FST Material Course: Reflections

Hi Narendra,

I'm not sure how you want the submissions to be formatted for the purpose of the blog.. for now I have the plain text and images attached: (straws-and-pins bridge structure photos are by Aditi)

Course: Material [Generic Skills]   |   FST101   |   Semester 2   |   15th January - 24th January

Reflections:

The material course with Narendra was a great way to start the semester.

I was glad to get out of my comfort zone: working with three-dimensional objects and playing with material was an entirely novel experience for me and I enjoying getting my hands dirty!

Working with material in this course helped me pay more attention to the process itself, rather than thinking of a final outcome right from the very start. I approached each material with no expectations – all of the understandings I gained were from scratch, and I spent a lot of time just getting the feel of things. This was true even for something as basic as clay and plaster-of-paris.

From a personal point of view, there was focus on iteration, iteration, and iteration! There were plenty of times when I failed to understand the given material, and my outcome wasn't good enough. I had difficulties working with plaster-of-paris, and after four tries I still couldn't get a stable mould! Yet each time I tried the mould was a little better, improving with my understanding of the process.

Narendra's insights were also quite crucial to this course. I have now started to grasp the brilliance of nature's design a little more, and have realized that a lot of can be gained out of observing even the trees around us. On another level, the straws and pins exercise has also made me appreciate the science and the engineering precision that goes into the building of structures.

I'm quite grateful for this course for the space it gave for me to freely explore. My only qualm is that I wish I had more time to work with more material, or delve deeper with the same set of material. Either way, this was a good start for further experimentation in the future.

Thank you,

Roshan Shakeel

FST 101