This is a guest post by Makerspace user, Yifan Liu. During the 2025 Fall semester he developed and created a number of amazing cityscapes.

3D Print Tutorial: Cityscapes

By: Yifan Liu (yl3gm), UVA Graduate Medical Student

Creating a 3d Model

1. Open the online software Map2Model. You will be presented with the following interface.
2. Enter which city or area you would like to model search bar. Then select an area of the map to be modeled.
   
3. Adjusting settings: There are many customizable settings that can be adjusted in the right-hand menus. Below are a few example settings that I commonly choose.
   • Base:
     • Map size: 152mm
     • Base layer: 4mm
     • Topography: Disable if modeling a relatively flat area to reduce complexity
     • Frame: Off
   • Features:
     • Roads
   • Include footpaths: Enable if you want to include detail of hiking trails or parks for example. Disable if you want to reduce file size and processing time
   • Road Types: Play around with disabling different road types for effect or reducing complexity - Grass: Off - Buildings:
   • Buildings Scale: 1.2x – 1.5x - Sand: Off - Piers: Off
4. Press “Generate Mesh” to generate a 3d model of your selection
5. Click the dropdown menu next to “Export 3MF”. Click “Export STL”
   • Note: you can also export as 3MF to retain features like roads, water, and buildings as separate objects.

Editing and Refining (optional)

You may notice that some structures in the model are not correctly detailed or rendered. If you want to add more detail, import your model into a 3d modelling software. For this example, I used Blender. More detailed instructions on how to use Blender can be found online.

1. Download or create 3d models of desired buildings. Adjust to correct scale and position and place over existing building on model.
   
2. Delete undesired geometry or vertices on cityscape.
3. Export file as an STL for slicing and printing.

Slicing

1. Open STL file in PrusaSlicer
2. Adjust settings by going to “Print Settings”:
   • Print settings: 0.20mm Structural
   • Brim: 4mm
   • Infill: 10%
3. Multimaterial Printing: (optional)
   • Click on the STL object and click on Multimaterial printing on the left-hand menu icons
   • Use the Smart fill tool to paint the desired colors. I prefer to paint water features blue and all other features white.

Printing

1. After slicing export your file to the desired printer. If using Multimaterial printing, use either Kermit (Prusa MK4 MMU3) or Big Bird (Prusa XL).
2. Load and select desired filaments on printer. Make sure to check that the correct filament is paired with the correct extruder.
3. Print and wait!

I’ve a talk accepted to the 2026 Global DH conference, and share that proposal here both for its content and as another example of what a conference abstract can look like. I’ve added comments (in ‘'’code formatting’’’) highlighting how the abstract proposal is structured.

“Not having to ask: critical humanities making, zines, & analog tech for multilingual DH”

In “Having to Ask”, a doctoral colleague [2024-2025 Praxis Fellow Amna Irfan Tarar] writes about othering experiences in DH spaces, such as when staff weren’t sure if a web font used by a team project could correctly render her name in Urdu. I’m developing digital and analog letterpress resources as part of our DH center’s critical humanities makerspace studies. Letterpress moveable type is a pre-digital corollary to multilingual web fonts, and Tarar’s essay reinforced my priority of anyone printing with us being able to print their name—without singling out that name as needing special effort or research.

Motivation / underlying research question.

This lightning talk covers the DH work I’ve started toward this goal, and will be of interest to scholars curious about: zine creation for teaching, critical humanities making, multilingual DH, accessibility, book arts, and connections between historical/retro tech and current DH methods. I’ll share my first set of moveable non-English type, my forthcoming zine on how to inexpensively create similar type, and an overview of my research into historical and current strategies for fabricating non-Latin type (some of which cannot be segmented into easily interoperable rectangles the way Latin type can). I know there are too many languages for us to complete this goal; while slowly moving toward that vision language by language, I’m also developing some quick hacks to at least slightly improve type accessibility in the mean time, as well as working to replicate how such scripts were historically printed.

