Self-Holder

I did one of my problems I identified in my own life bc I didn’t have the chance to talk in depth w/ my partner about his problems unfortunately.

I focused on the act of sharing yourself with other people, specifically strangers or acquaintances - and one of the ways in which we do that currently is through icebreakers… I personally really don’t like them, and would much rather avoid them at all costs - so I wanted to come up with something that still had the power to communicate information about me with the same level of intimacy that being in an icebreaker with somebody else establishes in a bond; but in a more passive way and free of the anxiety that arrives with coming up with answers to silly questions on the spot that somehow is supposed to represent the many facets of your most basic characteristics…

The best way to get to know people passively is by hearing about them or learning about them through others - get to know them based on how other people see them or describe them!

It’s something we do in everyday life anyway; so I knew this was important to incorporate in my design.

So I decided I would make a head (modeled after my own), mounted on a tile that I could hang on a wall (I plan to hang it on the wall of my studio...) which would contain a scroll filled with the ways that other people would describe me to a stranger that could be pulled out of the mouth and read.

This definitely solves all my problems revolving around trying to achieve a passive way of sharing information with others that is far from the anxiety or bashfulness producing exercise that is the icebreaker.

People can just walk up, read the scroll, learn some stuff about me, and then that’s that.

No embarrassment needed. 

The process was challenging…

I first started out naively believing that I could just model the entirety of the face in fusion 360. And I did, I got the profile down to a ‘t“, but then when I turned the model I realized I forgot about the front of the face entirely… And that’s when I resorted to just 3-D scanning my face with the help of a friend.

Then I spent a good day trying to figure out how and where I could 3d scan my face with a friend and got access to an ipad 3d scanner called structrsensor for the low low price of a melted fun size milky way that I had in my pocket.

Figuring that out was an adventure and then I had to try to take everything into meshmixer to cut down and revise which was an experience in and of itself - I then took it into fusion but there were too many facets (75,000) so I took it into meshlab and cut down that number to 900.

Foolishly - I thought that I wouldn’t run into any issues turning the mesh into a body within fusion but that turned into it’s own set of challenges so I took the plan from the slicer fusion plug in and had to edit certain aspects in illustrator before printing.

I also faced many challenges in actually getting the laser-cutter to recognize my files and project them correctly but after many modifications and assistance from a generous monitor, was able to resolve that issue…

BUT IN SHORT

After all of the fiascos I 3d-printed the inner components, and lasercut the face and mounting tile.

They had no mirrored acrylic in the ideate lending booth so I went the DIY route

and spray painted the acrylic with mirror spray paint

And attached my scroll and ta-daa!

All done

Below are all of the photographs of the finished thing and some process photos.