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We are delighted to announce a successful collaboration with Audrey Desjardins/Studio Tilt. It’s been a two-year process of conceptualizing, designing, producing and deploying a series of ceramic listening objects.
Read more about the project here: https://www.studiotilt.design/inner-ear/process
Timea presented a short paper on the Pathfinder: 3D Printing Data with Trigonometry and Chance. Papers are available through the Bridges Archives.
Conference participation was supported by a School of Art, Art History and Design, University of Washington Wickoff Milliman grant.
Timea is teaching a session 3 workshop July 16-28 Material — Human — Machine: Experimental Possibilities in Clay 3D Printing
In the workshop, we are using a dazzling variety of equipment, including a WASP 40100 with continuous feed, a Potterbot ceramic 3D printer, and several ABB IRB robots (on loan from Virginia Tech).
Timea is featured on 3D Universe’s podcast Episode 23: October 21st - 3D Printed Ceramics in Art and Education. She will be in discussion with California based ceramic artist Abiam Alvarez and host Jeremy Simon.
Tune in on Facebook Live Thursday, October 21st at 7pm Central, steam from the archives (link TBP) or find the episode on any podcast platform.
Super excited to announce that Slip Rabbit now has 3D scanning!
In September, we finally received a Revopoint POP scanner (Kickstarter project). The POP works very well and we have been testing it rigorously on both small objects and on live body scans. The resolution is great and the files can be exported either as a point cloud or as a mesh. We are using Rhino for cleaning up the point cloud and Meshmixer for fixing occasional misshapen object parts.
Spring is here! The star magnolia in front of the studio is in full bloom. Days are getting longer and warmer again. The air is filled with sweet scents of the waking garden and moist earth. Things may seem kind of normal around the studio. I am taking organic gardening classes with Seattle Tilth looking forward to lots of produce from the new bio veggie garden. Of course, things are far from being normal. We just passed the one year mark with the pandemic, and mourning millions of lost lives and long covid impacts. The past year was spent in a lock down, not being able to open the studio to the public at all. I missed the exciting collaborations, being able to offer workshops, and the refreshing energy of student interns. Washington state just yesterday went into phase 3. I am still waiting my turn for a vaccine, but I am hopeful about continuing improvements in the spread of the virus.
Please continue to remain patient as I keep an eye on the health and safety situation, and revamp the studio for public access. If you are interested in any of our programs, get in touch and get on the mailing list. We will reopen as soon as it is safe to do so.
It was the studio’s 4th anniversary this past month. I am grateful and excited about the community we have built and the quality of the research we’ve been able to conduct (you can read about these in earlier posts). No doubt, the world is very different now that is was in 2017, and I am reevaluating how to be a more inviting, inclusive and actively anti-racist community. Technology has also moved on: Rhino 7 just came out. This version integrates versatile parametric tools and subD editing. Wow! There are so many new tools in it that I feel like I have to learn it all over again. Our good friends at 3D Potter have also been busy with the new Scara robot models and improved versions of Potterbot. I’m getting ready for a 2022 exhibition at the Bellevue Arts Museum with Seattle artist Sylwia Tur, and also serving on the Advisory Board of the Seattle Universal Math Museum (SUMM).
Despite all this good news, I’m deeply saddened by the recent news of violence and abuses directed towards BIPOC and Asian-American/Pacific Islander artists and community members, especially the continuing disrespect of women and trans individuals of color. Evil, disruptive, and arrogant continues to be part of our world, unless we say a definitive NO, require accountability, and put ourselves to work against hate. Racist attitudes and acts have no place at this studio, in this community, and in our world. Our thoughts are with our Asian-American/Pacific Islander community, many of them are our much loved former interns, who are impacted by these racist acts.
For more information about where to report a hate incident or what you can do to help, check out Women in 3D Printing Stop AAPI Hate site.
I am delighted to announce a new workshop format for these Covid times of social distancing and remote learning. These are HANDS-ON opportunities for technical consultation and/or for a custom workshop that addresses Your specific ceramic technical or ceramic 3D printing questions.
