appstate solar car

I went to the unveiling of the school's new solar car yesterday. A lot of folks I know on campus assisted with the making of parts for the car. I saw one of the alum, Patrick, who I helped many years ago with the older car they used to race. I'm glad to see them be able to build a more aerodynamic and lighter car than the last car. Needless to say they had a lot of success with the other car and I'm sure they'll do well with this one.

After looking the car over, I start to think about the difference between an engineer and a designer. Many of the students talked about the upgrades to the new car and some of the parts they CNC machined in house as well as had made via outside services. Of course they wanted to talk about how much lighter all of the new components are and their use of different software and testing. The car is definitely a reflection of various components being worked on individually and being engineered to do a specific function. 

However it leaves me wondering about the role of design or beauty and how important "soul" and beauty are and yet it's the first thing that is eliminated when everything is designed in CAD by an engineer who is ONLY worried about function OR their idea of "cool" comes from an untrained engineering eye. In the end we get a collection of parts that create an assembly and eventually an entire car... but are all of the parts speaking to one another or do they have some relation to one another in terms of their design? Maybe I'm just a grumpy curmudgeon, or a think too highly about design, or maybe this is the result of a team of people building something vs. one person's vision. 

Regardless it has me wishing to build a car or a motorcycle from complete scratch (besides maybe the engine). Again, no shame to this team of students intended here, as this old man is still sitting on his couch typing on his computer, waxing on about beauty and aura and there's no handmade wheeled objects to show for all of his lofty talk. Shoot he can't even finish half the projects he starts...

Bucket list for certain...

 

team sunergy

I love the emotion in this video, toward the end. Good stuff...

app state visit

Last week I took a trip to North Carolina to teach a workshop on aluminum etching and to give an artist lecture. I had a great time visiting Appalachian State University. The people were very kind and I had a blast working with students there. One of the professors in Graphic Design, Taek Yeom, is doing some great work in the area of 3D printed ceramics (check out his Instagram). He had built his own delta bot and was printing tons of vessel forms inspired by type. The vessel forms were great! It turns out that Taek is a U of I alumni like myself. Actually there were several U of I alumni working at App State as well as some Illinois "transplants". Everyone was so kind and the students were great! The views in the mountains were beautiful and I was amazed at the small town feel of the place. The downtown post office reminded me of the old post offices from my childhood. Such character and history! Chip took me over to view his Commercial Photography area and while I was there I checked out the Industrial Design studios. I guess there is a long history of commercial printing technology at App State, so I took a ton of pictures there as I knew my Dad would find this interesting since he working in the printing industry for so many years. I completely walked away without any photos of the art department as I was just too busy to take many pictures. I'm kicking myself now... I also wished that I would have had time to drive to Fenland while I was there. Oh well...