True stories and curiosities inside a “Distributed Educational Model to Make (Almost) Anything”
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For the sixth year, OpenDot hosts the Fab Academy, the one and only digital manufacturing course organized by the Fab Foundation and present at the same time all over the world. The course is divided between lectures held in videoconference by Neil Gershenfeld of MIT in Boston and the practice at our Fab Lab.
/ How to Make (Almost) Anything
The Fab Academy aims to train students able to contribute to the global network that includes almost 2000 Fab Labs in the world, acquiring practical skills, learning a methodology to manage complex problems and developing a project from the idea to the finished product in a short time.
An intensive five-month program that teaches students to envision, design and prototype projects using digital fabrication tools and machines. It is a multi-disciplinary and hands-on learning experience that empowers students to learn-by-doing and inspires them to make stuff locally, to become active participants in sustainable cities and communities.
During the five months in OpenDot you will learn to imagine, prototype and document your ideas through many hours of practical experience with new technologies and digital manufacturing tools: it goes from programming to electronics design, from 3D printing to composite processing. The course leads participants to fully understand what digital manufacturing is and how to use it within their own and others projects. So, they are ready to use it independently in their professional career.
To better understand this path, we interviewed Sol Bekic, Fab Academy 2020 graduate, and our Instructor, Antonio Garosi, Fab Academy graduate in 2018.
Welcome on Medium, Sol! Do you want to tell us something about yourself?
Sol — I am a designer and creative technologist. I studied Game Design and worked as both a web and game developer for some years.
I have always been interested in electronics and physical things, but before the Fab Academy I didn’t really have a way and a reason to learn more about these things.
As a game developer, whenever we went to games festivals to show the game Vectronom, I noticed how the more experimental projects with custom physical controllers, blinking LED lights etc. were much more interesting to most people than even the most amazing purely digital games. This really convinced me to look deeper into haptics, interaction design and fabrication, and is the reason I was so interested to join the FabAcademy.
Why did you decide to enroll in Fab Academy at OpenDot?
Sol — When I discovered the Fab Academy I immediately found it an interesting opportunity, but I was still studying in Cologne, and besides, the year had just begun and I would not have made it in time. From there the idea remained in my mind, more like a dream than a concrete possibility. When I finished my studies I decided to move to Italy, together with my girlfriend. At this point I looked again at the list of Nodes, the Fab Labs in which a Fab Academy is activated. We were interested in Milan as a city, and OpenDot immediately struck me as an interesting place. Shortly after, I also had the opportunity to meet Antonio and Enrico in person at MakerFaire Rome, where I participated with one of my experimental videogames. We stayed in touch after the fair, and when I arrived in Milan I was very satisfied with my choice: the community of the Fab Lab and Dotdotdot, the design studio that founded it, inspired me a lot. Among them there are many experts from different fields such as design, music, programming, and there is a lot to learn from everyone.
Antonio, the Fab Academy is a tradition for OpenDot for many years: what does it represent and how has it evolved over time?
Antonio — I arrived at OpenDot after attending the Fab Academy at the Santa Chiara Fab Lab in Siena — arriving here was a change of environment that made me understand how well connected the Fab Lab network is (see what was possible in period of Covid pandemic!) and, anyway, multifaceted.Since its first edition, the Fab Academy in OpenDot gave rise to many professionals of various backgrounds, who then traveled the world and now manage a laboratory themselves (such as Saverio Silli in Shangai, Daniele Ingrassia in Kamp-Linfort, Mattia Ciurnelli of Superforma and Gianluca Pugliese of Lowpoly).
In this sense, OpenDot has always been one of the most active laboratories in Italy and a reference point in the international global network, also because the students who pass through here, in addition to following the course, can see firsthand how a professional studio works, with its customers, its projects and its deadlines. And today it makes me happy to carry on this important path.
The most relevant project for each student is the final one, which you presented a few days ago: do you want to tell us something?
Sol — Sure! My final project is a hybrid between two kinds of “keyboards”: it is both a computer-keyboard for typing and programming, and a musical keyboard (like a piano).
In both of these functions it is unconventional: It has 44 hexagonal keys, and is divided into two halves. For typing, the halves are separated so that the arms can be further apart than on a conventional keyboard, which is much better for the shoulders. There are much less keys — only 2–5 for each finger — so the hands also need to be stretched less to type.
For music, it uses the “Wicki-Hayden” layout, which was invented around 1890. It is a “isomorphic” layout, which means it is a kind of a more general keyboard than the traditional piano layout. The traditional layout is made so that the white keys form the C-major scale, but when you play in any other scale you have to remember the specific combination of keys by heart. With an isomorphic layout all scales have the same “shape”, they just start with a different key. So to transpose a chord, interval, or melody, you just have to move your hand to a different position.
I built this keyboard because I’m interested in music, but I always found music theory very confusing. When I learned about isomorphic keyboard layout, I finally properly understood the logic behind the normal piano layout and music notation, but I also understood that it is overly complicated basically for no reason! So I decided that if I’m going to learn music theory, I need an isomorphic keyboard, which makes learning it much easier.
Well, your project seems perfectly inspired by the claim of Fab Academy How To Make (almost) Anything — which is the original MIT’s popular rapid-prototyping course by Prof. Neil Gershenfeld. Antonio, what does this mean concretely for the student’s projects?
Antonio — Seen from the outside, Fab Labs are places where there are technologies (subtractive manufacturing, additive manufacturing, electronics and integrated programming, etc.) that not everyone can access. If we limited ourselves to this, they would be dedicated to the “experts”. Instead, the Fab Labs allow everyone to get closer, try, learn, deepen and finally master the technologies. This is why they are places where we talk about open source, communities and technologies. It’s in these cases that true innovation comes out, which creates inspiration and leads you to want to try it yourself. The fact of being in a “distributed” community, and therefore of sharing resources, tools and ideas, even if geographically distant, makes all this much easier.
Sol, what are your plans for the near future?
Sol — The FabAcademy gave me a lot of confidence to tackle the kind of DIY projects that I often thought up in my daily life, but rarely followed through on. The skills I learned and the tools I have access to here allow me to do a lot more — for example I’m working on putting together a custom bedframe using some IKEA drawers, and an IoT light switch for the smart lights in my apartment.
Apart from these “hobby” projects, I’ve also slowly been turning my final project into a sellable project. Together with a key-manufacturer, I am working to make the hexagonal keys a reality and launch a 12-key macropad. We are planning to begin collecting preorders in about a month. If you are interested, you can give us feedback and/or sign up for updates here!
/ Fab Academy 2021
The Fab Academy 2021 has just started, and has attracted professionals with heterogeneous skills.
The new participants are Filippo, a graphic designer fascinated by the idea of being able to influence the world around him with his own actions, and Alberto, a mobile architect and developer with numerous international experiences behind him, but passionate about new technologies and continuous training.
The paths and projects are documented in real time, as for all Fab Academies, on the pages of the official website.
