Digital Craft Statement

From the beginning I “made” I’m very aware of my materials. I’m that kind of person where seeing and touching comes together. When I made I usually starts with how does it look and how does it feel. Unfortunately it’s a fascination I always want to control by my own and as a result It’s hard for me to make things by coincidence. It’s always kind of “controlled” and that’s really who I am.

For this course I was looking for a way to control my work and also leave it up to coincidence, it needed to be a project that comes together by controlled work from me and work that was touched by a other form of nature. This form of nature could be as an example the process that comes from oxidation or the way fire can be unpredictable. I cannot control these things.

The second thing that came up was the literal combination of Digital Craft. How became things suddenly Digital Craft and can I make a combination of the oldschool original craftworks with the new technologies these days. A project where the purity and purpose of craftwork are melted with traditions and innovations from these time. But overall Craftwork for me shows a lifetime of learning, making and changing and having the ability to combine traditional knowledge with modern thinking in order to make something beautiful.

At the start I was searching for a way to combine my visions for this project. I found out Stipple Gen a program that can generate stipple diagrams and “TSP path” art from images. It’s a great (and free) tool for turning a photo into CNC-ready artwork, for use on the Eggbot or in other contexts. The beauty in this processing program is I can upload a picture and the processing turns it into a other image. The program decides how to render this image so I can’t control it. For the base I used the portraits of the founders of Arts & Craft Ruskin and Morris to make a serial of portraits on all the different craftworks.

Soon I found out that my focus and interests were more about the abstract structures of the portraits and for me it was not about the pictures anymore. The abstract outcomes in combination with the different techniques made me very happy and satisfied about the way I have worked. By every step I made I loosed a bid of controlling the materials. For example my last work “pushing Historical Example to limits” was not just searching for limits of the technique but also looking for my own limits, it took me more than 7 hours to got this end result. It was learning to let go all the controls and just see what happens. I only decided what kind of image was displayed on the copper plate but had no idea what would happen after that.

For the further process I used my fasciation for the effects on natural and non-natural materials. Combine two materials that normally don’t come together. During this project, I started to experiment with the reactions on metals (oxidation , corrosion etc). I tried patination certain color reactions on different metals and combine this with original techniques.

My statement

After a while I started to make a collection of structural landscapes, each technique in combination with the materials are beautiful and fascinating characteristic objects. My love for making comes out the beauty of materials, the inspiration you get from those little pieces comes together. And the wide reach you got with one single material. Making for me is feeling, seeing and connecting the right materials together, creating a beauty of its own.

Structural Landscapes

Series of 6

Simulate my research for the beauty of materials and techniques.

Showing details of the quality of each tool. Craftwork is a beauty.

Inspiration

Metaal & Hitte [Kleuren bij verhitten]

A Trinity - Ericka Ricciutti

Recepten oxideren van metalen

Research Stipple Gen

Used Materials & Techniques

MATERIALS

Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants.

It has been used for thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers (which are strong in tension) embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees, or it is defined more broadly to include the same type of tissue elsewhere such as in the roots of trees or shrubs.[citation needed] In a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up by themselves. It also conveys water and nutrients between the leaves, other growing tissues, and the roots. Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber.

The Earth contains about one trillion tonnes of wood, which grows at a rate of 10 billion tonnes per year. As an abundant, carbon-neutral renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a source of renewable energy. In 1991, approximately 3.5 cubic kilometers of wood were harvested. Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction.

Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu (from Latin: cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; a freshly exposed surface has a reddish-orange color. It is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, a building material, and a constituent of various metal alloys.

The metal and its alloys have been used for thousands of years. In the Roman era, copper was principally mined on Cyprus, hence the origin of the name of the metal as сyprium (metal of Cyprus), later shortened to сuprum. Its compounds are commonly encountered as copper(II) salts, which often impart blue or green colors to minerals such as azurite and turquoise and have been widely used historically as pigments. Architectural structures built with copper corrode to give green verdigris (or patina). Decorative art prominently features copper, both by itself and as part of pigments.

Copper is essential to all living organisms as a trace dietary mineral because it is a key constituent of the respiratory enzyme complex cytochrome c oxidase. In molluscs and crustacea copper is a constituent of the blood pigment hemocyanin, which is replaced by the iron-complexed hemoglobin in fish and other vertebrates. The main areas where copper is found in humans are liver, muscle and bone. Copper compounds are used as bacteriostatic substances, fungicides, and wood preservatives.

Aluminium is a chemical element in the boron group with symbol Al and atomic number 13. It is a silvery white, soft, nonmagnetic, ductile metal. Aluminium is the third most abundant element (after oxygen and silicon), and the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust. It makes up about 8% by weight of the Earth's solid surface. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite.

Aluminium is remarkable for the metal's low density and for its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation. Structural components made from aluminium and its alloys are vital to the aerospace industry and are important in other areas of transportation and structural materials. The most useful compounds of aluminium, at least on a weight basis, are the oxides and sulfates.

Despite its prevalence in the environment, no known form of life uses aluminium salts metabolically. In keeping with its pervasiveness, aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals.[8] Owing to their prevalence, potential beneficial (or otherwise) biological roles of aluminium compounds are of continuing interest.

Steel are alloys of iron and carbon, widely used in construction and other applications because of their high tensile strengths and low costs. Carbon, other elements, and inclusions within iron act as hardening agents that prevent the movement of dislocations that otherwise occur in the crystal lattices of iron atoms.

The carbon in typical steel alloys may contribute up to 2.1% of its weight. Varying the amount of alloying elements, their formation in the steel either as solute elements, or as precipitated phases, retards the movement of those dislocations that make iron so ductile and weak, and thus controls qualities such as the hardness, ductility, and tensile strength of the resulting steel. Steel's strength compared to pure iron is only possible at the expense of ductility, of which iron has an excess.

Although steel had been produced in bloomery furnaces for thousands of years, steel's use expanded extensively after more efficient production methods were devised in the 17th century for blister steel and then crucible steel. With the invention of the Bessemer process in the mid-19th century, a new era of mass-produced steel began. This was followed by Siemens-Martin process and then Gilchrist-Thomas process that refined the quality of steel. With their introductions, mild steel replaced wrought iron.

Further refinements in the process, such as basic oxygen steelmaking (BOS), largely replaced earlier methods by further lowering the cost of production and increasing the quality of the metal. Today, steel is one of the most common materials in the world, with more than 1.3 billion tons produced annually. It is a major component in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, automobiles, machines, appliances, and weapons. Modern steel is generally identified by various grades defined by assorted standards organizations.

Paper

Vinyl

Transfersheets

TECHNIQUES

Patinate

Corrosion

Etching

Lasercutter

Plotter

Printer

To do List

- Koper behandelen met licht emulsie daarna dit in zuur leggen waardoor restante delen verwijderen.

- Afdrukken op metalen maken doormiddel van zuren (zoals ontwikkelen foto's etc)

- Eigen mini plotter maken

- Electroplating

- Kan ik portretten maken uit bleek?

- Bluing (steel) [Link]

First Steps

Comparative Example

OLD VERSER NEW

The first machine I used was a printing device from the 80's. This printer only print with a processing code you need to write by yourself. At this time the machine was made, it was not capable to convert messages from a computer to a document to be printed.