The workshop/consultation appointments can be scheduled in 60-minute increments here: https://quickrabbitdesigns.bigcartel.com/product/remote-online-ceramic-3d-printing-workshop
Workshops cater to a variety of learning levels and learning goals, and can be tailored for individuals (non-professionals and professionals), small groups (design/architecture company presentations, clay studios) and schools (classes, research clusters, and makerspaces). Equipment is not necessary.
Cost $150/60 minutes (60-, 120-, or 180-minute appointments are available). Pay what you can for BIPOC individuals and communities.
Some sample workshop topics/learning goals:
Intro to ceramic 3D printers. How to choose a printer for Your needs/What other parts and equipment are needed.
Intro to the 3D printing workflow.
Printer operation (Potterbot or Delta WASP type printers) and printer maintenance basics.
Intro to CAD using Rhino's design environment; making solid models for 3D printing.
Slicing software. Slicing and trouble shooting for clay printing.
Ceramics trouble shooting: Clay preparation. Form and structural issues for printable ceramic designs. Post-printing issues in clay. Getting your piece ready for firing.
Advanced printing: Difficult forms. Special design needs. Large and multi-component parts. Building with printed parts. Advanced trouble shooting.
and more….
Upon registration, you will receive an email with a link to questionnaire to assess Your workshop needs and scheduling preferences. The remote online workshop/consultation appointment takes place on Zoom.
Timea’s work is in the freshly published Illustrating Mathematics book by AMS! We received the physical book last week. It’s really beautiful and a great record of all the amazing projects being done in Art&Math.
If you would like to buy a copy, you can do so here: https://bookstore.ams.org/mbk-135
You can now get your own print copy
here: https://www.timeatihanyi.com/shop
or here: https://quickrabbitdesigns.bigcartel.com/product/book
$40.00
This beautiful limited-edition print volume is my first artist book about the technique and concept of ceramic 3D printing, rule-based mathematical art, and art-science collaboration.
Technical chapters cover clay working, 3D printing, and ceramic printing, and offer plenty of resources for beginners and advanced printers alike.
There is a chapter on grid-based mathematical games and how I use them in my work. I also touch upon questions about how 3D printing and digital technology fit into the traditions of craft and clay arts, and discuss the challenges and benefits of collaboration with practitioners in other disciplines.
The final chapter of the book is filled with color photos of 3D printed porcelain artwork 2018-2020.
Full Title: MAKING AND BREAKING RULES: Algorithmic Forms and Tactile Processes - A Technoceramist's Adventures with Mathematical Thinking
150 pages (including 40 color plates)
Copyright © 2020 Timea Tihanyi
All photos, artwork and illustrations are by Timea Tihanyi.
Design by Eli Kahn and Timea Tihanyi.
Published by Slip Rabbit Studio
Printed: Quality Press, Georgetown, Seattle WA
First printing 2020 (100 copies)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020905076
ISBN: 978-1-64826-228-9 (Paperback)
Thank you for those who have participated in our May drive, which donated $500 to Solid Ground and $100 to Northwest Harvest in support of nutrition and housing programs in the Pacific Northwest.
We are doing another drive of Timea’s work on Friday, June 12th to benefit organizations doing critical work for racial justice and equity. We will be dividing up the 100% of all sales among
ACLU, Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, Black Women's Health Imperative, Color of Change, The Innocence Project, The Loveland Foundation, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
You can support the cause by following our Instagram page, where the available artworks will be posted 12-2PM, PT.
I need to acknowledge the times we are living through.
Each of us individually, our communities and the entire society grapple with not only a pandemic, but also with the events of these past weeks that exposed the racial injustices embedded in our society, economy, education system, and even, in our culture.
These injustices are not new, neither were they hidden, but my white middle class academic Pacific Northwestener privilege allowed me to not pay due attention to them momentarily.
But this is a time of emergency for Black People.
It's no longer enough to condemn police violence and overt racist actions by hating individuals and hate groups. It's no longer a question whether we enable and maintain systemic and institutional racism.
We have been enabling and maintaining it.
Black lives matter. The lives, cultures, histories, and the well-being of Indigenous, Brown and Person's of Color matter.
This week, I have been reading, listening, learning, and thinking. I've come to ask tough questions from myself of what I can do, what I am willing to do, how can I be relentless in doing my part in the healing to undo the perpetrated violence, negligence and ignorance.
