← Computational Craft | Salil Parekh

Week 10 | Soft Speaker

The soft speaker was a tricky one to create–not helped by the number of mistakes I was making while sewing it. The couched stitch is fantastic technique, surely one that I will use in the future to create circuits.

Front view of the speaker

Behind the scenes-what a mess!

Speaker connected to laptop

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Video of speaker in action

I didn't expect the speaker to work well, given that the coils are spaced out and the uneveness of the spiral, but it was surprisingly loud!

“So what kinds of artefacts or products satisfy our soul and our senses? What is the essence of such an artefact?”

This is the one sentence that stood out to me on reading the paper written by Mili. I do agree with the author that certain textiles and the craft of textiles give them the characteristics required to be more than just a functional product, and reach out to us on a deeper level. However, I’m afraid that Zaccai missed the mark by a light year with their take on industrial products not being sufficient to satisfy our souls or our senses. Ask anyone who uses a mechanical wristwatch, mechanical pencil or even a digital computer and they’ll tell you straight away that these objects have a soul, a life of their own. Many of these kinds of industrial objects were probably created on an assembly line, each one designed to be identical to each other. But certain objects allow for the user to build a unique relationship with them.​​ The humble mechanical pencil, built from plastic and cheap metal, does what it's designed to do for years on end, without complaint. Its identifying signs and logos have long since disappeared, and sure enough, it takes a while to catch on to the lead it's been given–but it is now a unique object. Being used over an extended period of time has made it special, a one-of-one. One day, it might be cast aside for a newer model, despite it being in perfect working order–just like the Concorde.

The Concorde, designed with mechanical pencils on paper, dutifully flew across the world faster than any other aircraft of its type for years. Until one day, its Olympus engines were never re-ignited, the nose didn’t drop and it simply stopped flying. It wasn’t the plane’s fault. It’s incredible that the Concorde, which was never superseded, now sits still in museums never to do what it was designed to do.

It’s the more unassuming objects that seem to have a soul–the cheap Casio watch, the humdrum family car, or even the wretched printer. Built from the cheapest available parts and meticulously put together by machines, they seem to be more than the sum of their parts. The digital Casio watch powered by a quartz crystal may well be boring, but it is one of the most accurate watches out there, which gives it that compelling, underdog quality which makes me not only want to have one, but keep one for a long time.

There is a certain something special that some industrial objects possess, you simply have to understand the context behind their creation in order to get ‘it’.