Ceramic Beach, part 3: Prototype and Experience!
After concept definition it was about a time to understand how to prototype this unusual design product.
Ceramic Beach is not just a product, but it involves process and the experience. I tried to communicate it all in final prototype. It is a kit consisting of 5 steps reminding the experiments I have performed. First two steps tell how much energy is needed for recycling ceramics and the last three are about the sensing the beach pieces in different ways.
First step is breaking ceramic shards into pieces of the needed size. It includes a hammer, plastic bags of different size, rubber mat and a velvet base to store the pieces in the container. All that is needed to polish debris is in the next step: a glove to protect hands while touching sharp edges and three sheets of sanding paper of different roughness with a labyrinth drawn on it to pass it with a piece of ceramics… approximately 1000 times.
Touch. A velvet bag with the different pieces providing various tactile experiences
Sound. This container is filled with water and then rolls on a little cylinder producing minor waves, that are enough to move little pieces of ceramics which utter sound:
Vision. Pieces of ceramics here can be seen from different points with different angles of light to explore their refraction qualities:
Also all the users of Ceramic Beach prototype were enjoying playing with it:
Ceramic Beach is my project developed during Ceramic Futures 1.0 — an online/offline workshop and competition which in 2013 involved students of 4 European schools: Glasgow School of Art, Politecnico di Milano, Abadir Academy, IED Rome. Full info can be found athttp://www.ceramicfutures.com/1/
