in the meantime

i have a paper due today on an existing "dystopic" technology. i was tempted to write it on... i don't know. marketing aimed specifically at kids? corporations? the stock market and the idea of constant growth being necessary? digital rights management and the loss of fair use and the subsequent cooling effect on creativity? tv? but maybe i'll do it on myspace and the shallow social interactions it helps build.

but for now, i thought i'd just put up some comics of mine.


p2 and p3.

fitting.

i've been trying to scan in my work.
here's the first and most fitting for me right now

images and the like

i finally developed some film. five rolls worth. so over the course of working out my thesis stuff, i'll post a few select pictures here and there. so for now here's three. the first above, and then
#2 and #3.

design thoughts

so i was thinking about this some more while i was waiting for jacqueline today. why is it that i bristle against having design competitions like 2.007. and i think the answer is that with a point scoring system, there is an implied "right way" -> the winner. there is only one winner. and with students' robots, there's a lot left to chance, so even some really good designs get kicked out early occasionally. the disappointment of not doing well in the competition can sometimes overshadow any good thoughts you have about what you've learned. this is in addition to the competition overshadowing the design process to begin with. so, really, i don't think that competition is the best way begin to design.

i was also thinking more about gender. particularly, that the people who do well (i.e. score lots of points) in 2.007 tend to be men. i can't think of a worman ever winning, but i might be wrong about this. why is this? the first thing i can think of is that women are less likely to have prior experience with making/fixing things from childhood on. this makes them less likely to dive in confidently and start making things. every mistake seems like the worst failure ever. when really, there's just a lot of back experience that needs to be built up. i guess i've noticed (being a woman engineer) that the most discrimination happens in the machine shop or with things having to do with design. it's a fight to be taken seriously sometimes. it's a fight to be allowed to make mistakes. and i think this is a problem that should be addressed (in general)

i'll try to touch on these things some more later on.

oi. what?

so. i really should get down to work. today, i'll attempt to flesh out a bit more of the what it is that i'm doing for my thesis.

in case you don't want to reference what it is that i wrote down in the previous post:

What?
+Kinetic Sculptures
..... -Wire
..... -Found Objects
..... -Interactive
..... -Ganson
..... -Calder
+Education
..... -Mechanical Design
..... -Structural Design
..... -Hands-on/Project-based
..... -Art as a safe play/exploration space
..... -My experiences with being taught design
......... *007
......... *009
......... *thesis

ok. so.
the broad idea is using art as a way to introduce engineering concepts to kids/people who might otherwise not think that these ideas are accessible to them. to make knowledge accessible to a different set of people from that of the traditional route of learning design/mechanisms/structures/math/programming/etc.

more specificially, what i'm interested in is the use of low-cost interactive kinetic sculptures as a way to enable the hands-on learning of mechanical/structrual design. to use art as a safe place to play and experiment with new concepts. to attempt to bridge the gap between knowledge/comfort in programming/the virtual world to the physical world. to carry over the idea of debugging a program to "debugging" a mechanism or structure. to encourage comfort and intuition in building with physical materials.

i guess this is just rehashing and clarifying things i've said before. so let me try to say something different... or at least expand more fully.

why kinetic sculpture? i was inspired along this path after seeing arthur ganson's exhibit in the MIT museum. i had already been experimenting with wire as ways to make little figures, jewelry, and chainmail. something about it just spoke to me. later on, i discovered calder's work. i'm still finding new artists to inspire me. but, mainly, i like using wire and things i find around me. my budget is always small to none, so this is convenient. as for wire as a material, it's good because you can find it most anywhere, and it's really flexible. with a little bit of thought/understanding the material you can do pretty much anything with it. it's easy to tweak if things mess up. and it's good to use to incorporate found objects into your work. adding the interactivity of sensors/programming is great. it adds a whole new aspect of things that can be done with the materials. also, there's this nice parallel of thought between programming and building. both require trials and debugging. both require logical thought. i think they reinforce each other.

