DESGN-6750-4: Studio 2: Carry-On Manufacturing
Spring 2020
- Subject: Graduate Design
- Type: Workshop
- Delivery Mode: In-Person
- Level: Graduate
- Campus: San Francisco
- Course Dates: January 21, 2020 — May 08, 2020
- Meetings:
Thu 12:00-03:00PM, San Francisco - Grad Center - GC20A
Thu 9:00AM-12:00PM, San Francisco - Grad Center - GC7 - Instructors: Matthew Boyko, Mathew Kneebone
- Units: 6.0
- Enrolled: 7/11
Description:
CARRY-ON MANUFACTURING Resistant Bodies
663-03 FA2019 / Multi-disciplinary Studio Practice
In many ways carry-on luggage has become the contemporary toolbox. Contained within this compact space are our most essential tools for working remotely. But contrary to a traditional toolbox of hammers and nails, the digital tools in our carry-on are commanded by scripted language to forge electronic networks, relationships, and speculation. If machines have become so ephemeral then how might we define them?
The 19th-century German mechanical engineer Franz Reuleaux summarized machines as being “a combination of resistant bodies so arranged that by their means the mechanical forces of nature are compelled to do work by a certain determinate motion.” Plainly speaking, a bicycle is propelled forward because its connected parts: the pedals, wheels, spokes, frame, chain (its resistant bodies) work together so that the cyclist (the force of nature) is channeled towards a determined motion (forwards). The efficiency of a machine’s process is about cutting away at any unnecessary motion; to restrict deviation. Upon further reflection—as artists, designers, students—we might then ask ourselves: What are the resistant bodies in place that compel us to work in a determinate or predefined way? What vision of the world, or lack thereof, does the design of our tools and their efficiencies serve? How does mechanization and its ideologies determine both how we work and what we produce? And what happens when we push back through subversion or deviation?
For the second iteration of “Carry-on Manufacturing” we’d like to identify and reflect on the ideology of tools and how their resistant bodies—and related efficiencies and standardization—influences the production of work within multi-disciplinary practices. Our intention is to investigate and challenge both the tools and forces already at play within your research and means of working; outcomes can be physical or meta-physical.
Pre-Requisites and Co-Requisites:
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