Ceramic Westerwald Prize symposium

In September Justin presented a paper on post industrial manufacturing at the Westerwald museum in Germany as part of the ‘Cool Britain’ symposium series which are being run in conjunction with the International Ceramic Westerwald Prize.

http://www.keramikmuseum.de/index_eng.html

Making Futures Conference

Katie and Justin presented a paper at the recent ‘Making Futures’ conference organised by Plymouth College of Art and Design.

http://makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk/index.php?page=Conference-Home&pag_id=2

‘The purpose of ‘Making Futures’ is to improve understanding of the ways in which the contemporary crafts are practiced in relation to significant and new emerging agendas relating to global environmental and sustainability issues’.

Their full paper; ‘Developments in Post Industrial Manufacturing Systems and its Implications for Craft and Sustainability’ should be available for download in November from the conference website.

Bespoke project update

The bespoke project now has a website http://www.bespokeproject.org/ where the events and activities surrounding this project can be followed.

Autonomatic work with Bath Spa University

In July Justin worked with Nick Lees, a senior lecturer in ceramics at Bath Spa University in order to investigate the potential for 3D CAD and RP technologies to be integrated into Nick’s creative practice http://www.artbathspa.com/research/ceramics/nick_lees.htm

 Four days were spent modelling and then physically prototyping a range of spiral forms which are to be used in the process of creating plaster ‘cores’ for Nick’s sculptural pieces.

 The results at the end of this short experimental period are currently being tested by Nick and we look forward to seeing the resulting final works.

An example of Nick's sculptural work

Drummond in Rapid News

Drummond’s work has gained recognition in an article featured on the Rapid News website, see link for more details.

http://www.rapidtoday.com/

Physicality and HCI 2009 @ Churchill College Cambridge

Autonomatic contributed to the ‘Physicality 2009’ workshop in the shape of a paper presentation by Tavs Jorgensen.

Tavs also showed artefacts to illustrate how his research into new types of computer interfaces can be used for practical design application.

The ‘Physicality 2009’ workshop was part of the Human Computer Interaction (HCI 2009) conference held at Churchill College Cambridge from 1^st to the 5^th of September 2009.

The workshop was that last in a series of 3, which have been funded under the ‘Design in the 21^st century’ scheme. The workshops focused on the use of non – GUI (graphical user interface) Computer Interaction and was a collaborative project between University of Lancaster and University Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC).

The workshop also included presentations from Eirk Geelhoed from HP Labs, Mark Evans from Loughborough University and John Bird, Open University. The workshop concluded with an idea and prototype generation session were a number of non-GUI concepts were explored. 

The HCI conference also included an open house event at the nearby Microsoft Research Lab (in the inevitable named ‘William Gates’ Building). Among the project presented her was that ‘Second Light’ by the Microsoft research team , a live 3D holographic display and a DIY approach to an interactive table from London Knowledge Lab.

Proceedings and further details available here: http://www.physicality.org and here:  http://www.hci2009.org/