Most importantly, I’ve been thinking about what can be done as a studio to change the rules of the game.
Slip Rabbit Studio was born out of a desire to facilitate participation in a field of research by involving students, artists, fellow researchers and tinkerers. During all these years, I've been striving to create a community that connects art and the STEM fields through ceramic 3D printing. A community that is diverse in every sense, as I strongly believe that each of us has something to learn from one another.
From the beginning, it was obvious to me that the biggest obstacle to participation in this arena is economic: it is technology, digital skills and equipment. Slip Rabbit's internship program mentored 23 students in three years, majority of them are women and individuals of color. I would like to pat myself on the shoulder but, sadly, this is not enough. It has never been enough. My dream was to create scholarship, paid internship, and paid apprenticeship programs so that young individuals could come to learn and to get mentorship at the studio, but they would also be receiving a financial incentive and compensation for their time and work.
During these critical times, neither of us can just withdraw and wait for someone else to do the right thing. During these critical times expressions of sympathy are not quite enough. I will continue to shore up resources and opportunities focusing on two areas in the coming year: 1. Slip Rabbit’s outreach to take 3D printing to BIPOC communities, especially middle school and high school age groups. 2. Establishing a paid studio internship program in ceramic 3D printing for black and brown women. Both are just a drop in the bucket, I know. But I also learned during these decades of being an educator that individual droplets can make huge ripples, with a little luck, leading to a magnificent storm.
With trust in a more equitable future,
Timea
T-shirt by Quickrabbit Designs.
Life is starting to slowly return to a new Covid-affected normal in Seattle. The studio is still a solitary place as we contemplate how best to contribute to the local art community and engage the public in a very different future.
In collaboration with several UW departments, throughout March the studio was printing face shields for the UW Medical Center. See this video news piece by Seattle Channel.
Timea’s book on Art, Math and Ceramic 3D printing is now available for reading and free download.
Working on more challenging ceramic printing projects, part of Timea’s collaboration with mathematician Frank Farris of UCSC.
In-line with the State of Washington, King County, the University of Washington and the City of Seattle recommendations regarding the COVID-19 virus pandemic, we have decided to suspend all public-facing activities, like internships, workshops and in-studio collaborations until further notice.
During a workday, we are using social media to stay connected with friends around the world and changing the stations frequently (between KEXP and KUOW), diluting the worrisome news with some music while continuing work on our projects. This time, unusually, in solitude.
Soon, we will begin posting Timea’s new book on her recent art and math collaborations using ceramic 3D printing, as well as we’ll be thinking about how to support other artists during this time of great need and anxiety. We are grateful for the privilege of health, space and opportunities.
Stay home, be patient and be well, support those who are in need in any way you can, and take care of yourselves!
Silent House, March 6th, 2020
Well, friends, winter came and went. We got extremely busy here in the studio with two new interns, Tom Lee Branstetter and Michelle Fang Wu, and former interns Erica Lee and Wanna Huang.
In December, Timea’s new pieces went to several PNW shows, including the Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle, a Contemporary Clay exhibition curated by Patti Warashina and Carol Gouthro at Columbia City Art Center, and to ClayFest Northwest at Pottery Northwest. The making of these pieces was generously supported by an Artist Projects grant from 4Culture.
We have greatly expanded our CAD toolbox, using Maya, Blender, and Meshlab for designing forms, in addition to Rhino. Often times, a particular design idea got tested in many different CAD programs and the printed results were compared, just so we could refine a particular look or style. There are lots of interesting differences between working with NURBS and meshes, from the perspective of the results, like the sharpness of angles.
This winter, we started a number of design collaborations, including research and development of several consumer objects. We can post more about these when the projects conclude.
With the help of Tom, we completed a working prototype of the Arduino-driven color dispenser, which adds pigment to the extrusion. There is still much to refine about this but it works, we figured out the hardware and the programing, and it is very empowering!
Finally, we are welcoming a new math collaboration. Timea is working with Professor Frank Farris on Grasshopper-made knit and chainmail patterns. This research generously supported by a Kreielsheimer art-science grant from the UW.