another idea that goes along with why kinetic sculpture is that of art as a safe place to play, a place where there's no "wrong". the only measurement to live up to is your own. through introducing technical concepts through art, some of the intimidation factor is taken away. it's more of (as david puts it) "hard fun". part of my desire to do this stems from my experiences with MIT's mechE design classes. particularly with 2.007 (previous post on that matter found here). since my own experience with that class, i've realized that i wasn't the only one who had issues with the way it was taught. i think there's a problem with the competitive aspect of the class. the competition clouds over the design aspect. also... the competition can be intimidating for people whose first design experience this is. by feeling that whatever they do will be shown in front of a crowd and compared to their peers, fewer people are willing to really try to push the limits of what they can do with design. and as a result, people's machines all end up looking relatively the same, because the people who are less comfortable with design just take the working bits from the people who get something working first. (i really should go into this more at some point). anyway. point is that i think that maybe having a non-competitive, creative way to explore design would be good for a certain set of people.

as for my experience with 2.009, i thought it was better structured. as a group, we came up with our project and worked on it. it was mostly the group dynamics that were a bit funky. i think i would've been better prepared for designing a larger scale thing had i had better design experiences earlier on. and i think hands-on is the only way to go when it comes to design.

but, really, the time i learned most about design was the time i worked on my thesis. i designed and built my own gyroscopic kinetic sculpture. it wasn't until here that i really tried to push my limits when it came to design. and i think it's possible to encourage other people to have similar experiences. to start to experiment. to set a challenge that's just enough beyond your limits that you learn new things. and this is ultimately what i want to do through my thesis... to encourage exploration for everyone. to help make learning mechanical and structural design accessible, non-intimidating, and fun.


maybe a better proposed outline for the intro would be:

+Kinetic Sculptures
..... -Wire
......... *Ganson
......... *Calder
..... -Found Objects
..... -Interactive

+Education
..... -Art as a safe play/exploration space
..... -My experiences with being taught design
......... *007
......... *009
......... *thesis
..... -Hands-on/Project-based
......... *Mechanical Design
......... *Structural Design

thesis

I've been trying to figure out my thesis, but I wasn't quite sure where to start. So I decided that it was best to just try to get thoughts down and simply start.

First iteration. Not so clear. So I tried to expand upon it.

I tried to narrow down the area that my thesis will focus on -- kinetic sculptures as a way to enable the learning of mechanical and structural design. Maybe this is still too vague? Maybe it would be more clear to say "interactive kinetic sculptures as a way to enable the learning of mechanical and structural design as examined by a short study of several groups of Scottish children using wire/found object construction kits"? heh.

But what it really comes down to after that is that I have definite questions to answer. What am I doing. Why would I or anyone, for that matter, want to do this? And how would one go about this.

So I tried to answer and flesh out those questions.

I don't know how successfull that is. I hate to say it, but that's really how I think. Maybe the arrows are a bit confusing for some, but I find them useful for thought flow. I'll try to talk through the last one.

What?
+Kinetic Sculptures
..... -Wire
..... -Found Objects
..... -Interactive
..... -Ganson
..... -Calder
+Education
..... -Mechanical Design
..... -Structural Design
..... -Hands-on/Project-based
..... -Art as a safe play/exploration space
..... -My experiences with being taught design
......... *007
......... *009
......... *thesis

Why?
+Constructionism/Constructivism/Hands-on learning
..... -"Hard fun"
..... -Experiential knowledge
..... -Future of learning
+Intuition
..... -Experiential Knowledge
......... *tacit knowledge
......... *build intuition
......... *rilke/aristotle/bauhaus
..... -Mechanical Design
..... -Structural Design
..... -A feel for materials
+Different approach for a different type of learner
..... -Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
..... -Gender imbalance in high levels of mechanical design
......... *due to way it's taught?
......... *due to lack of confidence in a traditionally "masculine" field
..... -Build confidence in working with materials
......... *Costa Rican workshop -- some teachers not used to working with hands
..... -Infuse design community with new thoughts/people (eventually)

How?
+Workshops
..... -One vs. repeated
......... *build up experience/intuition
......... *increased mechanical complexity
......... *Dewey (deep/structured thought. Reflection)
..... -Age range?
..... -Kit to start with
......... *materials in kit
......... *directions in kit?
..... -Start with overall idea for a project or simply one mechanism?
......... *(gut feeling: focus on one mechanism to start)
......... *limitations to enable a clear direction to start
..... -Projects as "hard fun"
......... *kids don't think of as learning?
......... *art as play


maybe that's a lot to bite off. but that's maybe a start of a direction. it's always easier to prune than to expand? this is somewhat of an outline :

Intro: What? and a bit of Why?
Background: Why?
Experiment: How?