DIGITAL JUNKYARD

Workflow at the Digital Junkyard

7/20/2015

Explode
First explode derelict files into their constituent parts. These will consist of 3D solids, 2D shapes and renegade lines. Items may sometimes stick together in groups, depending on how they were originally created.

Sort
Export individual salvage files to salvage library. Give each part tags describing properties it embodies.

Pick
Browse through the library and pick items by search queries for different properties. 2D and 3D items cannot be picked as mixed groups.

Combine
Picked items can be run through one of a series of combination engines available. See icons for a description of the available engines. Engines are available for 2D or 3D groups, or may work for both.

Fabricate
Choose from a number of fabrication methods based on the tools available. Choices are listed below. The file will need to be prepped for the given tool/choice.

Finish
The final process is the fully analog finishing, choices for finishing include:

Finishing elements may be combined at the authors discretion.

The artifact is now ready for display and contemplation.

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‘Clouds of fantasy and pellets of information’ -thoughts about thought ecology

6/5/2015

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The essence of this project was inspired by a text that relates found objects to photographs, exploring the connections between physical things and information production/reproduction. Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’ is a string of brilliant musings on the nature of the reproduced image, and the topics in the text go far beyond a discussion of photography to touch on the whole modernist cultural project. It culminates with the proposition that we should practice an ‘ecology’ of images. The position that ecology is not only about physical limitations, but can also applied to the production of information is an idea that is both compelling and difficult to intuit. The fact is, in Western society we have only in the last 50 years or so commonly accepted the concept of environmental limits. Limits to the production & consumption of something more ephemeral such as ideas or thoughts, is not yet conceivable, or at least agreed upon.

Sontag relates the act of collecting quotes to the collection of images, in that they are disembodied pieces of information, that only gain meaning through being connected to a larger context. Hannah Arendt’s essay on Walter Benjamin describes Benjamin as a famous collector of quotes “nothing was more characteristic of him in the thirties than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him and in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of ‘pearls’ and ‘coral’. In another passage, Sontag also describes the world as quickly becoming ‘one vast quarry’. This language turns thoughts & ideas into a resource, a physical thing to be mined. Our common understanding of physical resources is that they can be depleted or contaminated with use. Is it possible that our ideas and thoughts will become sparse one day? Are their infinite thoughts available? Is it possible that one day we will mourn the cavalier attitude we had with the spinning of ideas and then throwing them away? Is there a point when our brains will cease to deal with the onslaught of information we receive?

We have reached an age with information technology where the split between the virtual and the real has become blurred, as we witness potentially the third great technological revolution, the lines between physical production and idea generation have never been so thin. The number of steps between thinking of an object and making it real are diminishing. The way that Sontag writes about ideas as if they are physical things, is becoming less of a means of poetic description and more an actuality.

However, as we make things, we also make mistakes, we throw things away before they are produced, we make changes and then we scrap parts of ideas. It is possible that there are tiny fragments, physical ideas that we put intellectual energy into creating, that could be saved and clustered into something useful, or something brilliant, or beautiful. A photograph can capture the light off of something totally banal and give it a whole new meaning. framing, recategorizing, collaging, gives new value to things, both physical and intellectual.

Photographs are similar to found objects in that they are ‘clouds of fantasy and pellets of information’. Fabrication technology is now such that we can poach those pellets, and mash them directly into new objects.

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The Digital Junkyard finds a home at the Ryerson DFZ...

4/20/2015

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The Design Fabrication Zone (DFZ) is a new interdepartmental collaboration space at Ryerson University. Ryerson has been creating ‘zones’ to ‘promote multidisciplinary experiential learning through projects that entail research, design/fabrication innovation and entrepreneurship in built environments. With access to workspace, design/fabrication equipment, and a rich network of mentors and industry partners, members are encouraged to accelerate ideas through prototyping and 3D experimentation leading to business and/or design innovation’

The DFZ is filled with obsessive and creative minds and equipment to play with, and also provides members with access to the Architecture and Interior Design shops at Ryerson.

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Introducing the Digital Junkyard

4/16/2015

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The digital junkyard is an experiment in virtual salvage. It is a repository of donated digital information that is used to generate real physical and spatial objects. Making use of the derelict bits of ideas, lines, code, vectors, patterns, curves that we all have cluttering up our hard drives, the digital junkyard is a place to store unwanted junk towards making new creative projects. Designers, architects, artists will be asked to donate their old unfinished and unwanted files to the project. This could be as small as a simple image or some extruded boxes, or it could be as large as a full set of plans for a house that will never be built.

Most designers have spent hours coming up with ideas that never come into the development stage. A moment of inspiration may leave you cold the next day. Some are valued and saved for other opportunities, while many are set aside to forever be couched in constantly expanding digital junk drawers.

Besides being a storehouse for everything that may have been moved to the trash, the digital junkyard experiment sets up a process and a studio practice whereby these files can be picked apart, poached and reconstituted into new projects using digital fabrication tools.

This project is an embodiment of the growing collective intelligence that technology affords us; and an experiment in ideas about digital ecology. It also honours the time and energy that designers put into testing and making mistakes.

In the spirit of openness and collaboration, designers, artists, students, experimenters will be able to join the project and make use of the process and salvaged material.

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Workflow at the Digital Junkyard

‘Clouds of fantasy and pellets of information’ -thoughts about thought ecology

The Digital Junkyard finds a home at the Ryerson DFZ...

Introducing the Digital Junkyard

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