small stuff

docs/projects/outcomes/24_core_recipes.md

@@ -11,7 +11,14 @@
 
 These are the material samples I crafted over the course of this project. There were many more, but they did not make the cut when I'd set my criteria in stone. These recipes can also be used by anyone who wants to start of a local physical archive (maybe in your school, community center, research group or library). Crafting this basic collection will teach you the foundational techniques that many other recipes will build upon, and require you to collect the basic tools and ingredients you will need. By making this archive starter of material samples, you will learn some of the most important techniques to start your own R&D lab for design materials and you will have a variety of physical forms (solids, sheets, composites) to build upon. Further research is advised in case you wish to use any of these for commercial purposes (copyright info is listed in the recipes too, where known).
 
-**Putting my own recipe templates into practice**
+**Selection criteria**
+
+1.  All these materials are easily and harmlessly **absorbed by nature within 90 days** and/or can be turned into compost, *without* controlled conditions that require industrial composting facilities. And/or the material can be re-used with no or little additional resources. Biodegradability as a sustainability label is too often used to greenwash e.g. disposable packaging materials, so these criteria were chosen as point of departure.
+1. Recipes should be based on **local abundance**: the ingredients should be sourced and/or produced around my location (e.g. potato starch over tapioca, and madder over cochineal). 
+1. The collection of recipes chosen should **cover a range of foundational biofabrication techniques**
+1. Executing the recipes as documented should **result in a variety of physical forms** that makers and designers from different fields can recognize as semi-formed design materials. 
+
+**Putting my recipe templates into practice**
 
 The recipes ask all the questions that came up during my learning and research process that formed the foundation for the recipe templates. Questions that come up as you learn might be: how do you know when to demould a bioresin? How long does it take before it reached its final form and doesn't shrink anymore? Where does this recipe even come from? What makes a material sustainable? If it is sustainable, what other arguments might there be that make a material contested or controversial to use? Some questions don't have answers yet because they require further research. Consider them invitations to continue the exploration. 
 
@@ -19,11 +26,15 @@ The recipes ask all the questions that came up during my learning and research p
 
 **Sustainability beyond biodegradability**
 
-All the materials listed here are easily and harmlessly absorbed by nature within 90 days and/or can be turned into compost, *without* controlled conditions assuming industrial facilities, and/or the material can be re-used with no or little additional resources. Many - but not all - are vegan. This rather specific point of departure is important because biodregadability - especially in the realm of bioplastics - has become a very loosely used term that connotates "better" plastics, even though some bioplastics are chemically identical to petroleumbased options, even when they are crafted from "natural" ingredients like corn starch. 
+All the materials listed here are easily and harmlessly absorbed by nature within 90 days and/or can be turned into compost, *without* controlled conditions assuming industrial facilities, and/or the material can be re-used with no or little additional resources. Many - but not all - are vegan. This rather specific point of departure is important because biodegradability - especially in the realm of bioplastics - has become a very loosely used term that connotates "better" plastics, even though some bioplastics are chemically identical to petroleumbased options, even when they are crafted from "natural" ingredients like corn starch. 
 
 **Tools and ingredients**
 
-I've compiled an overview of tools and materials needed to recreate these recipes: 
+I've compiled an overview of tools and materials needed to recreate these recipes in the Netherlands: 
 
-- [Ingredients and consumables](../../../files/ingredients_consumables/)
+- [Ingredients & consumables ](../../../files/ingredients_consumables/)
 - [Tools](../../../files/tools/)
+
+**Future developments**
+
+I will design a display for these samples together with my students once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided enough for us to acess the lab again. All the samples will be labeled and displayed to allow students and colleagues at my university lab to explore these materials, recipes, and start contributing to the collection with their own experiments. 

docs/projects/outcomes/features_wishlist.md

@@ -8,22 +8,23 @@ The slideshow at the bottom of this page is a mock-up of an imagined online arch
 
 ##Summary
 
-**Meaningful filtering and correlating with additional fields**
+**Meaningful filtering and correlating using additional fields**
 
 The contribution envisioned here is more about the way database entries might allow for other perspective. For example: how might we approach recipes, ingredients, and user locations in more *relational* ways? How can new fields that ask contributors to make more specific and nuanced ethical and ecological considerations, be turned into meaningfully searchable tags and filtering? This mock-up tries to probe such questions by imagining such an archiving system and different roles for different kinds of users. 
 
