I have just returned from the opening of the Refashioning the Fashion exhibition at Object gallery in Sydney. The opening coincided with How You Make It a show curated by Kate Rhodes + encompassing works by a range of contemporary fashion practices. The opening went well and the refashioning show was a really eclectic mix of work by offbeat jewellers (Tiffant Parbs, Julia de Ville etc).  Anyhow - here are some pics:

Here is a link to the residency website which is coming together, from here you can download a pdf that shows all the images: Subtle Technologies

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Well - I have basically, roughly, technically finished my residency. There are of course a few bits and bobs that still need to be tidied up - as ever - however, the bulk of the work has gone baby gone. On Wednesday one full set of prototypes were couriered to Sydney for the refashioning the Fashion exhibition which opens this Friday 20 June at Object Gallery. Another set of diabetes projects were taken to BIO2008 conference in the US (a huge biotech conference that gets around 20000 attendees).

Here are a few pics of the finished prototypes. Photography by Narelle Sheean - she comes highly recommended!

 
Images: Left - diabetes applicator + reloader necklace set
Right - stack of diabetes rings

Image: diabetes applicator necklace

 Image: diabetes 2-part ring 

Needless to say the past few weeks have been really chaotic - deadlines tend to bring about this kind of mayhem. I am really happy with the outcomes though and the experience of working with NanoVic and also Catapult Innovations (product engineers on the diabetes project) has been enourmously exciting. There are a whole range of project refinements that need to be thought about to bring these pictured prototypes to their optimum operational ability - however, for the time being I am going to slowly tidy things up and have some much needed time out. Hooray…

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At last - I can show the world some pics of the vessel I have been labouring over. After many attempts we have decided that this crazy form is too blobby and resembles a computer mouse too much to register. So - here are some pics. The latest vessel (top pics) is the SLA print that I had done at ARRK in Melbourne. The outcome is really beautiful though the process is costly.

The pics below are some of the works in process. These are plastic prints that show the range of variations I’ve been through. This one is known as the gourd:

Below is the stone model - an early prototype:

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I have just realised that I am working for about $10 an hour! This is hilarious as you would get paid more cash in hand in a burger shop than that. Not that I’m complaining - after all 3 degrees and a lot of projects have brought me to this point. So, the point is that? Well - it’s art of course. It’s all for the love of art!

The projects are all galloping towards their completion in a completely insane way. I am currently surrounded by different types of glue, magnets, sticky tape, circuits and much electroluminescent cable. It’s really beautiful stuff though quite unforgiving. It won’t bend and won’t be superglued. So stage three is to recreate the circuits with thinner EL cable. It’s great stuff though not as bright + whiter in colour.

Photoshoot is this afternoon + tomorrow. The diabetes neckpiece is getting put together today by the engineers + will hopefully be functioning in time for the shoot. It will be great to get some really fabulous shots of this work - and even greater for it to be picked up by the courier next week to take to Sydney for the Object show.

The end is nigh -

Detail shot of part of the arsenic water vessel with EL cable behind

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I am really looking forward to having all of my design registrations through so that I can publish some pics of the arsenic vessel - it looks quite extraordinary. In the interim I can publish a few pics of some new little chemical containers I’ve had prototyped in the same material. The arsenic vessel is a translucent pod that encompasses a water vessel, cup lid + a ‘leaf’ that houses electronics and electroluminescent cable. The cable is quite a muted blue and activates when the lid is removed. The vessel has a 0.45um membrane filter in it to remove the Fe2O3 particles. SLA printing has really been the way to go for this project although really costly. The outcome is almost like a glass - quite extraordinary.

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I am currently writing an abstract for the ArtsHealth conference at the University of Newcastle this October. Specifically I have been musing over the potential benefit to innovation through developing robust relations between artists and scientists. Within our context the collaboration has seen the art/science relationship expand from a reactive, representational model where the artist responds to pre-existing technologies, toward one which is focused on the simultaneous synergistic innovation. In this model the artist informs the development of the technologies from the outset and the scientists think more broadly about the human impact of their products prior to committing to particular directions.

Well - that’s what we are moving towards. Much of the project work I have been doing is working with existing technologies and developing ways to humanise their interfaces. Now, towards the end of this development we are starting to open up ways of creating new therapeutic technologies with a human-sensitive interface.

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Well here are some pics of the latest Arsenic neckpiece that I picked up this morning. You can see here it in open and closed mode.

The arsenic water vessel is coming along well - although am not able to publish images until I register the designs. I have decided to get the vessels rapid prototyped in two different materials: an SLA print in a translucent off white and a SLS (stereolithography) in a clear that has a slight yellowish tinge.

I met with a collaborator recently who is advising on casting techniques for the vessels. We spoke about the possibility of doing the pieces as slip casts. In this way I could develop vessels in porcelain which would be fantastic in terms of the artefact’s sense of preciousness. The advantage of this process is that you can cast hollows without having to cut the model up. In order to cast in resin I would need to cup the body of the vessel as you could never remove the internal part of the mould through the mouthpiece. This requires gluing the pieces together + worrying about seam lines etc. This is why rapid prototyping opportunities are so attractive but also extremely costly.

The diabetes projects are also ramping up speed. Catapult Innovations are developing the internal mechanisms and I am prototyping the externals. We are hoping to have the elements finished by late May which is approaching faster than an out of control bullet train.

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Here is an article just published in R+D Review about the relationship between Nanotechnology and Art. It includes some of my projects and snippets of an interview.
rd-review.pdf

Also, an article about the residency from late last year: Band of Hope
Please note: I am not usually that colour!

Here is a new article authored by Melinda Rackham for the April edition of Campus Review: Generating New Creativities.

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Interstitial NS is the specialist vehicle launched from the bionanotechnology activities within Nanotechnology Victoria. They are focused on innovative drug delivery systems. I am collaborating with Interstitial on the Patch Projects. See the following press release for information about the collaboration.

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