Week 8 Journal Entry

PROTOTYPING SECTIONS AND PROFILE

CHAN JOSHUA TIG HAY

VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

PROTOTYPE 1: Prototype 1 – Ivory card The first prototype was made using ivory card and cut using the card cutter. The quality of the cutting was rough and the edges that were supposed to be scored had wrinkles just like ugly “scars”.

By cutting with the card cutter, I have learnt that it can only cut large and simple pieces such as squares and triangle with large diameters. It fails to cut intricate geometries and could simply tear the material, causing it to have a rough finish.

Ivory card had a thickness of less than 1mm, it was soft and easily bent. Ivory card was unsuccessful in creating the threatening effect that was desired by the second skin. Moreover, its flexibility made the notch system difficult to function as it is easily deformed. The notch system will fail easily as the thin piece of material could be torn when a slight force is applied.

MATERIAL: IVORY CARD

PROTOTYPE 2: In this prototype, boxboard with different thickness was experimented due to its higher stiffness compared to ivory card. The prototype was divided into 2 parts, which include the tentacle “head” and the tentacle “arm”. 1mm boxboard was used to fabricate the former as it appears to be the more delicate and detailed structure of the tentacle while 1.8mm boxboard was for the arm as it is slightly stronger and had to be able to support the head.

MATERIAL: 1MM, 1.8MM BOXBOARD

‘Digital Fabrications’ by Lisa Iwamoto has mentioned three types of sectioning techniques which include ribbing, parallel stacking and waffling.

Waffling had been experimented with the “head” of the tentacle. It was found that this technique is very effective in creating volume and the sense of a solid form. The sharp form of the tentacle head was quite successful in catching the eye of an observer in first sight. It is however, due to the thinness of the material, that it was a bit wobbly when moved around.

Besides sectioning techniques, I have noticed that the most important part of the second skin was not emphasized – the “hair” of the tentacle. Indeed, as an observer, I tend to become drawn to the ‘head’ instead of the ‘hair’ of tentacle, which are the major sensory receptors of the second skin used to protect my personal space.

The threating effect that was aimed to achieve through the hair was not successful. I believe that problem with them is that they are fabricated with the same material as the other components and are of the same size, which fails to make them stand out from the tentacle itself.

On the other hand, the technique of parallel stacking for the spine of the tentacle had been very successful in providing stability to the prototype. 2 pieces of 1.8m boxboard was stacked together to increase the stiffness of the spine.

The only drawback was that it failed to encompass visible volume. When observed in from the top view, the spine appeared to be a thin strip of cardboard which was not able to catch attention.

The notch for the ‘hair’ had to be double the width of the 1.8mm boxboard, which makes up to 3.6mm.

The width for the other notches were created with the width of the material

In my final prototype, PROTOTYPE 3: I focused on the ‘hair’ of the tentacles MATERIAL: by combining the 2 sectioning techniques 1MM BOXBOARD 1MM MOUNTBOARD explored in the second prototype and experimented with different materials.

The intricate weapon-like tentacle head that was present in the previous prototype had been eliminated and the end of tentacle is allowed to taper off naturally. This was because it was the ‘hair’ of the tentacle that is used to defend the personal space so it should be emphasized more compared to the head of the tentacle.

Instead of parallel stacking, the waffling technique was employed to the spine of the tentacle to give it more volume and thickness such that it is able to accommodate more “hair” in different directions.

The ‘hair’ pieces followed the curve of the spine and varied in sizes. They got smaller in size towards the tip of the tentacle while they increased in size and thickness towards other end.

This size variation of the ‘hair’ pieces corresponded to the alertness and uneasiness of the person wearing the second skin. Smaller pieces towards the end would be smaller such that the intruder is only warned, but as it gets closer to the person the ‘hair’ pieces tend to become more spikey and would cause pain to the intruder when touched, showing that the intruder had reached an unacceptable limit.

NOTCH SYSTEM PROBLEM