Automake Physics: Random Craft Production

The project on which this paper is based concerns combining computer based generative systems
with craft knowledge and digital production technologies to create new ways of designing and making
artefacts which challenge the boundaries between designer, maker and consumer, and between craft
and industrial production. This research project involves the development of a digital generative
system for the creation of one-off craft/design works based on randomly generated 3D matrices. The
system is to be used by the maker/researcher involved in the project to develop new work, and most
significantly, by consumers who will then become ‘co-creators’ of their own craft/design works
without any CAD or advanced computer skills. The data produced by this new software will then be
used to control a range of rapid prototyping/manufacturing machines, which will physically produce
the new works.