Dassault Systèmes has sponsored this post.
Forget fashion week. Been there, done that. Artist and designer Kate Reed has bigger aspirations. The 24-year-old Bostonian wants to empower communities and heal the planet through her 3D-printed designs inspired by and integrated with nature.
Reed, who grew up in Dover, Mass., has been turning heads with her high-fashion wearable technology and outlandish designs featured on the runways of New York Fashion Week, in WIRED Magazine and at The White House. Reed made her first wearable at age 13 and has been immersed in design technology since high school, attending the fully studio-based NuVu school, in Cambridge, Mass. that focuses on hands-on learning and problem solving. Reed went on to earn two undergraduate degrees, one in Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship from Brown University and the other in Industrial Design & Computational Technology from The Rhode Island School of Design.
Today she is an Artist in Residence at Dassault Systèmes’ Waltham, Mass. Lab, where she is using cutting-edge solutions in the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers offer.
We caught up with the multi-talented Reed to learn more about her designs and her go-to tools that enable her to not only dream up, but also to deliver her creations.
Growing up, Reed said she always knew she would end up in the arts. Cleary, she is much more than an artist.
“I think of myself as an artist and designer, but I think of myself much more as a scientist. I think that was kind of the surprise to how it all ended up shaking down,” said Reed.
“Ever since that early exposure of working with technology and coding and robots and all that stuff, as soon as I made a robot, the first thing I wanted to do was to make a robot on my body and bring technology closer and closer to our bodies.”
“So, the question I’m striving to answer is, how do we interface man and machine in a way that feels natural to our bodies?”
Reed has made hundreds of wearables, many of which have led to unexpected turns and Aha! moments.
This past year while in the Fab Academy program at the Dassault Systèmes lab, she had one of those moments. Reed explained, “A shift happened in that program, where for a while I was thinking about how do we merge man and machine in a way that feels natural? Why not copy nature? If we want it to feel natural, why don’t we copy it? So, I focused on biomimicry. Once I got exposed to the lab and all the amazing tools at Dassault Systèmes, I shifted. If we want technology that feels natural, why don't we grow the technology ourselves? And why don't we let nature grow that technology? Why are we trying to copy nature when nature can just do it herself? That kind of started me down this whole other path of interspecies collaborations.”
Wrapping Your Head Around Kate Reed
To help wrap our heads around Reed’s work, it helps to look at her projects.
One of her design explorations can be seen in her Beyond Biomimicry project based on the idea that nature takes over the role of the designer.
Sea Sprouts is one of the designs in this collection and features a living system that grows off the human body. “Sea Sprouts is basically grown using a barnacle growth algorithm. The algorithms grow in a computational space, are printed out and then paired with living collaborators,” explained Reed.
She used xShape for half of the form and plugged it into xGenerative* to perform the computational part. “It was printed, but that was only half the job. It still had to be adorned with mycelium which started sprouting living mushrooms. Instead of fast fashion, we had incredibly slow fashion.”
Another example of Reed’s work are her biomimetic wearable computers that use biomimicry to create wearables that mimic natural surroundings physically and functionally. Watch her trippy video of Pollution Cloud to get a feel for what she’s doing.
Wearable pollution cloud augments the human experience by visualizing toxic pollution levels around the wearer in real time. Wearable pollution cloud is made from bronze and fiber optic cable. LED lights are embedded within the fiber optics attached to a pollution sensor run by a microcontroller. (Image and caption courtesy of Kate Reed.)
Shaping Up Her Designs and the Software
Reed is all about the “x” apps from Dassault Systèmes, including xShape, xGenerative Design* and xStudio*. In short, she said she was amazed by their ease of use, capabilities and ability to move fluidly between the software.
“I really fell in love with xShape,” said Reed. “It really allows you to sculpt exactly how you would sculpt in real life. It's super intuitive and super easy to use.”
“I found myself kind of purposely sculpting and creating these habitats to 3D print and have living things adorn and grow into. And I guess my process that happened is that often I would sculpt the base form and a lot of times I would then bring that into xGenerative to apply algorithms to it and apply some textures to it and it was really exciting,” she adds.