Specifics on what the talk will cover. Which scholars might want to attend it and why, including showing how that's not limited to e.g. "people who do letterpress" or "makerspace people". Quick note that I understand the most immediate likely challenges to this work.

I’ve wanted to contribute to a more multilingual DH, despite my monolingual ability restricting what I can do. My hope is to develop enough type design and fabrication competency to partner with colleagues who have greater language competency than me, and I’m eager to hear advice from session attendees toward this goal.

Where is this in-progress research headed, and how might that benefit others? What kind of Q&A might this talk elicit from its audience?

Q. Do you know of zine templates that let you import your zine content and then print it properly?

A. I’ve run into this a lot, partly bc some printers have various hidden amounts of white space they’ll require to allow for where they grip the paper, even if you set printer settings to zero margins. Very frustrating, especially for printing minizines, where this can through off what’s visible per page when you fold the pages.

A few printers have true borderless printing, but I haven’t happened to run into one at home/work yet. Sometimes I use a paper cutter or scissors to remove that unprinted edge after printing, to make the zine look printed all the way to the edge when it doesn’t have a white background.

Researching what those secret extra whitespace settings are for my particular printer brand and model has helped, as well as printing a test template with text running off all the zine page edges. This lets me then measure on the printout what of the text gets cut off, then design so my text/images don’t go there. In Canva, I’ve drawn those measured cutoff points as colored boxes, then duplicate that page to fill it with zine content and remove the boxes once I’m ready to print, like so:

Canva (free plan) lets you set margin and bleed guides (file > settings) that helps with designing for printing correctly. While these don’t override that secret won’t-print-there grip area of paper many printers have, ustom print margin settings can sometimes help too:

I’ve tried various zine arranger (plus additional cool features!) tools, such as:

• Zine Arranger
• Electric Zine Maker
• Spectrolite
• This GDoc template, made by Reddit user ttuulliipp

These all do useful things, but ultimately can’t address different printers adding that secret extra space—so the hacks above have worked best for me.

From text originally posted by me via the Scholars’ Lab Bluesky account in response to a question there.

(Note that the deadline has been extended to Friday, May 23rd, with notification date also moved later.)

The Scholars’ Lab, part of the Digital Humanities Center in the University of Virginia Library, is accepting proposals for creative works that tell evocative, artistic, and thought-provoking stories with data for display in our community space (Shannon Library, Room 308).

We use “data art” rather than “data visualization” to emphasize we seek physical, compelling, data-inspired or data-enriched compositions that inspire or educate visitors. These can be, but do not need to be large-scale research projects. They should be based on some kind of specific data, but we define data broadly to include analog, ephemeral “data” such as photo albums, archives, and personal records, as well as digital datasets. Projects should take a material form—that visitors to our space can examine and/or interact with. They can be graphical (2D) or multidimensional exhibits, and can also incorporate sound or other analog or digital media.

Questions or need help IDing data? If you have a clear idea for exploring a specific topic with a specific artistic outcome, but need help identifying a dataset to use, we might be able to suggest possibilities. Please email Laura Miller at least a week before the application is due to set up a data consultation, or to answer any other questions you may have.

Eligibility:

• Applicants must be at least 18 years old, can work independently or in collaborative groups, and do not need to be affiliated with UVA. There is no travel or residential funding associated with this award, but virtual participation and presentation is required if you are not local.

Prize:

The inaugural 2025-26 award will be $1,000: of that amount, up to $300 is available as soon as the project is accepted for the purchase of materials needed for the fabrication of the exhibit, with the remainder provided to the creator (if UVA student or non-UVA affiliate) or their department (if UVA faculty or staff) after the finished project is delivered to the Lab, and the public event is complete.

