User:Nsilver/Statement

First homework statement: What I have been working on so far has mostly been 3d prints. In school I have mostly printed with plastic, at Unfold I have printed with clay in combination with aluminium, copper, wood dust, wood pieces and glass. We have still to learn how these materials react together in the oven. We already know that the wood will leave holes in the clay, we hope the glass will give it a glaze. The copper and aluminium might give it a green look due to their oxides. All the plastic prints are quite small, smooth and hard. The clay prints where big and fragile, but after drying and baking will also turn smaller and go hard. I have mostly been using the 3D printer because I want to be able to materialise what I model in the computer. Other things I have been working with include: tie-wraps and soldering. I enjoyed soldering very much. It is delicate and very precise but satisfying to complete.

3D printing is definitely very interesting to me the other thing that appeals to me is the tie-wraps constructions, because they look rather neat and have an interesting potential when it comes to structural building. They bend yet they are steady. I am thinking about a moving installation I can make with them. A structure that breaths if you will. The soldering and combining of old electronics is also something that interests me, I have always had an interest in disassembling old electronics, but to actually be able to construct new functioning machines out of them is going to take some practise.

As I said before I have mostly been busy mastering the 3D printers and seeing what I can make them do. What their limits are and how you can use them unconventionally. I should have explored more materials, I still want to use the turning table to make a clay pot. So I can experience the craftsmanship behind pot making. I have experienced the craftsmanship behind 3D printing to make a pot, but not the original of making a pot.

Second homework statement:

The 3d printing defineltey relates to DIY culture, so does the lampshade. I was amazed by how many models you can find online for free. Of course there is greater joy in printing your own models. This is something fairly new at least the open-sourceness of it and the availability of the printers. You could call the sack with which you put whip-cream on your cake an early form of 3D printing, apart from it being controlled by a human and not a machine. The concept of dropping a liquid to create a solid structure is as old as mud. Just the mechanical printing and the accessibility to these printers is new. All the techniques I have explored are fairly modern. Apart from the mold and the wax sculpture. The soldering is also much older than I thought. Soldering electronics is of course something pretty recent in history. Soldering in general goes back a long way.

All the crafts and materials I have explored can contribute to my practice. It has just opened new doorways. In animation I usually prefer making physical backgrounds to then photograph these and use them in my movies. Especially 3D printing opens a doorway to help my digital work into the analog work. So there is a back and forth between the two which I find interesting. The wax has a certain aesthetic that is pleasing to the eye, I can imagine a seen in a creepy snowed over forrest. Made out of ironwire and wax. The practise has definitely made me consider working with new materials and techniques, I only feel I havent explored enough.

I make because of the satisfaction of having something that you made which is unique to the same extent that we are unique as humans. Overcoming the struggles along the way makes the end result so much more satisfying. I make because I want to be more than a cog in the wheel. I want to show the world what I can do with these hands, and to be honest with myself I have not done enough for my practise this quarter. That is because I was struggling with my stop-motion project in animation, which I finished and gave me such satisfaction as I described above. Something I learned this quarter is that experimentation and making is not something to take lightly, this should have been started earlier in the quarter. The excitement was there, but the actual doing did not amount too much. Choices had to be made within my limited time, I made a conscious decision to focus on animation, keuzevak and theory. Which have all been rounded of successful and this was sadly all I could do for my practise.