Artist Development: Digital Fabrication

My first experiment with drawing in Rhino will the laser in mind as tool, was a turning a series of drawings tracing everyday actions such as cooking porridge, school run, and talking on the phone into 3D objects using the modelling software Rhinoceros. As a part of my research which explore what kinds of actions and processes in everyday life are data producing, and in turn, what movements we engage with producing such data – I was curious to explore turning these visual explorations into 3D objects. I used the skills I learned attending the Rhinoceros level 1 run by Simply Rhino in Bethnal Green, which was scheduled over 7 weeks, one night a week, 3 hours + homework. In the seven weeks we went through the basic platform setting, and every week we practised a couple of modelling tools, and by the 7th week we had been through a quite thick book with exercises and tutorials.

Learning the program was for me mostly about developing an understand of what you can use the software for, and as a newcomer to the field, I it was definitively through doing lots of exercises, that I began to understand what kind of working processes the software environment enabled.  My first exercise to realise using the laser cutter was a trace of the path in the kitchen I take to make porridge every morning. I drew it in Rhino using a point-controlled curve using a minimal amount of control points to get straight lines between the main points in the kitchen implicated in porridge cooking which included the fridge (milk), shelf (oats), cooker (cooking), table (eating), sink (dishes), and the cupboard (bowl and spoon).

I then annotated the drawing with the points but assigned the annotation on another level separate from the one I want to use for printing. I then used the solid function to turn the curve into a solid 3D object with surfaces. This simple drawing what I wanted to turn into a small sculpture which I could make using the laser scanner. In my next post I will talk about how I prepared the 3D drawing for the laser.

Working on the topic of digital data and how to explore its role in contemporary society,  I have approached this subject from a number of perspectives. I have listened to people’s stories of working with data or giving it away, I have researched and visualised data polices and public data-sets, and I have looked at what body parts and gestures are growing out of data production. In collaboration with Loes Bogers from the with the Visual Methodologies Collective at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences we have been able carry out large scrapes of online image material shared around pregnancy, from which we subsequently developed a series of collage approaches around. Situating my artistic practice as ‘live-investigations’ such as the work The National Catalogue of Savings Opportunities as the Body Recovery Unit (with Bogers), the artworks are made from ‘living’ streams of data, managerial reports or policies using data as evidence, exploring how to use artistic practice as cultural form, through which we can interrogate society. In this connection want to explore how modelling data in 3D form can provide new ways to respond to respond to the context of data production was the motivation behind seeking out a broader skill-set.

I decided to focus my process of learning 3D modelling software and experimenting with the laser cutters on data produced through everyday living such as GPS data and movement tracking, to explore how 3D sculptures can give new meaning or challenge our perception of this data, and how it can be used. I began reworking a series of existing drawing series around ‘domestic data production’ which is based on the tracing the body movements associated with mobile phone use in the home. I order to model these drawings as individual objects, I decided to focus on the possibility of shapes emerging out of the movement traced drawings (see fig.)  In my next post I will talk about how I modelled these shapes in Rhino.