RuthB

The task of data-driven souvenirs is to use festival data to create a personalised souvenir. The main point I wanted to address with my project was unifying all of the festivals. Edinburgh has a rich festival culture and I wanted to highlight this with my souvenir. I therefore created a series of collectable products, with a separate product for each festival, each year.

I originally worked on the idea of creating one singular souvenir that is added to each time the user attends a festival. The initial object would ‘grow’ as the user attended more and more festivals and events. The souvenir would be a dodecahedron shape with a different side of the product for each festival. I developed this idea and settled on creating a different version of the same product for each festival/year. A contributing factor to this decision was that souvenirs are consumer items and this motivates the user to purchase a new product every festival/year. I made sure to keep the ‘growing’ element of the original design.

The final product is an interactive kit where the user can record their best festival experience each festival/year. The kit contains a packaging box, the 3D object, an instruction book, time-capsule papers and a needle and thread. This is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival version of the product.

On the surface of the souvenir, the user records their best festival experience. This is recorded in the form of an abstract code. The code was created using processing.org. Each letter of the alphabet was mapped onto a number, using a map of Edinburgh. The code generates a pattern for the type of event attended and the venue. These are layered and embroidered onto the fabric side of the product.

So that the user can easily remember what their best experience was, the product also acts as a time-capsule. The kit comes with time-capsule papers, the user writes their best memories on these and places them inside the object. The object is then sealed with the lid. The object has the abstract representation of the users best experience on the outside and the written memories inside.

The item is designed to be tactile. This is why the representation of the user’s best experience is abstract, because the most important element is the texture. As this is meant to be a tactile object, it includes Braille of the festival and year.

As the souvenir is designed so that many can be collected, the design is edited for each festival. Below is the Edinburgh International Festival version of the product.

The different souvenirs click together using the fastenings on each side of the product. This means that over time the user creates their own ‘festival tree’. This means that the consumers souvenir ‘grows’ as they attend more events.

In the first six weeks of the New Making course, we were tasked to combine a form of digital fabrication with a traditional crafting method. I chose to combine 3D printing, specifically relating to printed glitches, with sewing.

Initially, I tried different ways to combine the two mediums. I did this by either pre-printing holes into the print and then by using a candle to heat up either a needle or a piece of metal wire and melting a hole through the already formed plastic.

For this exploration, I took inspiration from Matthew Plummer Fernandez. Fernandez takes objects and uses a 3D scanner to digitize them. He then digitally repairs the mesh and prints the finished product. This work explores the transformation from a physical to a digital and back to a physical object.

Using this as an inspiration, I 3D scanned a theatrical pin badge. I then used MeshMixer to reduce the resolution of the scan by reducing the triangle count. In my continued exploration, I have used the reduced resolution version of the scan.

To ‘fix’ the 3D printed glitch through sewing, I looked at different ways to stitch over the eyes of the pin. For my first try I pre-printed holes and used thin black thread to sew over the gaps. When sewing in a straight the thread would not stay taught, therefore going in different directions was more successful. The aesthetic created by sewing over the eyes has radically changed the mood of the piece. It is no longer a replica of the original pin but has become a new piece in its own right.

To develop the use of sewing over the eyes, I looked into different stitching techniques. I looked into cross-stitch and tried it with unusual materials. I stitched through a piece of wire mesh using thick wool. Placing this behind the eyes created a very different aesthetic to the previous try.

Finally, I created a print of the pin which included thin scaffolding over the eyes. This was then used to weave through to fully cover the eye area. I first tried using thick wool, but it was too strong and broke the delicate strips. It worked best with thin thread that could be evenly weaved through all of the gaps. I think this is my most successful experiment because rather than just adding thread to a 3D print, I have actually adapted the print to allow for the sewing to be effective.