• The selected work(s) will be on loan to the Library and will be displayed for the academic year (August-May). The work will be returned to the artist at the conclusion of the term.
• The Library will provide assistance transporting, installing, and labeling the piece.
• The Scholars’ Lab will host an opening reception, with a brief talk, and will aid in programming around the piece in conjunction with the artist. Local creator events will take place in person; travel funds are not available, so non-local creators will speak virtually.

Space considerations:

The Scholars’ Lab Common Room (Shannon 308) space has:

• one area with available two-dimensional installation space up to up to 56” w by 88” h or a three-dimensional installation space up to 56” w by 48” d by 120” h.
• a second area with a two-dimensional installation space of up to 84” w by 88” h or a three-dimensional installation space up to 48” w by 48” d by 120” h.
• a third area with a three-dimensional space of up to 72” w by 72”d by 120” h. Ideally the installation would use one of these three locations, but if your project design utilizes multiple spaces, please indicate this in your proposal. Note: all completed projects must either be assembled on site or pass through our main entrance, measuring 72” w by 88” h.

Proposal Requirements:

• Project title
• Brief bio of the artist(s) focused on what prepares you for this work. Please include any previous experience with the method (e.g. quilting, sculpting, weaving, felting, electronics, etc.) used to complete your project.
• Either an artistic plan for the work; or if it already exists, link to a website hosting the entry; or, if a physical object, videos or photographs of the completed piece
  • Description of the work, including material, finished size, technical specifications (if digital), and installation requirements
• Project explanation, detailing the data source(s), key decisions in visualizing the data, and the primary narrative or argument conveyed (one-page or less)

Timeline:

• CFP announced April 23, 2025
• Submission Deadline: Submissions should be sent to Laura Miller by end of day, Friday, May 23. The artist(s) will be notified by Friday, May 30.
• Project Deadline: The selected piece must be completed and ready to be installed by August 28, 2025.

I presented about the Zine Bakery today at the Global Digital Humanities conference last week. Below are some links that had to fly by on my screen, so folks have more time to peruse them.

I’m on Bluesky at LiteratureGeek.bsky.social if you want to chat there!

Key parts of Zine Bakery

• Homepage & what is the project? as well as links to subsets of the zines, such as all the social justice zines that are free to print and share
• Zines I’ve made & co-authored
• The public catalog
• Zine cover quilt viz
• Physical distro at the Scholars’ Lab
• Redistro/publication and hosting for zines

Where to find zines:

• ZineBakery.com
• Queer Zine Archive (archive.qzap.org)
• Barnard Zine Library (zines.barnard.edu)
• Social media + #zine(s)
• Internet Archive + “zine” search
• Random tables in libraries, coffee shops, communal spaces…

Citations & further reading

Fox, Violet B. et al. “The zine librarians code of ethics” web resource, zine. November 2015. zinelibraries.info/code-of-ethics-1115-web-version.

Freedman, Jenna, et al. Zine Union Catalogue web resource. zinecat.org.

Nemergut, Nicole Acosta. Teaching with Zines zine. 2018. github.com/zinecat/zinecat.org/blob/master/Documents/Teaching%20with%20Zines%20-%20Acosta.pdf.

Sahagian, Jacqui. “Zine-making as Critical DH Pedagogy”. Scholars’ Lab blog post, January 14, 2022. scholarslab.org/blog/workshop-zine-translation.

Stevens, Amanda, et al. Zine Subject Thesaurus web resource. anchorarchive.org/subject-thesaurus.

Visconti, Amanda Wyatt. “Book Adjacent: Database & Makerspace Prototypes Repairing Book-Centric Citation Bias in DH Working Libraries”. DH+Lib special issue, Spring 2024. dhandlib.org/?p=154321.

