Hunacturing wearable objects. Een artistiek proces in reproduceerbaarheid via een fusie van natuurlijke materialen, machinale bewerkingen en de menselijke toets.

HUNACTURING - Questioning the nature of reproduction via a fusion of natural materials and industrial mechanical treatment. During the last three decades technology has accelerated in an explosive way. The use of innovative industrial techniques is no longer ignored within the craft world, since it clearly offers novel possibilities to both the design and the manufacturing of artefacts. The ‘Hunacturing’ project questions the nature of reproduction in order to create jewellery and objects that attain a warmer human touch or a unique fingerprint within an industrial context. An unconventional combination of natural materials and mechanical treatment (manufacturing) enables me to achieve another perspective on reproduction. The project extensively uses the lasercutting technique, which has mainly been developed for mass production. In this context, reproducibility is rarely or never questioned since it is digitally controlled and thus stimulates (re) production. In a traditional computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) workflow, the design process and the implementation are clearly separated. In the ‘Hunacturing’ project, however, the technique is used in such a way that it not only carries out the work but it actually becomes part of the design process. The challenge is to create an open working process through the 'thinking by doing' principle: handling an innovative digital technology through a craftsman-like way of thinking. The key method in this research is combining this craftsman-like approach with natural animal materials and the subjective and selective role of the designer, which results in non-traditional modes of (re)production. Animal skins with different or unpredictable properties, such as hair growth and skin thickness, structures and behaviours determine the uniqueness of the final result and restrict reproducibility. Moreover, a material such as hair (growth) on animal skins offers us an emotional experience of tactility, which increases even more the warm human touch in the final results. The selection of particular parts of the rawhide to be worked on and the addition of certain patterns aim to the fusion of the organic and the man-made. This combination is intended to emphasize the natural beauty and specific behaviour of each animal skin and goes beyond the original natural properties through a truly “new nature” in jewellery and objects.status: publishe