-
 **Proposed features**
 
-Developing a working database was outside the scope of this project, and connecting to existing initiatives may be a better avenue to explore. The design of the system proposed here: 
+Developing a working database was outside the scope of this project, and connecting to existing initiatives may be a better avenue to explore. The design of the kind of system proposed here would include these features: 
 
-- 	**enables peer feedback**, ratings and constructive criticism
--  incorporate **additional fields** in contribution forms, to promote, include and build more nuanced understanding of the historical, cultural and ecological context of materials and ingredients.
--  include **audiovisual material** that can convey tactile and sensorial qualities of samples
--  its logics of organisation and additional required fields can promote and **add a critical angle on the way we consider new naturals** as material alternatives. It allows users to filter on the properties as well as constituent ingredients *and* other tags pulled from the fields of the recipe and ingredient forms that may all become relevant filtering criteria: such as local abundance in your area. Most successful recipes, or most contested ones that could be further researched. 
--  the way the datastructures are linked **allow for analysis of popular recipes and correlations** with geographical regions, environmental conditions and local abundance of certain ingredients
+- **features for peer feedback**, ratings and constructive criticism;
+- **additional fields** in contribution forms that help us build more nuanced understandings of the historical, cultural and ecological context of materials and ingredients (e.g. eco-compatibility tags);
+-  include **audiovisual material** that can convey tactile and sensorial qualities of samples;
+-  add additional required fields (in recipe and ingredient forms) to **add a critical angle on the way we consider new naturals** as material alternatives. 
+-  use these new fields as **additional filtering criteria** for e.g. local abundance in your area, most successful recipes, or most contested ones that could be further researched. 
+-  once used by enough users, the way the datastructures are linked can **allow for further analysis of popular recipes and correlations** with e.g. geographical regions, environmental conditions and local abundance of certain ingredients: so in the future we might be able to learn from the database-as-dataset. 
+-  **differentiation of "roles" and rituals** (reader vs. writer vs. admin vs. superadmin) to ensure quality control and feedback loops based on experience and expertise. 
 
-The suggested features may be included in existing archives (preferred) or be a starting point for a new initiative. Do get in touch if you are are working on material archiving and would like to explore this further! l[dot]bogers[at]hva[dot]nl
+The suggested features may be included in existing archives (preferred) or be a starting point for a new initiative. Do get in touch if you are are working on material archiving and would like to explore this further: l[dot]bogers[at]hva[dot]nl
 
 <iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSOITFNlLhDRTC-h4-3g8u4V4mp2aVy5ONBdhKwN_7VJFTJSQW5lZD5VXOjcPAiExnz6gH1xD5-qoX1/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" frameborder="0" width="600" height="629" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
 

docs/projects/outcomes/new_naturals_manifesto.md

@@ -4,18 +4,18 @@
 
 *As a starting point for the project, I wrote this manifesto for the obsessively curious, the critical makers, the material nerds. Now let's keep going. By Loes Bogers, 2 April 2020*
 