—. Zine Bakery. ZineBakery.com. Project’s research blogging includes:

• “Metadata for Zine Collecting”. April 2024. zinebakery.com/2024-04-10-zine-collecting-metadata
• “Zine Bakery: research roadmap”. August 2024. zinebakery.com/2024/08/18/zine-bakery-research-roadmap
• “Zine Bakery: topical zine collections”. August 2024. zinebakery.com/2024-08-16-zine-bakery-topical-collections/

—; Quinn Dombrowski; Claudia Berger. “#DHmakes: Baking Craft into DH Discourse”. Korean Journal of Digital Humanities, 1(1), 73-108, 2024. accesson.kr/kjdh/v.1/1/73/43507.

Walters, Jess. “Zines” (Walters’ zines & work, including zines for disability jistice community, learning, advocacy). jesswaltersart.com/zines

The following is an accepted proposal I submitted to the international Feminist Media Histories journal special issue on “Craftwork within the Digital”, guest-edited by Christina Corfield and Whitney Trettien. In addition to giving a preview of my piece, I thought this might be helpful to folks looking to propose journal articles for the first time.

I propose creating a one-page website consisting of a written scholarly artist statement and 3 digital, printable zines.

The written introduction will consist of 2-4 pages of text exploring the intersections of craft/method-expansive makerspaces and the digital humanities (DH) for feminist practice, including through recounting my zine and #DHmakes community work. I’ll particularly focus on the affordances of one book arts methods and especially letterpress printing craft, offering a list of intersectional, transfeminist values including justice, care, and abundance and how this method offers opportunities to practice these values. I’ll also provide a short, hyperlinked bibliography of free online scholarly readings related to these topics.

Finally, I’ll present a model of one feminist + digital craft case through an overview of how I’m developing my DH-center-based booklab based on intersectional, transfeminist values, to fill local gaps in book arts accessibility, including through:

• Low-barrier, friendly, safe/hard-to-break printing experimentation available for no cost
• Building support for inclusive and multilingual printing, especially for non-Latin scripts, Braille, and other typefaces uncommon or difficult to procure in the U.S., with one goal being all lab visitors always have the type available to correctly print their names
• Experimental & digital humanities explorations, applying our makerspace and prototyping expertise to develop custom, cheaper, and/or otherwise unavailable typefaces and printing apparatus (e.g. to address the dearth of multilingual options), and explore other connections between hands-on book arts practice and our DH skillset
• Maintaining a free, public zine rack stocking social justice-related titles
• Growing a collection of historical LGBTQIA+ letterpress blocks, and publishing these in an online gallery; lasercutting wood to create new LGBTQIA+ letterpress blocks to expand what’s available, and sharing the design files and instructions so others may replicate these

The 3 zines associated with this piece will be readable online, as well as by printing and folding. Each will use a feminist-tech tutorial approach (à la Julia Evans) to make introductory letterpress practice more accessible in both a tacit knowledge and a monetary expense sense, covering three topics:

1. finding your first press
2. finding your first letterpress type
3. doing your first typesetting and printing
   I plan these zines to be similar in depth of content to my recent co-authored “DIY Web Archiving” zine, and the zines’ design/polish level to be similar to my co-authored “Speedweve for Mending” zine. I have existing experience with the required methods (web design and zinemaking) for this proposal, and do not need support in achieving them. I have a draft outline and notes toward writing all three zines completed already, so the remaining work is doable during this CFP’s timeframe.

Bio:
Dr. Amanda Wyatt Visconti (they/them) is Director of the Scholars’ Lab, an internationally recognized digital humanities research center; and both a researcher and practitioner of book arts and making (e.g. letterpress, zines, resin, data embodiment). An active contributor to the #DHmakes community, in just the last year they’ve organized a 7-session public zoom series teaching craft methods to digital humanists (#DHMakes Methodz Talks), written and published two zines on craft methods (mending with Sam Blickhan; lasercutting) in addition to four other zines, and published two peer-reviewed journal articles on scholarly making (book-adjacent, data-powered making; #DHmakes community history, with Quinn Dombrowski and Claudia Berger). Their scholarship includes intersectional, transfeminist bibliography and digital humanities research coding, and they hold a Literature Ph.D. and Information M.S. both focused on digital humanities human-computer interaction.

