John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

Holy Ghost (detail)
It is very different to how things used to be where normally I’m working on a
design project I had to have a studio full of bits and bobs and models at various
stages of this project - physical models – whereas now I’m seeing the thing on
the screen the whole time. In fact with Entropia the prototype was built out in
Italy I didn’t see the models until long after the client had seen them. Which is
quite an eerie feeling when the client – you are talking to the client on the
telephone – he’s looking at the model and you are not you’re seeing it on the
screen but it’s not quite the same thing.
So this is the model as it ended up. It is quite an interesting to work with
something other than a lamp form. SLS® is – if you’ve seen the process – it is a
textured finish that you get with this. It’s fairly rough and ready and
interestingly enough I was at a conference last week the TCT (Time
Compression Technologies Conference) where they were talking about the
future of rapid manufacture and saying that the big hurdle is the finish of SLS®.
I was saying in my talk how beautiful the finish of this was because as a designer
working with objects that are on the art fringe it is a very beautiful material.
Particularly when you use it for lighting because when it is back lit it is almost
like a wood grain finish. The problem with it is it being a textured finish it picks
up grease basically so if you handle these things they do get dirty over time.
Also they are UV sensitive so if they are in strong sunlight they will yellow over
time. I think there are a lot of people out there with nice expensive lights that
maybe in ten years time will be a bit sort of nicotine yellow.
Finish is one of the big issues it would be nice to have a really nice glossy finish
you could achieve via rapid prototyping. The first objects I did were hand
- 363 -