Session 2 - The First Lesson at the City Learning Centre (CLC).

Inspiration/stimulus, sketching and presentations

Aim for students:
- To be stimulated by the artist's presentation of her own work and inspirational resource images to develop ideas building on the experiences in the gallery
- To understand the process of working to a brief
- To appreciate that an art object has value without being functional - To develop ideas and designs for a small scale adaptive

Outcome for Lesson:
- A series of sketches of ideas
- The student should begin to make links between the irregular and rough make-up of Franz West's work and their own more refined and smaller scale design proposals for an adaptive to be cut and carved out of a sheet material such as Perspex using CAM
- A presentation of their ideas to the rest of the class

Katherine Willis - Work Showreel and Design Process Case Study Presentation

As the students arrived at the CLC network room, which would be their workshop for the remainder of the project, the digital pictures which they had taken in the gallery were being projected in a sequence on the interactive white board. This provided a good starting point for the first part of the lesson which then involved the artist talking through a showreel of her own work with the Jason Bruges Studio.
Play Katherine Willis - Work Showreel

Katharine's showreel

This was followed by a design process case study showreel of a project developed for the T-Mobile headquarters.
Play Design Process Case Study Presentation

Developing a familiarity with the different stages of the design process is an important aspect of ICT and D&T in school and this case study provides images from important stages in the real context of the artist's work, particularly developing models and prototypes using CAD and dimensional drawings of components for CAM.

A third section of the presentation featured a collection of inspirational images which introduced a number of key concepts important to the development of the students' ideas. We can not include the original presentation for copyright reasons, however, the following section covers the same ground drawing on links to publicly available websites.

As Brad Wilson concluded: The presentation was a really good idea, a good transition between the experience in the gallery and being able to get them to think about the kinds of things they might be able to make.

Image Stimulus - Inspirational Resources
The project had to draw a thread between four areas: Franz West's Adaptives, Katharine Willis's digital installation work, CAD/CAM, and business practice. To achieve this and to bridge the gap between the low-tech approach taken by Franz West in making his Adaptives and the more modern materials and production methods characteristic of CAD/CAM, Katharine Willis created a PowerPoint presentation of inspirational resources to trigger creative thinking, making connections and exploring possibilities. This included sections which would help the students to expand on the idea of adaptives:

Layers
The first section showed examples of three-dimensional artifacts made from layers. This was because many of the materials used in CAM are sheet materials and more complex forms for sculptures can be made up from multiple layers. 2D Design software is particularly useful for working with the shapes that can be cut from flat sheets of Perspex or plywood.

2D Design Examples

This large-scale artifact from the Thomas Heatherwick studio shows the potential of cut shapes of sheet material, in this case built-up like the contours of a map.

Components
The next section focused on components and featured the work of David Mach and Shiang-shin Yeh. David Mach is an English sculptor who often makes works out of multiple identical components such as matchsticks, coat-hangers, and recycled glossy magazines. You can see examples of his work on his website (http://www.davidmach.com/public/publicframes.htm) Shiang-shin Yeh is a Taiwanese artist who makes beautiful jewellery, objects and puzzle-like constructions from components.

Anthropomorphic
The next section focused on anthropomorphic elements - the relationship with the form of the body. Examples given included Brancusi's sculpture
(www.portlandartmuseum.org/)
and the way tool handles are designed to fit comfortably in the hand. Other examples included jewellery and body sculpture. For instance, jeweller Ann Marie Shillito designs her pieces in CAD software for output to CAM for small batch production. More jewellery by contemporary makers can be found on the Axis website (http://www.axisartists.org.uk)

Just like Franz West's Adaptives, body sculptures don't have to fit comfortably. Sometimes they are designed to restrict movement or feel particularly heavy. Body sculpture can respond to your body using sensors to show temperature change or heart rate, for example. Stelarc is an artist who works with technology and the body. He wants to break down the barrier between something that is worn on the body and something that is part of your body. He creates devices that cause the body to move involuntarily. These use small electric pulses on the skin that stimulate the muscles and make them react, even though he has not made a physical effort to move. You can see examples of his work on his website (http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/index2.html)

Finally a number of images showed how cut shaped Perspex could be bent into new forms and how artists, product designers, jewellers and architects use CAD/CAM to produce a wide range of complex forms which until the advent of information communication technology and computer control would have been very difficult to conceive or make. Frank Gehry is perhaps the most well known of architects currently pushing CAD to the limits, particularly in his world famous Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao. (http://www.frank-gehry.com/)

Introducing the Written Brief
Much thought was given to developing a brief which was achievable within the sequence of lessons and in the time available to us. We had considered allowing the students to include working with sensing LED's (temperature/movement), picking up on ideas in Katharine Willis's work but applying them to the theme of adaptives. We could have also given the students a choice of software as they had some familiarity with 2D Design. In the end the following themes were selected for the Brief:
- small, wearable adaptive
- working with Perspex
- working with ArtCAM [link]

Adapt Brief
Introduction:
An adaptive is interactive, engaging, thought-provoking, fun, art rather than functional or useful, breaks the rules, creates a dialogue, responsive.
-Your brief is to design an adaptive
-You will use sketching, paper models, CAD and CAM
-Your adaptive will have the following features:
Size:
something that can fit in, on or around your hand and arm.
Material:
It will be manufactured from sheet material or block material such as Perspex (blue foam and blue wax are available for prototyping)
CAD Software:
ArtCAM
CAM Manufacture:
Using Denford CAM routing, milling and lathing machines (Additional processes that may be available are heat forming and vacuum forming).
The final result can be one or more component so you may need to consider how the material is joined, layered or fixed together
Deadline:
Friday 5th December 2003
Recording:
You will need to record how you make the adaptive. You can use sketches, card models, computer drawings or early CAM prototypes. The success of your adaptive will not be judged just on the final piece you make but how well you can show the way in which the idea was developed, and what you learnt from your successes and failures. You will present these working methods at the end of the project. You can use:
- Sketchbooks
- Technical (CAD) drawings
- CAM models
- Card/plasticine models
- Photos
[End of Brief]