data you're collecting without intention. Or are you currently collecting data intentionally?
Is there a type of data that reveals something specific about your life, your interactions with your environment? Can a short sample offer a complex reflection?
Your survey has to comprehend at least 6 hours of tracking and showcase a complex aspect of your entangled life (beyond a specific quantity tracking).
Think of questions you want to answer before you start tracking.
Record videos or take photos to indicate and attempt to extract the data or reflect on it.
Represent that data in a performative way.
Presentation/performance: max 2 minutes - you can invite the audience to take part, use props, etc
Individual work
Collection Exercise II: Material Collection
In advance, select materials you want to experiment with: biomaterials, minerals, off-the-shelf, chemicals, liquids, growing, reactive, decaying, static, states, duration, texture, smell, taste, touch, etc
Think of where they come from, how they have been extracted, by whom, their lifecycle, their history, their trade, their price value, their exploitation, rarity, waste, off-the-shelf, availability, function, unfunction, forms of fabrication, etc...
Bring them for a collective experimental day, list characteristics, qualities and behaviours and determine which interface could be derived from its properties.
Collection Exercise III: Digital Data Collection
- See Workshops for details
In-class Exercises, Performances & Weekly progress reviews (bring iterated prototype/sketches/experiments for each mentoring)
Mid-Class Delivery: Booklet concept, prototype & inspirations
PDF featuring texts and visuals: Overall Concept, Main directions, Inspirations/Related Work (references, authors, dates, visuals) Material inquiries, and Prototype
Final Project and Presentation: Interactive embodied fabricated apparatus
Use Data-Collection, Generative Design Methods and Digital Fabrication to create an interactive body apparatus (wearable, fashion item, prosthesis, orthesis, prosthetics, implant, extension, external apparatus, architecture, etc).
Questions to consider in your process:
- What drives the design? (example: is it functional, speculation or critique)
- Where could the data come from? (example: sensors)
- How do you map the data to a geometry? (example: using a metaphor)
- Or is the form making process inspired by existing models? (example: fungus, cell division, mathematical geometry,…)
- What are the materials used? What are their properties, lifecycle, etc
- What is the fabrication process?
- What does your body extension connect with the surrounding environment?
- What does it embody?
- What meanings does it create?
In groups of four or five students
Presentation Format: Exhibition of Experiments & Performance with Final Prototypes together with an oral presentation.
Presentation on: 22.12.22
Documentation
- A 'Journal' is developed by each group of students that reflects on experiments and learnings from the course. It should be in the form of an online blog (ie. WordPress, Tumblr or other):
  - The journal should be structured in a generally comprehensible manner
  - The lecture notes, including annotations, are stored
  - Notes, sketches for each lesson should be included as well
- Final Documentation per usual guidelines: title, authors, abstract, hi-res pics, PDF with commentary text, video documentation (see Wiki)