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<p>What happens to the work of craft in the age of rapid fabrication? While we've seen a surge in appreciation of craft and the labour of love, we've also witnessed a parallel boom in 3D printing, something which goes hand in hand with the craft renaissance but also stands curiously apart from the hands-on appeal of 'making'. How can you get a feel for algorithms fashioning an object?</p>
With that question on our mind we were blown away by a recent project which allows you to do just that: Joong Han Lee has set himself the task of humanising the 3D-printing process and has done so with Haptic Intelligentsia, an installation that tethers your body to the repetitive, computational, processes responsible for 3D printing.
<p>His installation uses a high-tech haptic prosthetic to guide your hand, with which you wield a hot glue gun. Using only haptic feedback you trace the virtual shape into reality. Thisdesign intervention is far from some cybernetic nightmare as the hand merely guides you where to go, and whether or not you obey or how much glue you squeeze on each pass, is completely up to the participant. This results in a wonderfully contingent end product, a far cry from the carbon copy output typical of digital reproductions (see the video for a demonstration).</p>
<p>3D printers are plummeting in price but we're equally attracted to these outside the box deployments of the same principles. For the budding digital craftsperson this could be the perfect gateway drug to 3D printing, something which allows you to get a feel for the algorithms you are working with.</p>