It’s been a busy summer with lots of visitors and workshop participants over at the studio. Fall is upon us now and we are settling back into the usual weekly routine of internships and pursuit of new research projects. We are lucky to have two terrific young women joining the studio: Marika Ridder is a junior in engineering and Terrene Huang is a senior in industrial design. Our right hand at the studio, Wanna Huang, is also thinking about returning to school and will be gearing up for grad school applications this fall.
Timea has been traveling and giving lectures about ceramic 3D printing at various places, from the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) to the Northwest Math Conference and the Nordic Museum.
We are proud to have the studio mentioned in the beautiful book Céramique by Charlotte Vannier and Véronique Pettit Laforet (just published by Pyramyd books, Paris, France) featuring, among 90 contemporary ceramists from all over the world, Timea’s 3D printed and slipcast porcelain sculptures.
Our fall STUDIO OPEN HOUSE is Friday, November 8th 4-6PM. Drop in any time to see both printers in action and to take part in Timea’s Ringató project, which is a pas de deux between the 3D printer and the hand. Please RSVP so that we can send you directions and parking information.
We are honored and delighted to be featured in the current issue of Studio Potter.
Read Bryan Czibesz’ in-depth interview with Timea about how she got into clay, became interested in ceramic 3D printing and why she founded Slip Rabbit. The long and fascinating conversation also discusses the trap of thinking in binaries, under-representation of women in 3D printing and the future of tactility.
https://studiopotter.org/conversation-timea-tihanyi-slip-rabbit-studio
We are delighted that summer is finally and irrevocably here. This means: Sun, Spritz and Studio time!!!
Yay!!!
You have asked for it and we are delivering:
We have created an exciting line-up of private and semi-private workshops for You, Slip Rabbit friends and digitally curious!
Registrations opens tomorrow, Tuesday, June 11th. Go to our new menu and find WORKSHOPS to register.
There are short intro courses and in-depth opportunities in digital ceramics. We can customize and tailor content to your schedule, project needs and educational goals.
Design and make a unique cup with us or enjoy a relaxed evening full of color while learning the special glazing technique developed by Timea. Bring your STL file and learn to set it up for printing.
We also have specialized workshops for teachers and college instructors that let you get up and running with both the digital and the clay process, master equipment use and get tips for maintenance.
We are proud to be the first organization to offer recreational, educational and professional development opportunities in digital ceramics.
Come and learn with us!
Looking forward to opening our doors to the general public again on Saturday, May 11th 3-5pm.
During the Studio Open House, we will present our current projects, introduce the new WASP printer and offer the public another opportunity to participate in Timea’s Ringató project.
The special focus of this Open House is fiber/textile traditions, techniques and textures, such as those made by weaving, knitting and embroidery.
Our Potterbot 7 printer will be running. Enjoy delicious snacks and our famous Pink Rabbits Punch while you are having fun conversations with fellow tinkerers. Mothers day is coming up, we will have a few one of a kind 3D printed porcelain pieces for sale. Please consider supporting the studio with your purchase of a cup. Each cup comes with a packet of Nasturtium seeds, which you can plant and enjoy all summer long.
We had a challenging winter with many snow days. A sudden change of weather brought weeks of warm and beautiful sunny days in March, refreshing our soul. Timea has been doing a lot of travel for speaking and doing demonstrations and workshops at various colleges and national and international conferences and ceramic events, including representing the USA at the Intercontinental Ceramics Project in Valencia, Spain, at NCECA FabLab in Minneapolis, as well as doing joint talks about the collaboration with math professor Sara Billey at the UW annual Math Day and the Math Hour.
We are saying good bye to the winter Slip Rabbit interns, Erica, Kayla, Veloria and Xun and to the WXML math team, James, Catherine and Eli. In these past three months, we have accomplished a lot in many areas, from machine hardware experiments to finishing a new project. This project, which grew out of Timea’s Universal Potter concept and the ListeningCups, uses a “pathfinder” code in Python (made with the great help of former intern Daria Micovic) for creating a woven texture based on sound data information.
The math research was also an example of an exciting collaboration between disciplines. Often times we would found that questions arising from the art process were giving direction of the math and driving that forward. We have generated many possibilities but only had time to print a few possible versions so far. Many more to come in the next months!
