Every day we marvel and rejoyce at the new technological advances that make our lives easier.
Yet there are those who, at the same time, mourn the death of craftsmanship claming that technology is killing more traditional forms of creativity.
Designer Christian Fiebig may have found the solution to this dilemma, though, with his “Augmented Craft” project.
Combining technology and craftsmanship, by following a structure in the making via a webcam, this computer interface generates other design suggestions based on special parameters programmed by a designer.
Fiebig grew up in South Germany where he got a BA in Industrial Design followed by a few different internships - from yacht over interface to frequency packaging design - and by a Master in Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven.
After graduating last year he launched with his colleagues Adrien Petrucci and Thomas Vailly an exhibition, Refabrik, at the Dutch Design Week 2011 and, prompted by the feedback he got, Fiebig started working by himself developing innovatively exciting projects.
What inspired the Augmented Crafts project?
Christian Fiebig: On one hand it came from my background; on the other it came from the Design Academy's fascination with crafts. I have some friends from my old school who went into interaction design and generative art. I saw more and faster progresses and interesting experiments at the Design Academy. So one intention was to bring this aspect into crafting, into the actual making of things. At first I thought about solving it within the design of a product, but then I realised that, what really interested me, was the experimenting behind the result. Of course, projects such as the "Bone Chair" by Joris Laarman or "L'Artisan Electronique" by Dries Verbruggen - a mentor at that time - and the whole kinetic hacks including Open CV (Open Source Computer Vision) that where appearing at that time were an inspiration for this direction as well. But I would say that, generally, it was based on the constant question "what's next", and augmenting crafts was one attempt to formulate a next step.
Which could be the applications in the design industry of this device?
Christian Fiebig: I saw it more as a tool for designers to create their own machine/tool to augment the way of designing. I thought of creating a public design tool as well, like Droog's “Make Me” project or similar other projects and I also wrote my BA dissertation on Open Source design. But I think this would need a more developed culture, since, so far, things are still a bit too sketchy in this field, almost comparable to the beginning of the personal computer. So I think an intermediate step in this direction is a semi serial craftsman production by the designer. Quite a few people - included myself with the "Polyhedron Light" project - are already going for this option. Apart from that, on the more commercial side this tool could enable the designer to create a series of different objects with the same specifications, which may get closer to what could be conceived as a sort of design identity that could be used as a blueprint for a serial production. Personally, I would like to see it being hacked or to see people doing something funky with it!
Would you like to push the Augmented Crafts project further?
Christian Fiebig: As I said, I still see it as a designer tool. So I'm not interested in making a sleek application from it, but I would like to share and implement my concept with other designers and developers. The prototype I made with developer Roman Grasy was more to illustrate the concept behind it. On one side I was thinking about refining the process results (that is the spot welded metal strip bowl) for people to use them; on the other, I did quite a few experiments during this project with different approaches, so I'm looking forward to develop those further.
Quite a few projects of yours - the Polyhedron Light, the Polygon Chesterfield chair, the Digital Vanitas skull or the Paper cast milk jug - are based on geometric shapes, what fascinates you about geometry?
Christian Fiebig: During my time in High School, a friend gave me an old 3D program - I spent hours on modelling heads, spaceships, cars and so on. My entire world at that time was dominated by moving vertex points and manipulating polygons. Later on, I mixed this interest with the fascination for design that may derive from pieces such as “Chair One” by Konstantin Grcic or by some Gareth Pugh's dresses and a lot of other stuff also that is being done in the generative art movement. However, all the mentioned objects are just part of one project – "Refabrik", the exhibition I did with Thomas and Adrien on the side of our graduation show. The idea there was to find a method and generate a "world" from it in a small creative production process. Beside that, I like that the polygon shapes are one aspect strongly associated with computer graphics, so almost nostalgic and, by making real objects out of it, there is always this virtual/real area of tension, which I like. I also like what Xavier Veilhan or Arik Levy are doing with it. And of course it’s an easy way to merge conventional things with an obvious touch of our digital age, maybe the equivalent to the pixel graphics in 2D.
So far which has been the project you worked on that excited you the most?
Christian Fiebig: I'm not so distanced from my work, so it's always the project that is unfinished. A lot of excitement for my work, apart from the inspiration and collaboration, comes from the drive to finally show what I worked on for a long time, which is usually exciting, but also long and painful, that's why I like more to look forward than backwards.
Who has been the greatest influence on your career choices?
Christian Fiebig: The biggest influence on me is my dad who was and is really into design, though he is working as a technical engineer. Because of that, we had all these design magazines lying around the house. My idols changed, but in the beginning they fell into the “cliche” category: so the Eames, Dieter Rahms and the idealists from the Bauhaus and the HfG Ulm - that's why I chose to go to the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd. Later on, they became a bit more different and also more fashion and art-related, that's why I chose to go to the Design Academy afterwards.
Would you like to collaborate with a product designer/architect/fashion designer one day?
Christian Fiebig: Collaboration is one of the things that excites me the most in my work - I like to bounce ideas and fight for the best concept. Of course it would be a dream to work with an idol like Konstantin Grcic. But there are also many others, some of which I mentioned already above. It would be quite interesting to work in an unconventional collaboration with people from other disciplines of which I'm not so familiar with such as music, fashion, dance or art and architecture.
What are you working on at the moment?
Christian Fiebig: I'm working on an executable version of my Augumented Craft project with two developers, David Menting and Martin Schneider, that will be presented during the exhibition "The Machine" at the C-Mine in Genk, Belgium (from 3rd June to 7th October 2012).
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