FRAMES
A few years back, I start an experiment around first layer FDM prints to make 2D patterns exhibit 3D structures. With a new printer acquisition I’ve started to build off of that work with the project I’m calling FRAMES. FRAMES is just a means to an end for a larger project that’ll share as things develop but as often is the case process is just as interesting as the final result.
vibecoding scripts, playing with various FDM filament properties, post effects and finishes, and hacking slicers to rapidly create new frames.
Unreleased innovation archives
Instapump Fury GMO (2020)
A case study in material intelligence. Part of a larger exploration in expanding Reebok’s Liquid Factory initiative using the IPF as a subject.
Early in my career when @hestemic brought me on to the project I pitched a GMO story that imagined a world where these shoes were living breathing creatures we have a symbiotic relationship with. I lived a stones throw from the MIT media labs at the time and like every designer was inspired by the work being done at @oxmanofficial lab. The story was utopic, a closed loop designing the lifecycle including death and decomposition. The sketches detailing various successful specimens derived from the spliced DNA of a whole host of earth inhabitants.
The concept that ended up getting developed was a rouge specimen not unlike Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein featuring a “grown” bladder, tendrils, and other spliced organs.
The bladder had to be split to achieve the continuous extrusion of PU that connected from medial, tongue pull, to lateral.
The team developed the g-code for the midsole in such a way that the nozzle head moved in relationship to the foams setting rate so that the PU had time to “stack” atop itself as it expanded. The thinner ground contact PU was draped over for traction.
It never released and lived quietly in the archive but it marked an early affinity to this notion of material intelligence and what the medium of footwear could be.
