n3w me3DiA, n3w F0rms: Assignment 10.2

Oh my God what a heart-stopping thrill ride. Brigid and I started by brainstorming over text what kind of shape we wanted to create. We agreed on an inter-locking structure that had some kind of continuous line that connected across all the shapes. From there, Brigid hand-made a mockup out of cardboard, which I digitized in Illustrator.

I thought everything was fine when I arrived at Thingspace, but something told me to ask Adela (because they are a genius) to look at my Illustrator doc just to make sure everything is kosher. And for the most part, everything was.

Except the gosh dang slits, where the shapes connect. I had only made a line, but I should have made a whole shape so that the laser cutter would cut out the negative space, and allow the shapes to interlock. So, I estimated the width that I should make them. The first go around, they were all too narrow to interlock. Plus, we realized that if all the shapes interlocked, then the line would be off-kilter. (Brigid pointed this out. Brigid is also a genius.) So we decided that if we just completely redid the square with wider slits, that would solve the problem.

And so we did (which explains why we have two squares).

What is clear from the above is that this project demanded creative problem solving. Going from thinking in 2-dimensions to 3 is challenging because it demands a lot more from the maker in terms of logistical planning (which is informed largely by physics!). So this combination of both 2 and 3 design was a good bridge into the next couple of modules. After our laser cutting adventures, I'm forward to exploring more of the third dimension!