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to make a keychain or charm that is both laser cut and 3D printed.

Design the keychain

This works best with designs that are mirror images across at least one axis. Names are possible, but much harder.

Sketch the outline of the keychain and the ring hole.

30mm x 70mm is a little bigger than a standard house key. If making a rectangle, round the edges at 6mm.

Add a circle for a hole 4-5mm in diameter, and 5mm from the center of the circle to the edge.

Import an SVG file for the design or sketch the design.

Line up and resize the SVG image to your liking.

Once you have the design set, add a rectangle around the design that will be cut out. This will serve as the bottom of the 3D printed part, and the section that will be engraved by the laser cutter.

Just to make things clean, create a new sketch and project the current lines onto this sketch. These will be the engrave and cut lines used in Illustrator.

Save this laser cutting sketch of the keychain as a DXF file.

Making the 3D printed part

Next, create a new sketch for the 3D printed part.

Project the lines of the design that will be 3D printed onto this sketch. Then select the lines and offset them inside by .5mm.

Extrude the inset design 3mm.

Then extrude from the shape surrounding the design as a new body by .5mm. Remember to extrude it as a new/separate body.

It’s important to have each part of the design a separate body from the bottom plate, so that it is easier to 3D print them in different colors.

Export all of the bodies to be 3D printed. Go to File->3D print. Select the main Bodies folder, which will include all of the bodies in the export. Then click OK.

3D Printing

Slice the object for 3D printing

Select the colors you want for the print. There can be up to 5 different colors. Then select each part to have the correct color.

3D print the insert object on Big Bird, https://cal.lib.virginia.edu/seat/176961 or Kermit, https://cal.lib.virginia.edu/seat/176954.

Laser Cut

Prepare for Laser cutting in Illustrator

Open the DXF file in Adobe Illustrator in a new file that is sized to the laser cutter, 32”x18”.

File→Place then select the DXF file.

If you open the file directly in Illustrator, make sure to scale the artwork appropriately. If you used metric measurements in Fusion 360, then change the Scale units to 1 millimeters.

Highlight all of the lines, and then unselect the shape surrounding the design.

Change the color of the stroke to red, #FF0000, and 0.001 inch stroke width. All of these very thin red lines will be cut.

Then select the shape around the design. Turn the stroke off and change the fill to black, #000000.

Print the file and make sure the VLS6.60/75 is selected. It should be by default.

Hit the print button again.

Laser Cutter Software

Open the laser cutter software by clicking on the icon in the app tray:

You should see the image from Illustrator in the Viewer screen. The red lines will be cut out. The black shapes will be engraved. The engraving will burn out just enough material for the 3D printed part to fit right in.

Set the Material

The very first thing to do is set the material used and the width of the material. Click the Settings button.

In the Materials Database dialogue box, select the correct material (use Birch if you are using the thin birch plywood). Measure the thickness of the material and enter that into the Material Thickness section. Make sure to enter the numbers, then hit Tab on the keyboard, then click the Apply button. If you do not do it in this order, the thickness will not be saved.

After making changes, always make sure the Apply button is grayed out. Then click OK.

Now you can turn on the laser cutter, which will turn on the exhaust system. You must wait until the exhaust system is fully running before starting the print/cut job. Click the power button to turn on the laser cutter.

When the exhaust is fully on, and the laser cutter is ready to cut, the play button will turn green.

You can check that your material is placed correctly by lifting the lid on the laser cutter, pressing the focus view icon and clicking next to your keychain shape in the Viewer.

The carriage will move to that point and if the lid is open, it will shine a laser pointer light on your part. Check multiple places to make sure the material is sufficient for the part to be cut out.

Once everything is in place, click the big green play button.

Remember to stay by the laser cutter the entire time that your piece is being cut.

Result

And voila, you have some laser cut and 3D printed keychains. You can also make them with words. Just make sure to decide if the legible side is the 3D printed side or the other side.