“The most amazing thing about the x apps is that it's so easy to move between the software. It’s really difficult to have these complex models happening loosely, but what was so amazing about the x apps is that you can go between the [different] apps with the same model and the same system and everything is compatible, which is pretty unheard of.”
Creating an Experience
Reed’s designs are anything but static, as she aims to create an experience. It is fitting that she uses Dassault Systèmes apps, as they share a similar vision of equipping their customers with solutions to do just that.
Reed’s Bugeyed wearable headset below was designed in xShape and made in the 3DEXPERIENCE lab. It features six LCD displays showing surveillance information about the wearer.
(Images and video courtesy of Kate Reed.)
Creating Aha! Moments and Empowering Communities
Part of Reed’s mission is empowering communities through her work.
“I've always been really interested in empowering communities through design, and my goal is to heal communities and replenish the sense of community—when technology has driven us apart, Reed says.
“If you put technology in a place where people don't expect it, it feels like magic. What I do with the community work is create these magical moments where it's like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what's going on? What's happening? How is this thing moving? How are these lights changing?’ That happens in these moments of magic and moments where adults experience wonder and kind of Aha! moments. We revert to that little kid inside of us and we turn to the person next to us and are like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cool.’”
“We create magic for communities. Then we allow the communities to hold on to that magic even when I'm not there.”
“The other side of community projects is how we empower communities through open-source projects and open-source designs through an engineering approach,” she adds.
Reed said one such example is in her Invisible Campaign where she puts sculptures in communities that ask the question, what makes you feel invisible? And participants can answer and put in a note. “So instantly you're having these conversations about what our community is struggling with,” explained Reed. “It's just these little simple, simple acts of curating experiences that really allow conversations to happen is what I've seen with that.”
Cracking the Code Through Community
Reed is big on community. She raves about the benefits of the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers offer and having access to the Made in 3D community where she can share and collaborate on ideas and designs and network with people from all over the world. Her support from Dassault Systèmes comes from the highest level, with Bernard Charlès, president and CEO, commenting “Let’s make sure Kate’s dream can be fulfilled with xGen.”
“That was one of the best parts,” said Reed. “All of a sudden I had access just by posting in the community to some of the most amazing experts in the world. Those who make the software are actually looking and listening. And it was amazing. I would just post these ideas that I was close to figuring out, but I hadn't yet cracked the code. Suddenly, I had these amazing mentors who were like, ‘Oh, here's how you do it.’ I think that's definitely an amazing perk of the community.”
“They have an amazing community of makers and mentors from all over the world who are just so wonderful, willing, active and really excited and interested in helping. That makes it a lot more fun. It's not like you buy the software and you’re on your own. You get this wonderful community with it.”
Moving Forward
Looking ahead, Reed plans to continue intersecting biology and technology to make better designs and processes that are environmentally friendly.
She is currently working on making her own 3D printer filaments that are actively alive or impregnated with living plants and living systems. “I'm 3D printing slime mold, which has given me a lot of hope for the future. Imagine 3D printing a mailbox or something that was actually impregnated with living things and would really become one with the forest. I'm working on a future that changes not only the processes but also the material.”
“I'm pushing to get to not only living materials and living designs and systems, but also carbon negative, if not carbon neutral. Once we start to design with nature and design with living systems, we’re not only doing no harm, we're starting to heal the planet. I see it in the very near future.”
Ready to Let Your Imagination Run Wild and Make a Difference? Join the Community
You too can take advantage of the experience and the offer. The 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers offer is available for a great deal of $99 per year or $9.99 per month, with one caveat: you can’t earn more than $2,000 income per year from projects designed in the software.
The offer includes 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Professional, and access to browser-based tools including 3D Creator and 3D Sculptor.
Visit https://discover.solidworks.com/makers for more details.
To learn more about Reed’s work visit https://www.biomimetic.io/.
*xGenerative and xStudio are not yet available for Makers.