Hi folks. This is just a quick update to say thanks for the links, and to let you know that there are a couple of new write-ups of material explorations in the works.

This material exploration took us in the direction of fabric and, in particular, what non-specialists would do at home if the phone encouraged them to make use of handicrafts and fabric.

As I suggested in Material explorations, we picked a number of different materials to explore in this way (there are some others where we’ve used a different approach). I’ll be linking to them here, and this post will bounce to the top whenever a new one is added.

Our major challenge in this strand isn’t “how do we make a phone out of wood?” A mobile phone isn’t just a physical form, so instead we need to investigate how wood affects the networks of people using and creating the phones. Once we’ve researched this, we can design a mobile phone that illustrates those changes, and build it properly. This brings us to the real challenge: How do we even begin finding the answers?

The material exploration brief in this case dealt with the ways mechanical forms could be of interest when using wood. Through this we made particular references to traditional toy making, cabinet making and cigar boxes (these are areas that demonstrate the specific material qualities of wood that had attracted us).