Physical and Digital Symbiosis

Microlab Hall, Dutch Design Week Eindhoven, October 22-30

The project shows how physical and digital approaches and techniques merge within an improved clay-based working process.

Tiles & Totems

With her Tactile Totem: Ceramics, Nina van Bart adds a new chapter to an ongoing project, in which she concludes her material research with an object composed of stackable containers which reveal diverse possibilities and innovate traditions. Furthermore, a collection of Tactile Tiles equally endorses how current and future-oriented digital technologies can be useful for our approach to ceramics and to a historical craft. Both where appropriately brought together under the telling title ‘Physical and Digital Symbiosis’.

We were delighted to be involved in this research and matched our teaming with designers and experts from the necessary disciplines. So, this time, it was a fruitful gathering of people from Set and Surface Design (Nina van Bart), Procedural Design (Roel Deden) and Ceramic Design (Marieke Heesbeen), which we further enriched with a collaboration with 3D printing company Marketiger. As always, it was our goal that the techniques developed, and the procedures proposed would make the most of both digital and physical contexts, hence the title.

Research into touch and efficient processes

‘Physical and Digital Symbiosis’ is as much a combination of research into matter and touch as it is a commitment to optimised, digital processes that are carried out efficiently. As such, we again chose to initially render and virtually visualize models, freeing up precious time that we could invest in the creative thinking process. It also makes this design not only about the products and the specific project, but equally shows how people can work together and how creative interaction is at its best.

Digital technologies and crafts

‘Physical and Digital Symbiosis’ was selected as a response to the Open Call of the Dutch Crafts Council. The creation and its upfront research thus received its first presentation within the group exhibition New Crafts that went on during Dutch Design Week 2022 and was built in the Microlab Hall. This collaborative project showed how digital technologies and crafts advance each other. 

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