User:Rensvanpinxteren/Draft

Draft Digital Craft

As a student Graphic Design I believe that you need to interact with the media and technology of the time, this is one of the main reason why I choose to graduate with the Minor Digital Craft. With this Minor I want to discover technologies within the digital realm and develop knowledge to substantiate my discoveries.

The other reason why I chose the Minor was because of my previous experiences with Digital Craft. In the previous years of my study I had the opportunity to immerse myself within the practise Digital Craft and I liked the method of learning by making. By discovering my capabilities as a craft within the digital realm, I realized that the Minor Digital Craft offers me a broad spectrum of intrests which fascinate me. By making I want to understand, control and substantiate these subjects and obtain this knowledge to use it in future projects.

During my past projects I discoverd that I use my imagination to visualize a mental image and decide if it’s actually worth it to develop my findings into a project. This depends on various factors such as, is the subject of intrest relevant and what is the authentic value of this discovery, can I distill a coherent story out of the subject, contains my visualization on this subject a qualitative aesthetic singularity and what is the moral responsibility of this technology. With these personal statements I determined the value of my subjects and start my research process. The way that I approach my process is often very analytical and in which i’m constantly looking for elements that connect with the subject. These elements are really important to me because by remixing these findings, new perspectives emerge.

By reflecting on this method I realize that my process helps to create the story that I want to tell and that I use my work as a medium to debate. But due to this, it’s important to decide wich kind of story could be relevant. Should it be a speculative, an expressive or a real story and what could be the impact on the information in wich I want to relate to? Therefore I’m willing to change the visualisation of my artwork and by this way I construct the story that I want to tell to spectators. This could be one of my signatures within the course Digital Craft.

If I should define my craftsmanship I think that it would be hacking and materialising. I’m always really fascinated by the medium itself and the way I can conceptualize a new feature with it. That is also the reason why I really like smart materials and how you could connect data with a physical medium. So by combining different aspects I want to create new perspectives. That is also why the last few projects really motivated me. By first experimenting I discoverd a way of working which can lead to unexpected new findings and help me to go out of my conceptualizing comfortzone. I found out that some times your fixed fascinations need to make way for better findings. This way of working has increased my way of thinking within Digital Craft.

By working on projects within a small time frame I also discoverd a few borders. I’ve noticed that I’m thinking almost immediately in installation form instead of just experiment and explore the possibilities of the material. This way of thinking was really framing me, but since i’ve noticed I really started experimenting. Another barrier that I discovered was constantly working without taking a moment to reflect and look at your process from a distance. I noticed that if I’m working without reflecting I make I decisions that take a lot of time and are not necessarily required for the research that I’m working on. I noticed this during my last project where we discoverd a really accessible approach of expirimenting with our material. With this way of working we had the ability to create a lot of content which we could use in many diffrent ways. In this process I made the decision to focus on another element of our project that was many times less interesting. We lost a lot of time because of this decision.

If I question myself wich historical technologies really fascinate me are these most likely examples out of the second world war like the invention of submarine sonar and stealth technology. As i mentioned before I’m also really facinated by smart material and how materials can be used as camouflage by absorbing and reflecting radiation. This could be a potential starting point for my final Minor project Digital Craft.