[ISEA2011] Paper: Nur Balkir Kuru & Roberley Ann Bell – Low technology in the digital age: Designing with post consumer waste

Abstract

This presentation will examine the Turkish and American university students’ approaches toward utilizing the post-consumer waste for design purposes in their own classroom settings. It will compare how students designed and fabricated a product toward achieving the goal to go from the waste to the function.

Post-consumer waste is the garbage that individuals routinely discard, either in a waste receptacle or a dump, or by littering, incinerating, pouring down the drain or washing into the gutter. Post-consumer waste is distinguished from pre-consumer waste, which is the reintroduction of manufacturing scrap (such as trimmings from paper production, defective aluminum cans, etc) back into the manufacturing process. Pre-consumer waste has been commonly used by industries for many years, and is therefore often not considered recycling in the traditional sense. Students were required to use some of those reuse objects or a non-reuse product of assembly, hardware, glue, etc. Project outcomes needed to meet the criteria of sustainability and originality created by environmentally conscious minds.

  • Nur Balkir Kuru, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey
  • Roberley Ann Bell spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia, before returning to the United States to attend the University of Massachusetts and State University of New York at Alfred from where she holds an MFA in Sculpture. Bell is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, and a 2010 Senior Scholar Fulbright to Turkey. Bell’s Fulbright projects the city as the site of intervention resulted in a series of projects in public spaces.  Bell has received several residency awards both nationally and internationally. Bell’s work has been exhibited in one person and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally including many art fairs. Bell has completed public projects , nationally and internationally. Bell is a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY where she teaches studios in three dimensional design and seminars on public art/public space. Bell has led workshops on exploratory spatial experiences at numerous venues world wide including the 6th International Interaction Design Workshop ‘Design as Seeing as thinking’ held in Istanbul. Bell’s mapping  projects move away from the object crafted by the artist and become whole only through the act of participation The participatory nature of the project transforms social space through shared encounters. The public and private merge as one moves through time and space. Her projects often result in—“- a collection of deadpan photographs of the nature/culture confluence, presented with the veneer of scientific inquiry. Like much conceptual art the book is also the archive of an extended performance in real time and space. It speaks to Bell’s interest in sculpture in the environment.”  _Ivy cooper, Sculpture Magazine May 2010.  roberleybell.com