-- What is a material? **If we can perceive "stuff" as *useful*, it is a material**. 
-- if usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps what we need most is to do **change and open up our perception**
-- if material = useful "stuff", we perhaps we should **evaluate materials in terms of what they *do*** (the superpower they have) and less by what the *are* (in terms of traditional taxonomies)
-- **we need *ongoing* material activism**, especially in the face of smart and advanced materials increasing popularity. What could be methods to continue to demystify material craftsmanship as materials research evolves and becomes highly technical and less accessible due to increasing complexity as well as patenting intellectual property?
-- **if plastics are not the only issue, then bioplastics are not the only solution**, dyeing and chemical treatments and finishes are equally if hazardous for the environment and workers. Biodegradable, or even biocompostable plastics will not solve all our problems
-- **designers and makers need to get comfortable drawing from different fields of knowledge** and their methods like empirical approaches and systematic ways of experimenting and documenting, such as in fields of biology, chemistry and other "hard" sciences.
-- but we need to be equally **aware of history, cultural heritage and the politics of design materials** in terms of their cultural history, as well as their socio-economic and ecological implications. 
-- **we need open-source material knowledge**: if resources are part of the commons, then so are material kowledge and craftsmanship, but we need to contiue to build it up and keep it alive. 
-- **make materials from scratch**: it will bring the entire ecology of material knowledge, production, distribution and legislation into view and open to questioning;
-- **cultivate material craftsmanship** and understand the importance time and controlled environments effect on a material's growth/curing/drying. But equally, learn to work *with* any material (rather than expecting it to bend to your will). 
-- look for and learn to appreciate **locally abundant resources** and their potential, and start to see them appear in very unlikely places;
-- **spend time with materials and resources**, attention and dedication to the cooking/curing/drying or growth process will allow you to start seeing alternative uses, options, applications.
-- **learn from practices from all over the world** to strengthen your own locally centered practice (not yielding to the temptation of turning that wealth of knowledge into a candy shop to pick and choose from);
-- **ask questions to stay with the trouble** of socalled sustainable materials, rather than setting out to find silver bullet solutions.
-- **document and share** your process, research and outcomes using formats to describe their sensory and technical properties, and give an impression of their tactile, and auditory qualities.
\ No newline at end of file
+1. What is a material? **If we can perceive "stuff" as *useful*, it is a material**; 
+1. if usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps what we need most is to do **diversify *and* nuance our understanding of usefulness**
+1. if material = useful "stuff", we perhaps we should **evaluate materials in terms of what they *do*** (the superpowers they have) and less by what the *are* (in terms of traditional taxonomies);
+1. **we need *ongoing* material activism**, especially in the face of smart and advanced materials increasing popularity. What could be methods to continue to demystify material craftsmanship as materials research evolves and becomes highly technical and less accessible due to increasing complexity as well as patenting intellectual property?
+1. **if plastics are not the only issue, then bioplastics are not the only solution**, dyeing and chemical treatments and finishes are equally if hazardous for the environment and workers. Biodegradable, or even biocompostable plastics will not solve all our problems;
+1. **designers and makers need to get comfortable drawing from different fields of knowledge** and their methods like empirical approaches and systematic ways of experimenting and documenting, such as in fields of biology, chemistry and other "hard" sciences.
+1. but we need to be equally **aware of history, cultural heritage and the politics of design materials** in terms of their cultural history, as well as their socio-economic and ecological implications:
+1. **we need open-source material knowledge**. If resources are part of the commons, then so are material knowledge and craftsmanship, but we need to continue to build it up and keep it alive. 
+1. **make materials from scratch**. It will bring the entire ecology of material knowledge, production, distribution and legislation into view and open to questioning;
+1. **cultivate material craftsmanship** and understand the importance time and controlled environments effect on a material's growth/curing/drying. But equally, learn to work *with* any material (rather than expecting it to bend to your will). 
+1. look for and learn to appreciate **locally abundant resources** and their potential, and start to see them appear in very unlikely places;
+1. **spend time with materials and resources**. Attention and dedication to the cooking/curing/drying or growth process will allow you to start seeing alternative uses, options, applications (and are necessary in understanding how be somewhat in control of their final form).
+1. **learn from practices from all over the world** to strengthen your own locally centered practice. Or: let's not yield to the temptation of turning the wealth material resources and knowledge into yet another candy shop to pick and choose from at will;
+1. **ask questions to stay with the trouble** of so-called sustainable materials, rather than setting out to find silver bullet solutions (see also point 5).
+1. **document and share** your process, research and outcomes using formats to describe their sensory and technical properties, and give an impression of their tactile, and auditory qualities.
\ No newline at end of file

docs/projects/outcomes/tools_and_templates/label_templates.md

@@ -81,9 +81,9 @@ The label designs were originally created by [Maria Viftrup](https://viftrup.com
 
 These labels are 21 x 20 cm (WxH)
 
-[InDesign file for large labels](../templates/label_large.indd)
+[InDesign file for large labels](./label_large.indd)
 
-[PDF file for large labels](../templates/label_large.pdf)
+[PDF file for large labels](./label_large.pdf)
 
 ### Medium labels