updated front page state of the art

docs/projects/final-project.md

-# Open Material Archiving
+#Open Material Archiving
 
 ![](../images/presentation-4.jpg)*Material samples, Loes Bogers, 2020*
 
-##Goals of the project
+##Scaffolding a context-aware global material commons: what will your local archive contain?
+
 
 **The goal of this project was to explore and develop simple methods for open material archiving....**
 
@@ -14,11 +15,11 @@
 - imaging collaborative open archiving that can facilitate critique, contestations, suggestions, updates and reviews from peers
 - offering a package that allows novices to learn, and educators to get started in a systematic way...
 - ... and encourages experienced material designers and "alchemists" to continue asking the hard critical questions regarding sustainability and share those considerations with each recipe or ingredient.
- 
+
 ##Outcomes
 
 - [**development brief**](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YRHikbOnj0WLbVhc2BELcTUBk30rFFGOpYzF1ra7Jp4/edit?usp=sharing) for a context-aware, collaborative materials database that enables peer feedback, ratings and constructive criticism. 
-- [**25 foundational recipes**](../recipes) to start your own sample archive (based on ingredients that are largely locally abundant in the Netherlands). What will be your list of 25?
+- [**25 foundational recipes**](../recipes) to start your own sample archive (based on ingredients that are largely locally abundant in the Netherlands). What will be *your* list of 25 recipes using resources abundant in your location?
 - [**list of tools**](../tools) needed to start your own material samples archive
 - [**video tutorial**](https://class.textile-academy.org/2020/loes.bogers/projects/templates/tactilityvideo/) for capturing tactility of material samples
 - [**template for new recipes**](https://class.textile-academy.org/2020/loes.bogers/projects/templates/new_recipe/), to help you capture the entire proces, ask the hard contextual questions and document relevant considerations when contributing new recipes to the database.
@@ -32,7 +33,87 @@
 - realising the online database further with a designer and developer
 - develop, document and add methods for simple material testing
 - add section for open-source DIY tools for fabrication
-- testing these formats as tools for learning in higher education and fabricademy, gathering peer feedback from peers
+- further testing of the formats as tools for learning in higher education and fabricademy, gathering peer feedback from peers
+ 
+##State of the art 
+
+We are in a moment where more and more designers are starting to recognize the importance of materials and unlearning our wasteful and toxic addictions to plastic and other common design materials. This is a wildly interesting field that can be approached from many perspectives. This project contributes less to the *material engineering* side of materials research, but is more focused on the DIY, open-source approaches to it that can be useful for designers and makers to be used in critical material imaginaries.
+
+Below is a discussion of a small selection from the current state of the art. This project is hugely indebted to each of them and the amazing work the people behind it have done. The critiques here come from a commitment to push the work further and extend the work others did before us. If you feel like your work should be acknowledged here or in the recipes, please contact me at l[dot]bogers[at]hva[dot]nl.
+
+###1. Classifying new materials
+
+**Material District**
+
+Commercial material archives are committed to showcasing new materials and rethinking ways of presenting material innovations (which can either be high-tech and innovative, or more innovative in the sense of sustainability). [Material District](https://materialdistrict.com/) is a match-making platform for organisations involved in R&D of materials, and design professionals. This organization hosts an annual materials fair in the Netherlands, and hosts an online archive, where new materials are logged together with some technical material properties, and information about manufacturers. New materials can be showcased at a cost of €100 per year. 
+
+Their role in matchmaking R&D with designers and industry is important and pivotal in promoting the uptake of new materials (Damadei, 2019). 
+
+But the classification systems continue to rely on traditional material families like wood, ceramics, and metals, and except for the container category of "other naturals". New and often hybrid materials require us to rethink such categories (Kula & Ternaux 2019: p. 337-338), but new models are still lacking. 
+
+One avenue might be to explore and make explicit the tactile qualities of materials, alongside their technical properties. Material District does this in a summarized way (see image below) that gives an overview of the material that is accessible to novices. But their clients have to continue to rely on the big materials fair for get a "feel" for the different materials on offer. 
+
+![](../images/materialdistrict.jpg)*Properties listed for each material on the Material District Archive, screenshot of their website, 2020*
+
+**MATto Design**
+
