READY SET GO

sorakeem:

I’m graduating today!

(via no-aesthetic)

mini-mal-me:

EMILY JEAN

(via beanfield)

This is going to be my last entry on this tumblr reflective journal. Having never kept a diary/ reflective journal before, this constant update about my work was a very strange concept at first, however I have found it to be so useful and easy through tumblr. I have even started my own blog. A visual diary that contains things that motivate and inspire me from day to day. 

Twelve weeks of Creative Projects: Digital Technology has past, and I have enjoyed every week so much. Using technology on a day to day bases from making calls on the phone, checking emails on the computer and watching movies on the television, I feel that this subject has made me become more aware of the impact of digital technology on us and as a society as a whole. This major project has been so much fun to make, and I am very satisfied of what I have produced. 

At the beginning my goal was to challenge myself my doing something I had never done before and had always wanted to try, that was to create a website. Having been asked my a family friend’s business to design a website for them I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to do that. After struggle with using Wix, I tired using other website creator programs such as Dreamweaver. Still discontent with the results, due to the terrible combination of my computer illiterate skills and the complexity of some of these programs, I lost interest and motivation in the project. Because this website was for a real client, I wanted to present them with something that I would be proud to hand over, and new that I was unable to do so with the limited time I had as well as lack of website creating knowledge. I would still love to complete the website design for Tran Tran Restaurant something in the near future. Maybe during the summer holidays I could give it another try.

Following my instincts, I decided to use what I know to create an art piece that was produced my technology. ‘Living Edge’ as I like to call it, appears as an abstract organic form with no real resemblance to anything; however there was a lot of thought put into the creation of this final product. Essentially it represents the merge between man and machine; how technology can be used to created beautiful original forms designed my the human brain and produced by the machine. The ‘Living Edge’ also alludes us to idea of mass production and how technology has made this such a popular alternative.

Technology is advancing a a terrifyingly rapid rate, as there are higher demands for more, quicker and cheaper. The balance between technology and humans can achieve amazing things, however our constant demand for the unrealistic can lead us down a path of disaster. We need to be aware of the dangers, and be very careful of which we we stir our future. Technology is a powerful thing that can make or break us. 

There are the final images that I have chosen for my final presentation. These images show the piece as a whole as well as smaller details or materials, textures, joins and shadows. These images have been slightly enhanced using Photoshop, however I wanted to keep them very natural so I only changed the contrast of the photos and the saturation. Aside from wanting to keep the photos looking natural I didn’t want the photoshopping to overshadow the actual images themselves. 

photos part 2

Here are a couple of photos I took today of the ‘Living Edge’. 

Inorder to transform my ideas into a laser cut model, one essential program that I need to use is Rhino. It is also possible to send through dwg files and illustrator files, so long as the layers are active. Rhino is a program that is in the adobe package along with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and many other design programs. The reason I chose to use Rhino to draw up the pieces for this model is because, in the architecture building the laser cutters read Rhino files much quicker than the other two programs, which means cutting time will much a lot quicker and cheaper. Rhino is a very usual program that can be used to do anything from drawing straight 2D lines to 3D modelling and rendering. I have used Rhino a couple of times over the past year and felt like this would also be a great opportunity for me to improve my Rhino skills. The file that you send through to the laser cutter is a 2D file that is comprised of layers; page boarder (magenta), cut line (black), etch line (red). The computer reads the different lasers as different activities and cuts or etches according to this. Below is a sample file I got laser cut for this subject, it is an exploration of shapes. In this file you can see the different colour lines.

These images below are screenshots the development of the pieces of the sculpture that I did on rhino. 

THE DESIGN PROCESS

one: come up with a design

two: figure out how the pieces fit together with consideration to material thickness and how the pieces join together

three: draw up the pieces needed to form the lamp on Rhino

four: send it off to the laser cutter to be cut

five: assembling the pieces to form the lamp