I’ve been experimenting with lasercutting type-high wood to make letterpress blocks for letterpress printing (read more & pretty pictures here). Since someone asked on Bluesky, I’m now sharing some of the recent files I’ve lasercut, which are free to use with a CC-BY-NC license, which means you need to credit me when sharing them (Amanda Wyatt Visconti / AmandaVisconti.com) and cannot sell them nor include them in a sold thing.

You can use these for stickers or other purposes; to lasercut them for printing on wood, lino, or other materials, reflect (flip) the images horizontally before carving, so they read correctly when pressed against paper with ink. Here’s an example of one of the images I flipped and lasercut into wood for letterpress printing use:

“made with <3 by” with checkboxes for trans ally or trans printer; & fill-in trans pride flag

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

“made by a trans ally!” & “made by a trans printer!” with fill-in trans pride flag

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

“made by a trans printer!” on manicule with Erin Moore’s Vision font on “trans”

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

“we are older than your laws and we will outlive them”

The text in this design quotes the text from CoyoteSnout’s art, which quotes an old Yiddish lyric with a 20th-century history of resistance/defiance to Jewish persecution and murder (“we will outlive them”) put into the context of trans rights (there have always been trans people).

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

“Critical tech! No ‘innovation’ serving profits over people” + Luddite

This uses a personally digitally edited version of a public domain image from a historical illustration of a Luddite.

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

“glitch their systems”

Download as: SVG or PNG. (CC-BY-NC Amanda Wyatt Visconti.)

I’ve been experimenting with lasercutting type-high wood to make letterpress blocks for letterpress printing with, greatly helped by forum posts on the BriarPress.org letterpress community site about topics like type-high wood/shims and lasercutting viability (for example). I wrote up my work to share there in return, and wanted to blog it as well in case it can help others.

Here’s the best lasercut letterpress block I’ve made yet! I’ll update with a print once I next get to use the local Vandercook with it.

Here’s the art I used to make it, digitally flipped for readability (for non-letterpress folks: the cut block needs to be reflected horizontally, so when pressed to paper with ink the image comes out correctly):

Fun images first, followed by in-depth details of what/why/how below

Skip past them for detailed info on why/what/how, for folks who want that. Any cuts that look like I made them wrong (that are readable left to right, thus would print wrong) are actually digitally flipped to make your reading easier; I just got was lazy about including a note to that effect on each one.

Earliest tests, using only 1 lasercutter pass

These produced pretty shallow cuts; they could be printed okay on a Vandercook, with some of the chatter because I was lazy and wanted to print a bunch of slightly-different-heights cuts at the same time without packing under individual cuts to balance them all, and also didn’t sand/seal these at all before printing (some of the chatter was from the height being shallow, though). I also deliberately kept some of the prints with more chatter, as I thought the wood-grain effect was neat, and wanted to remember to explore deliberately including it on some cuts in the future (as well as cutting deeper to avoid it on most cuts).

This one is especially fun, as it started as a shape cut from craft foam using safety scissors and printed on a BookBeetle; I then scanned the print, cleaned that scan digitally, lasercut it into wood, and printed from that.

You can see the cut is fairly shallow:

Here’s the original BookBeetle/craft foam print the above cut came from:

Photo digitally flipped for readability. Sometimes there is flame; optimally, there is not any (power was too high and/or speed too slow):

Testing different laser methods & settings

Next two photos are digitally flipped for readability, zoomed in to show text height from block surface. On the “zines zines zines” block, each word looks slightly different because a different lasercutter method was used on each, with raster cutting deepest (far right) but also burning most, cut (far left) cutting least, and etch in the middle. It probably didn’t help I used subpar random mystery Ebay wood…

Best outcome yet

“Critical tech: no ‘innovation’ serving profit over people.” 5 lasercutter passes, passes 1, 2 or 3?, 5 shown below (final photo digitally flipped for readability):

Why do this at all?

