ARC3018HF
Fall 2024 Thesis Seminar
Instructor: Maria Yablonina
Meeting Section: L0103
Mondays 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

A critical technical practice will, at least for the foreseeable future, require a split identity––one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique."  - Philip E. Agre, 1997

Any design undertaking inherently relies on the tools and technologies at the center of its process and beyond it, from sketching, measuring, and forming materials to developing processes, building systems, and integrating into existing infrastructures. In designing and making, we do not simply wield our technologies but develop relationships wherein the tools shape what we make, how we think, and even how we imagine thinking and making. Making with Machines course will focus on developing relationships with computational design and digital fabrication tools while paying close attention to how they shape us and how we might shape them.

The Making with Machines course pursues new ways of working with technology to make things, to interrogate how things are made, and to imagine future ways of making while remaining suspicious of any one solution. While making, we will refuse the idea of a designer as an end-user of technological tools and instead look for ways to critique, subvert, play with, and re-imagine alternative technologies and systems out of old ones. We will learn how to listen to materials, intuit and work with technological limitations, see power structures behind technology, and ask better questions of technical systems.

Like other tools, design and fabrication machines afford opportunities at the cost of limitations. An obvious example is the limited work envelope of a 3D printer or the limited capacity of a CAD tool to model physical properties of materials. A deep understanding of a medium's limitations is key to building proficiency. As we spend more time with our technologies, we learn to feel for the limits and come to sense where and when to push beyond them with care. And in this careful pushing, strange and things can happen: we might discover new ways of using old tools, invent new tools for new and old materials, uncover and critique hidden biases in how tools are designed, or imagine entirely new technological systems.  

COURSE METHOD

Through a series of hands-on tutorials and skill-building assignments, we will begin to establish a relationship with one tool in particular: a UR10-e robotic arm. A robotic arm is often positioned as a universal tool for automation – a narrative that we will interrogate as we get to know the arm. In a series of exercises, we will learn how to use UR10 by asking it to do things in new ways rather than trying to automate existing processes. In parallel with these skill-building exercises, we will investigate the history of automation and how robots came to be what they are today through a series of readings and discussions.  

COURSE OBJECTIVES

The Making with Machines course is designed to cultivate skills and knowledge in the areas of research in digital fabrication, critical making, computational design, architectural robotics, and critical technical practices. This course will equip students with the essential background knowledge and technical skills to formulate a thesis and make a significant research contribution in one or more of these research fields.