Ron Arad was interviewed about his use of rapid-prototyping technology to coincide with the Design Museum‘s The Future is Here exhibition, currently displaying some of his pioneering and more recent 3D-printed work.
“I discovered [3D printing] when it was called rapid prototyping… and I thought ‘here’s another way of making things’,” he says. “Things are very fast, you can draw something in the morning and print it in the evening.”
Currently exhibited at the museum, Arad’s Not Made by Hand, Not Made in China collection of spiralling, flexible 3D-printed designs was launched during Milan design week in 2000.
“I remember showing it to [designer] Achille Castiglioni when he came to see it,” says Arad. “I remember taking the time and explaining to him what it is, and I thought ‘this is great, I have something new to teach one of my heroes’.”
He reminisces about how exciting it was to experiment with the new materials and machinery, but says over time it was overused just as synthesisers were in music.
“The technology completely took over the studio and it was the most interesting thing we were dealing with, and predictably it became commonplace,” he remembers. “Synthesisers were abused completely and so is this technology we’re talking about.” …
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
