PROTOTYPING

SECTIONS AND PROFILE

CHAN JOSHUA TIG HAY VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

PROTOTYPE 1:

MATERIAL: IVORY CARDPrototype 1 – Ivory card

The first prototype was made using ivory card and cut using the card cutter. The quality of the cutting was rough and the edges that were supposed to be scored had wrinkles just like ugly “scars”. By cutting with the card cutter, I have learnt that it can only cut large and simple pieces such as squares and triangle with large diameters. It fails to cut intricate geometries and could simply tear the material, causing it to have a rough finish.

Ivory card had a thickness of less than 1mm, it was soft and easily bent. Ivory card was unsuccessful in creating the threatening effect that was desired by the second skin. Moreover, its flexibility made the notch system difficult to func-tion as it is easily deformed. The notch system will fail easily as the thin piece of material could be torn when a slight force is applied.

PROTOTYPE 2:

MATERIAL: 1MM, 1.8MM BOXBOARD In this prototype, boxboard with different thickness was experimented due to its high-er stiffness compared to ivory card. The prototype was divid-ed into 2 parts, which include the tentacle “head” and the tentacle “arm”. 1mm box-board was used to fabricate the former as it appears to be the more delicate and de-tailed structure of the tentacle while 1.8mm boxboard was for the arm as it is slightly stronger and had to be able to support the head.

‘Digital Fabrications’ by Lisa Iwamoto has mentioned three types of sectioning techniques which include ribbing, parallel stacking and waffling.

Waffling had been experimented with the “head” of the tentacle. It was found that this technique is very effective in creating volume and the sense of a solid form. The sharp form of the tentacle head was quite successful in catching the eye of an observer in first sight. It is however, due to the thinness of the material, that it was a bit wobbly when moved around.

On the other hand, the technique of parallel stacking for the spine of the tentacle had been very suc-cessful in providing stability to the prototype. 2 pieces of 1.8m box-board was stacked together to increase the stiffness of the spine. The only drawback was that it failed to encompass visible volume. When observed in from the top view, the spine appeared to be a thin strip of cardboard which was not able to catch attention.

The notch for the ‘hair’ had to be double the width of the 1.8mm boxboard, which makes up to 3.6mm.

Besides sectioning techniques, I have noticed that the most important part of the second skin was not emphasized – the “hair” of the tentacle. Indeed, as an observer, I tend to be-come drawn to the ‘head’ in-stead of the ‘hair’ of tentacle, which are the major sensory re-ceptors of the second skin used to protect my personal space. The threating effect that was aimed to achieve through the hair was not successful. I be-lieve that problem with them is that they are fabricated with the same material as the other components and are of the same size, which fails to make them stand out from the tenta-cle itself.

The width for the other notches were created with the width of the material

In my final prototype, I focused on the ‘hair’ of the tentacles by combining the 2 sectioning techniques explored in the sec-ond prototype and experimented with different materials.

Instead of parallel stacking, the waffling technique was employed to the spine of the tentacle to give it more vol-ume and thickness such that it is able to accommodate more “hair” in different direc-tions.

PROTOTYPE 3:

MATERIAL: 1MM BOXBOARD1MM MOUNTBOARD

The intricate weap-on-like tentacle head that was present in the previous prototype had been eliminated and the end of tentacle is allowed to taper off naturally. This was be-cause it was the ‘hair’ of the tentacle that is used to defend the per-sonal space so it should be emphasized more compared to the head of the tentacle.

The ‘hair’ pieces followed the curve of the spine and varied in sizes. They got smaller in size towards the tip of the tentacle while they in-creased in size and thickness towards other end. This size variation of the ‘hair’ pieces correspond-ed to the alertness and uneasiness of the person wearing the second skin. Smaller pieces towards the end would be smaller such that the intruder is only warned, but as it gets closer to the person the ‘hair’ pieces tend to become more spikey and would cause pain to the intruder when touched, showing that the intruder had reached an unacceptable limit.

NOTCH SYSTEM PROBLEM