We have two beautiful project videos by Rollofall now online:
ListeningCups features Timea’s collaboration about sound data-tactilty, data-stories/data-fictions with interaction designer Audrey Desjardens.
Ringató (Cradled) is a technohaptic project by Timea, highly popular and much loved during our Studio Open House events.
Speaking of Open Studio: We are announcing the date of our next semiannual event:
Save the date!
The Spring Slip Rabbit Open Studio is Saturday, May 11th, 3-5pm.
Winter weather in the Pacific Northwest is tempestuous. From mild and sunny in January to a complete shut down of the Seattle metropolitan area due repeat snow storms in February, we have had the extremes and everything in between. This winter, we welcomed Veloria Zhu and Xun Cao as our newest Slip Rabbit interns, who have joined Erica, Kayla and Timea in the studio. Veloria takes over communications and outreach and Xun will work on hardware development with Timea. We are also excited to have the talented graduate student in mathematics, Eli Johnson, joining Sara Billey, Catherine Babecki and James Pedersen in our WXML group as a new graduate research assistant. Former Slip Rabbit intern, Daria Micovic, has also been working with Timea this winter, all the way from her new home in the Big Apple, on writing code in Python for a new project that plays with data lists.
Timea will be speaking about her work at Reed College in late February, will be representing the USA at the inaugural Intercontinental Ceramics Project in Valencia, Spain in mid-March, and will be an invited presenter at the FabLab at the 2019 NCECA in Minneapolis in late March.
Our research on mathematical sandpile models is ramping up and taking us into really interesting directions for exploring the mathematical logic these patterns and applying this logic to coding. The patterns themselves that we have been developing are becoming more and more complex and ornamental. At the same time, they bear a resemblance to various fiber arts based patterning traditions that have developed over the centuries through human ingenuity and as a result of interactions among craftspeople from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
The fall brought a more-contracted-than-usual studio schedule due to a heavy load of work obligations at the university. With less operating days per week and several more research directions we wanted to go into, we had to become creative with using resources and planning our progress.
We started a close collaboration with the newest UW makerspace, The Mill, and benefitted greatly from the electronics workshops being offered by the first UW makerspace, CoMotion. Our connections with these much larger and more universal makerspaces allow us to tap into both knowledge-base and equipment that is on our “wishlist”. The “wishlist” is long, and contains diverse things like basic programming, Arduino, small motors, dual printers, etc…., which, on the face of it, seem to stray away from ceramics. We find them to be the necessary steps in order to test ideas for experimental augmentations/alterations of the ceramic 3D printer for the purpose of generating new possibilities with clay techniques, forms and surfaces. Slip Rabbit interns, Erica Lee and Kayla Lee (not related) worked with Timea on every aspect of this initial research preparation.
We created test forms that challenged the dual color printer and our Rhino skills. We created pulsating lights that were run by Arduino boards. On Thursdays, we would teleconference for an hour with our WXML math group counterparts, to shed light on the mathematical nature of sandpile models (chip-firing games). This resulted in series of new textured forms designed by Timea, both cups and larger vessels, with a dense yet delicate, almost bead-like design that shows the equilibrium state of each matrix. Surprisingly, each matrix size (think rows and columns!) produces a slightly different pattern of distribution in this final state of stability, yet there are some matrices that never stabilize. We don’t yet know why.
In November, we opened our doors for our Fall Open House, which was not only well-attended but also offered networking opportunities among diverse communities of clay, glass, engineering, IxD/UxD, and Women in 3D Printing, which Slip Rabbit is proud to be a member of. Timea visited Material Matters at ECUAD for a day of tech exchange and we were happy to welcome UCSB art historian and craft history expert Jenni Sorkin for a studio visit and discussion about digital ceramics. Jenni’s visit (and UW lecture) inspired Timea’s new interactive project: be-HELD, in which participants are asked to “dance with the machine” while it prints a particular shape that could not otherwise be made by and on the printer. This interaction was a highly popular party trick at our open house. We love doing it too when we have a chance, because it demonstrates how much the human is initiating and authoring the process. We could always rely on our communication intern, Nick Wong, to document studio life and keep our Instagram page fresh.
