The number of DIY spaces according to Google search stats and news media from the NY Times is flourishing.¹ We are told that such places are not just situated in garages or basements of desolated towns; they are now spots for social interaction, located in urban spheres among bars, restaurants and coffee shops. City hackers and tinkerers with knowledge or ability to resurrect equipment favor these locales from which they intake a daily dose of crafting intoxication. Such emergence is also believed to parallel English coffeehouses of the 17^th and 18^th century, where customers would congregate in the hopes of gaining a first class education for the price of one caffeine shot. ² Indeed, while these physical spaces where once considered incubators of knowledge, the expectation that such specific settings single handedly promote innovation is now challenged, one would even argue that this popularized trajectory of understanding space sedates ideas.

This is a pragmatic study that identifies the places and practices where the opposite of sedation is forged. It describes how the adaptation of diverse technologies; of interlacing physical and virtual spaces; of resourcing to systems capable of becoming flexible models that equally engage humans, programs, and equipment challenges our understandings of what once constituted creative working spheres [ateliers, workshops, coffee shops, design studios, maker-bars. It is concerned with testing the grounds to visualize a new culture of making; of how to intervene in established sequences of existing machinery and of how to develop diversions to alter the behavior of standardized equipment. Accordingly, the significance of this work lies in the data produced and in recording the imprecise tactics, futzing with materials, and applied methods for hacking or tinkering with machinery, all of which aids students and educators to radicalize the learning spheres of conventional academic environments.

In specifics, the research was executed using a problem-based approach that interferes with the conventional formatives of studio design assignments by suspending program base projects. These act underpinned a shift, away from product-oriented thinking, towards iterative design processes. It extended beyond expected interfaces, in that, all exercises required designers to customized jigs and derail the deterministic behavior of the CNC machine. The jigs re-condition the inherent qualities and variables of the machine that typically yield expected outcomes; it allowed for the customized tool and designer to simultaneously provide distinct iterations from the production and reproduction of 2 and 3 dimensional work.

Method:

The mechanics of the work, like historical permutations of artist and architects, follows the understanding that technologies are often repurposed to alter predictable outcomes. Hence, the work presented will exemplify the processes and functions implemented by an interdisciplinary group of design students instructed to develop customized jigs using a network of interactions between humans and scripted software. The details of this approach will be explained by focusing on the sequence of operations and systematic assemblages as applied to CNC equipment and as the machine was re-engaged in re-producing novel drawings through the use of customized jigs.

Explanations for instructions and guidance of how students engaged in a series of exercises requiring sequential steps will provide an extended description of the research methods. And of why a similar settings to that of a “master chef challenge” [where amateur cooks are place in a kitchen to actively collaborate in groups and produce a signature dish], set the stage for a group of design students to be placed in the school’s fabrication lab to heuristically forge teams and engage in following instructions for outputting a relatively simple CNC product. Beyond these task and to explain the sequential format of the remaining exercises, the paper will delineate how each team engaged in communicating ideas and provided revisions interactively and in real-time. This imposition, has allowed each team the flexibility of working at whim, any time and from any place, like the fab-lab, the studio, and even from remote stations such as their home or other wifi arenas. The goal was not to diminish physical presence but rather to afford students a richer understanding about interactive collaborations in producing a series of digital drawings and models that would inform their making process.

Sharing files and using diverse types of software to draw, model and built multiple iterations of the jig afforded students opportunities to test the performativity of the tool prior to the final challenge. Ultimately students were require to built robust jigs capable of holding multiple tools such as brushes, pens, blades, and custom liquid dispensers. Some of these jigs were reconfigurable and capable of rotating along specific xyz axis. The outcomes, which intervened in, established sequences of operations and introduce analog elements {brush, knife, glue etc.] between the machine and the printing surface diverted the behavior of the original machine in ways that all printed iterations become authentic original drawings.

For the final execution, students worked in larger teams. They had to insert a selected jig from their own production into the CNC machine and ultimately test the jig’s ability to produce different drawing iterations without altering the gecode file. In order to win the challenge each team had to demonstrate the ability to navigate through complex digital processes.

Discussion:

From one perspective the procurement of drawings was assumed to be simplistic yet, these series of exercises added manifold levels of drawing interventions and modifications to standardized computer-controlled equipment. It enabled students to engage in producing design fabrication methods of their own conception. These understandings are not the same as building custom robotic tools but the exercises free designers from accepting restrictions imbedded in prefabricated tools and to look for results that are infinitely flexible.

In retrospect this research it is not about the jig or the media but rather design process and workflow. In addition, the worked rendered was possible by connecting static and none static elements to pre programmed artifacts, similar to Jackson Pollock’s paintings where the “Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement”. ³ At the end of the challenge each team achieved success by forging broader understandings of interactions between humans, software and equipment.

Outcomes:

The paper will broadly discuss how students generated authentic differences in their re _production processes and in accordance with their designed jigs. It will also produce a detail analysis of the value and performativity this approach generated through the customization process and unveil the methodological venue for interactive experimentation. The paper will conclude with a delineation of the messy set of successes and failures that we believe adds to the culture knowledge of designing processes in the age of automation.