This project is about creating an artefact using the skills we have acquired this year in Skills Passport. 

 

I started by deciding what artefact I was going to create. After creating a spider diagram of all my ideas, I decided to make a web shooter maquette/statue inspired by Peter Parker’s web shooters from Spider-Man. To begin, I conducted research into the character of Peter Parker and what his influences might be in creating the web shooters in the story. I also did research into biomimicry and real-world applications of synthetic spider silk, inspired by aspects of that character. After my tutorials and proposals, I did some research into silk and yarn art – I thought that the idea of using wire as the spider’s web would reflect my theme of machinery, as well as enhance the final product. I looked at self-repairing materials in architecture, as I thought it reflected that theme too.

 

To construct my final piece, I started with the idea of scanning my hand and arm using a 3d scanner and then printing that out with a 3D printer. This worked really well, as if I had an idea for my piece and wanted to design in a 1-1 scale, I could just use my own hand as reference. I then looked back at my initial sketches and created some cardboard add-ons at various angles to go around the hand. To construct the web shooter itself, I referenced a white card model I had created. I then spray-painted everything black. For the web, I stuck more closely to my initial ideas of a crochet wire web ‘splatter’ and I utilised gold wire so as to stand out against the black of the piece. I used my passport pattern skills to create a web ‘fabric’ for the rest of the arm to ensure visual interest was kept, based on a picture of my crochet. After everything was put together, I did a small photo-shoot.

 

I was really pleased with my final result as you can see a lot of the skills from the skills passport being displayed in it – such as Workshop for the construction of the piece, Model Making and Pattern Making. I think this is effective as it really displays everything that I have learned and got better at over the last year. Overall, I am happy with my artefact.