Below are a few images from these exciting past months.
Message from Timea:
“The impending Holiday Season gives me an opportunity to reflect on our first year and a half as a non-profit studio with education and research mission in the area of digitally aided ceramics.
I am deeply grateful for the the wonderful people, exciting projects and tantalizing possibilities I personally had the chance to encounter through Slip Rabbit, especially for our amazingly talented student interns who have many times provided the kindling for the fleeting sparks of wild ideas.
This year, as I prepare the holiday meals, I am thinking of each and every one of you with whom I have had the good fortune to share tea, snacks and good conversations during those long workdays in the studio and who now are out in the world, continuing to push all of us toward a more equitable and humanistic future that considers both hand and technology, tradition and innovation.
Below is a feature about one of alumna, Huiqing Wang, written by current Slip Rabbit communications intern, Nick Wu.”
At Slip Rabbit, a lot of things have to come together for our ceramic pieces to be created—from 3D printers to math equations to files of code—but, perhaps the most important element of all was the creativity and hard work of our numerous interns. Over the next few posts, we want to showcase some of these interns—past and present—and give our audience the chance to learn more about their talents, aspirations and experiences.
Huiqing Wang is also a recent graduate from the University of Washington, where she studied Interdisciplinary Art. Also, like Annabelle, she spent two quarters at Slip Rabbit, where she furthered developed her skills with clay. Huiqing has long been a devoted artist in ceramics, specializing in creating figurative sculptures that are capable of conveying so much within simplicity.
What is an example of something you’re passionate about?
I am passionate about making figurative sculptures with ceramics. The particular contact between my body with such material is actually the content of a certain work. What I am creating is also what I was and I am going to be.
What ceramics intrigues me about is that sculpture that after firing out of kiln become to be the individual that on longer controlled by me or others, instead, it exists in the nature on its own.
How do you find inspiration when you need to be creative?
I am convinced that the best inspiration comes from the things that beyond expectation. When I urge to be creative, I will break through my routines and try something that fresh, challengeable or even “dangerous”.
And I like to find inspiration from my previous experience, artworks, diaries and etc. I also have a notebook for writing down my improvisational ideas and sketch for later reviewing.
What made you want to intern at Slip Rabbit?
There was still a lot of things I want to learn from Timea after I graduated from UW. Also, I needed a place to take more practices in ceramics, sculpture and interdisciplinary art, such as the digital printing that combining my major with technology.
At that time when I was leaving university, I noticed that I must try unknown things, open my mind and find my focus in artistic creation.
What is something that you learned during your time at Slip Rabbit?
“Working all the time.”
We would work continuously until my last bus arrived in the evening. I understood that we never lack of ideas, but time and consistence to realize them.
“Being logical and having fun.”
Art requires both sensibility and rationality, extreme caution and entertainment.
What was the favorite or most memorable thing you worked on at Slip Rabbit?
Here come a lot of lovely memories in my mind, and hardly saying which one is the most favorite. Specifically, there was always radio music accompanying us while we were working, delicious and delicate Hungarian snacks made by Timea, drinks with “homemade” cups, and the vigilant sniff from her kitten upstairs, and the smell of lavender.
Are there any other creative ventures you have done since?
I went back to China and interned in a Bronze Foundry for six months this year. My initial intention was to connect with my country but it turned out that I was alone in this way since all my peers who have studied art abroad did not choose to come back to China. Although it was not a great place for creating art, especially when people around me were not supportive or receptive, I learned to strengthen my willpower through protecting my principles from being assimilated.
I am working on application for graduate school in China currently. I see my action as a creative venture, because the whole process of preparation for it is extremely examination-oriented and I possibly will get stuck in this mire. I want to experience the contradiction and struggles that millions of Chinese students are experiencing, but with a certain autonomy.
Are there any creative ventures that you want to explore in the future?
I want to bike to Tibet after surviving this year.
Even after a brief interview, it’s clear that Huiqing Wang is someone who exudes passion and creativity, something that is so rewardingly evident in her creations. Her hard work, curious mind, generosity and tenacity make her one of Slip Rabbit’s most memorable interns.