+Besides the inspiration taken from Material District, the archive put forward here incorporates the sensory descriptors and categories proposed by Beatrize Lerma in her article "Materials ecoefficiency and perception. Proceedings" (2010: pp. 1-8). Discussing an existing reference tool called SensoTact, she describes a sensory vocabular to describe materials (e.g. stickiness, rough/smooth, hot/cold) in addition to parameters to evaluate socalled *material eco-compatibility*. [MATto](http://www.matto.design/en/home/), the materials library and consultancy service at the Politecnico di Torino has adopted this approach (but is not open to the public). To describe relative sustainability, Lerma suggests to discuss parameters such as toxicity, energy involved in production, shelf life, and distance to source. 
+
+**Physical forms vs. material families**
+
+In parallel to the traditional materials families (wood, metals, etc) the MATto materials library *also* organizes materials more in line with fabrication methods and physical forms that are recognizable and useful to designers. Users can also navigate the archive by browsing collections put together based on their physical form: e.g. slabs, tubes & pipes, foam and expanded materials, textiles, grilles & nets, surface treatments, gels and pastes, grains/flakes & powders, and so on. This is an interesting approach that allows designers to consider different alternatives for a part of a product. For example someone designing a speaker might browse the "grilles and nets" sections and find composites made with yarns or other fibres she would never find browsing polymers. The physical forms are another method we explore in this project, but in a more simplified manner. User interviews I did during the project showed that these categories were the most meaninful that could capture all: surfaces & surface treatments, solids, powders/grains, liquids/gels, and strings/tubes.
+
+![](../images/matto.jpg)*Phycisal forms and material families alongside one another, Screenshot from their website, 2020*
+
+###2. Physical Archives
+
+**Tactile experience of materials**
+The ways of categorizing and describing material samples listed above are useful and easy to implement in text-based databases. But can only give a limited feel for the aesthetics and tactility of a material. 
+
+The physical [Material Archive](https://viftrup.com/textilelab) developed at Textile Lab Waag, by Cecilia Raspanti and designed by Maria Viftrup and others from 2017 onwards continues to be one of the most effective ways of offering alternatives to designers. Not only because it offers visitors to meet the materials, and touch, smell and manipulate them, but it also allows them to take them home. Not in the sense that they can take the materials home, but because the recipe and technique to recreate the material is documented on the back of the label attached to the sample. 
+
+<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/243628535" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/243628535">Material Archive promo - by Maria Viftrup</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/waagmakers">Makers of Waag</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
+
+Their archive is divided into "raw" and "made" materials and a loosely organised but effective tagging system to indicate what kind of material a given sample is. The downside here, is that the Material Archive at Textile Lab Waag does not have any kind of online accessible version of the archive, and updating recipes when new insights are formed can be an issue, as a recipe will always be tied to that particular tangible sample. This project hopes to contribute to their efforts by suggesting ways to bring this amazing archive online. 
+
+![](../images/institutemaking.jpg)*The materials library at the Institute of Making, UCL London, Loes Bogers, 2020*
+
+The [Institute of Making](https://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/) at UCL London has a materials library with another interesting approach that lets go of classification systems altogether. Their exhibition space continuously changes to offer fresh perspectives on materials, and can vary from chronological ordering, or it can be an exhibition around controversial materials. The story is the organizing factor here, and always depends on the availability of staff and slots to visit the archive. They offer a valuable (design-)historical perspective on materials, but do not organize or offer any practical information for manufacturing and manipulating them. 
+
+
+###3. Open-access publications: Material Activism
+
+Great! But static. How do we make it ongoing?
+
+
+###4. Collaborative databases: Materiom 
+ 
+Great! Ongoing, new stuff, add your own. 
+
+But no peer reviewing, no relationships, no context, no history
+
+
+
+
+##References
+
+Lerma 2010 1-8
+Material District
+Materiology
+Institute of Making
+Material Archive Waag
+MATto
+Material Activism
+Bioplastics Cookbook
+Materiom
+
+
+
+
+-----------------
+-----------------
+
 
 ##Overview
 

docs/projects/templates/new_recipe.md

@@ -54,11 +54,11 @@ Approx. [number] [unit]
 ###Tools
 
 1. **[Tool] [optional or not?]**
-	- Is this ingredient optional?  Yes/No
+	- Is this tool optional?  Yes/No
 1. **[Tool] [optional or not?]**
-	- Is this ingredient optional?  Yes/No
+	- Is this tool optional?  Yes/No
 1. **[Tool] [optional or not?]**
-	- Is this ingredient optional?  Yes/No
+	- Is this tool optional?  Yes/No
 
 
 ###Method