Designed Objects: de-form (event)

Thursday 6th December was the third Product Scotland workshop (supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Methods Network programme). The subject for this workshop was: scanning, sampling and rapid prototyping. It was introduced and led by Jon Pengelly and was held at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. Again the themes explored were: Future Body, Future Food and Future City with an emphasis on the use of computer-based technologies to transition between the digital and the physical and vice versa. The workshop explored how these technologies are impacting on the traditional role of the product designer. Participants were asked to bring to the workshop an object that they had a personal emotional attachment to, or something associated with food on the move, personal space or urban escapism. The workshop went something like this:

10.30 – 11.00 Arrival and coffee
11.0 - 11.30 Jon Pengelly: overview - themes & format for the day
11.30 – 11.45 Geoffrey Mann: scanning moths & clouds
11.45 – 1.00 Body scanning
1.00 – 1.45 Lunch
1.45 - 2.00 John Marshall: 21st Century transformations in manufacturing
2.00 - 3.45 Group working: generating and manipulating data from digital scans, printing work from body scanning, object scans etc.
3.45 – 4.00 Coffee
4.00 – 5.30 Finishing up and bringing together thoughts related to theme
6.00 – 8.00 Reception at Peacock Visual Arts

This workshop was slightly different than the previous two (see below). There was certainly more of an emphasis on computing. However, there was the same focus on the 'hands-on' that has carried through all the workshops. Various strategies were explored to make digital objects physical and physical objects digital. These ranged from the 'misuse' of ultra high tech 3D scanners (e.g. moving around in a body scanner - it crashed) to 'rapid prototyping' that can be done on your kitchen table and 3D object scanning without a scanner. The slides from my presentation are below and some useful links can be found here.