Upcycle Project Specifications 2024

Due dates:

• Upcycle Artifact must be completed by 11 am Monday Feb 19.
  • You are encouraged to revise and improve it later, but this is the version you must document for critique. If you revise it, submit an additional post about it later too.
• Complete Upcycle report due midnight Wednesday Feb 21
• 2 Critiques of Upcycle reports due Midnight Sunday Feb 25

Upcycle Artifact

From the Initial Assignments document:

This will be your individual warm-up project. Create an artifact that conforms to an aesthetic, either the aesthetic you researched, or one that someone else in class posted about. Upcycle means that your artifact should be constructed of inexpensive or recycled material, something easy to manipulate using additive or subtractive techniques: cardboard (can be laser cut), foam core, drywall, sticks, plastic forks or plates, soda cans/bottles, Legos, bubble wrap or packing peanuts, stir sticks, straw, hay, cloth, papier Mache, tires, DVDs, PVC, food, plastic bags, rocks, snow, ice,  etc. Try to avoid buying new materials. (A hint: repetition is a common component of many artworks, so for example, if you use rubber bands, use a lot of rubber bands). You’ll be asked to document your design and construction process, so keep track of where you find inspiration. In particular, if you use an existing design you must document the source, but hopefully you will use this opportunity to create something new. Your artifact should be of moderate size, something between 0.5 and 8 cubic feet; can be small but must be viewable without a microscope, or up to as large as a chair. Plan to video the finished artifact for a short in-class presentations during the week of Feb 19, and a formal report will be due as a blog post Weds Feb 21. You might want to make one of those time-lapse assembly videos for extra awesomeness.

Upcycle Report/Blog post

Length: As long as it needs to be to include the following. This documents your efforts for one third of the semester. Don’t scrimp.

• Your title should be the name of your artifact, not ‘Upcycle Project’.
• Complete report due in as blog post, midnight Weds Feb 21.
• Set a Featured Image.
• OK to cut and paste from Inspiration, and Progress posts.
• Describe and cite your inspirations and any existing designs that you adapted. You must cite ALL content on your blogs for this course! Any photo that you did not take, any text that you did not write from scratch MUST have a citation, a source link. If you can’t remember where you got something DON’T USE IT. Go back and search for something similar that you can cite.
• Describe your vision for your project, the specifications that you developed for its function and its form, your artistic vision and aesthetic. What were you trying for?
• Add a detailed description of your fabrication process. Document with lots of sketches, photos or video. Minimum 5 photos, and/or 1 minute video.
• An illustrated description of the final artifact. Again, photos, videos, cad drawings as appropriate. Full description of the actual artifact.
• Compare what you achieved to your FUNCTIONAL goals.
• Compare what you achieved to your ARTISTIC goals. This your aesthetic, your metric.
• What is next? Will you refine this artifact? Keep it, recycle it, try again someday?
• Optional: Include a link to the video you made of your live presentation, or another video that provides and equivalent full description and demo. If you want this to appear with a play button instead of a Featured Image, insert the link to your video (upload to YouTube or Vimeo) as the first text in your post, and set your post type to Video.

Two In-Depth Written Critiques

Choose two Upcycle Final Report posts to read carefully. See the Blog and Critique Policy for more guidelines.

Upcycle Presentations

In class starting Monday Feb 19 (see Schedule), we will have presentations in pods, the same pods you’ve been having discussions in. Everybody is expected to serve as a Critique Facilitator at some point this semester for one of the Upcycle, Design Preview or Final Project critique days. Your pod has a grad student (Pod Facilitator) who will coordinate to make sure there is a Critique Facilitator for each session to keep things moving along. The Critique Facilitator will host the zoom room for the critique, and post the link in the pod slack channel. The Critique Facilitator will record their presentations if requested. The Pod Facilitator will take roll, note who facilitated and who presented in the pod google sheet. Even on the days you are not presenting, you must attend with camera on and comment. This is another opportunity to hone your critique skills.

Each student will give a presentation on their Upcycle project, with the content of the presentation to mirror the written report, detailed above.  Plan to talk for 7 minutes, then take 8 minutes for critique, then one minute for the next speaker to get set up while others are typing comments. This way 3 students can speak each period, but it’s OK for the critique to go long; there is room in the schedule. Presentations and critiques that are too short are not good.  The Critique Facilitator is expected to encourage discussion by contributing their views and soliciting input from everybody. The order of speakers will be set by who volunteers to go next, but if desired your pod can decide to set an order.

It’s up to you to make sure you can present via Zoom. Practice sharing your screen and using the computer audio and optimization when sharing a video. If you want, you can pre-record your whole presentation, but this is not expected. Extemporaneous presentation experience is valuable.

Say Thank You at the end of your talk. Do NOT say ‘Any questions’ right away; instead, wait until after the applause. Then ask for questions. It’s magic. It completes the rhythm of the talk. Allowing applause sets the audience free to respond.