Weekly Sprint 02- Digital Fabrication

This week I did a lot of work on projects that were *not* my thesis, but I promise, it was all still relevant . I spent some time in the digital fabrication studio developing and testing my laser cut clock project. This was actually pretty helpful when thinking about the physical visualizations I aim to create. It’s reassuring to know that I can use Adobe Illustrator to create designs. I am already very comfortable with that software, so that’s one less thing I have to worry about.

The laser cutter was also pretty simple to get the hang of, and the possibilities of what can be made with it are endless. I came across some roadblocks when cutting my clock design and I understand how making anything physical may not work out as planned the first time around. I’ll be sure to keep this in mind as i’m designing a data sculpture and be sure to have several iterations tested before the final product.

I also completed the sculpture studio training, so I’ve been thinking more about building something out of wood. An interesting data project I found along those lines is “Made by Numbers” an interactive data sculpture by HUSH :

For this project, HUSH took their company’s numerical data and translated it into a visual format. This video gave me a better idea of how I can display qualitative and quantitative data in a new form. Also, an interactive element would be a nice touch to add if time permits, but for now I think my focus will be a static sculpture or display.

Ideas and possible concepts:

• Should the it be geometric or more abstract?
• Should it be “college” themed— Something about school, university, graduation…
• Maybe Graduation tassels — hang them from the walls?— each tassel is a different color, length size, each aspect relates to a question/response from the survey
• Build a wooden display to hang these tassels from- figure out a a way to hang/display these tassels?
• Have a collection of smaller sculptures on display

Additionally, in the Data Visualization mini course I’m taking we learned more about how to work with and find datasets. We were introduced to a software called Tableau and began to familiarize ourselves with its features and create sample visualizations. My professor for this class brought up a lot of good questions and suggestion for my project. She mentioned how it would be interesting to see changes in some dimensions diversity over time. Also, it may be be beneficial to have a dynamic web graphic/visualization to accompany the physical display that allows viewers to click around and explore the datasets. This could be the possible interactive element, but again, my main focus will be building a tangible model to display the data.