Because experimenting is fun; because you can make longlasting cuts from your own or other favorite images, including things you can’t buy historical or new cuts of; to design your own type (very advanced to do well); to have type in hard- or impossible-to-find (at least in the U.S.) languages and scripts (ditto). If you have free access to a good-enough lasercutter (eg thorugh a local library or college makerspace), the total cost can be very cheap in general (just the cost of evenly-cut maple blocks and one of many options for materials to make a shim bringing it up to type-high).

What lasercutter & settings?

I’m using the VLS 6.75 lasercutter (aka “Vader”) in Scholars’ Lab’s makerspace, for which I wrote my first zine (a cheatsheet on cutting and etching on acrylic using this lasercutter). You need to be trained by us before using it, but it’s available to anyone who can visit us in-person (no UVA affiliation needed!) and we offer both periodic workshops and 1:1 training by appointment. Non-commercial use is free, but you do need to bring your own materials to cut/etch (unlike our 3D printers, where we provide the filament for free for most non-commercial projects). Luckily, materials can be fairly inexpensive, starting from scrap cardboard, and even nicer looking wood can be fairly reasonable (e.g. a nicely finished bamboo cutting board from Ikea is a great lasercutting block, and costs ~$10).

The final 2 passes I did on the Luddite/critical tech cut above were set to 90 power, 90 speed, and 500 PPI, using 5 total complete lasercutter passes. I’ll continue tweaking those, and ideally I would have done maybe 7-8 passes but I ran out of time. (I varied the settings over the course of the 5 passes, but each took around 13 minutes, which included time the laser was doing nothing cutting the empty space above where my material was because I didn’t know how to move the start point lower, lol).

The SVG file producing the cut was color inverted so that the parts I wanted cut away were black, and the parts I wanted to remain raised were white. I also horizontally flipped the image so it would come out correctly readable when printed.

Finding a lasercutter

If you haven’t used a lasercutter before but are curious, I encourage you to ask a local or college/university librarian if they have or know of any nearby that can be used—with cheaper and smaller versions becoming more available, at least in the U.S. these seem to be popping up in more makerspaces in the last couple years. I’m not sure, but think the standing rather than tabletop kind are the ones with enough power (and safe venting requirements) to cut deep enough into hard woods, though other materials are also possible.

Materials

Lots of good posts if you search the Briar Press forum. For wood, end-grain maple seems to hit the sweet spot for price, hardness, results, but I’ve seen folks mention other options including cherry hardwood.

• So far I’ve used type-high, maple wood blanks from Virgin Wood Press, McKellier, and Ebay old letterpress blanks with the lead piece chipped off (don’t put lead in a lasercutter, the fumes are toxic)
• Non-type-high wood: get wood from anywhere cheaper (eg McClains) then add a shim (of wood, 3D printed block, tape, ?) to bring it to type-high
• Other materials: acrylic (I’ve used this in a lasercutter, lovely results, very quick <2min cuts, can get fun seethrough neon colors!); harder (grey, not “EZ Cut”) or other labeled-laser-safe linoleum (thanks for advice from Ryan Cordell*)

What’s involved: basic

Basic lasercutter use is not overly complicated to learn, if you have some comfort using computer programs, especially saving image files containing letters or shapes from any drawing program. You use a drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator to create the lines or shape you want to cut or etch—any program that can save as an SVG file—give the lasercutter some info (e.g. what kind of material you’re cutting, how thick the material is), and position the material or image so the cuts happen in the right places, then click a button and it does the rest.

A more even and precise press (e.g. Vandercook, rather than hand-pressing or craft press) may be able to print cleaner from shallower-lasercut blocks.

What’s involved: intermediate

I’ve found the non-basic part to be figuring out the best lasercutter settings (such as speed and power) for the material you’re using. Harder materials take more power to cut into and to cut deeper. With wood, speed and power impact whether you get from zero burning, to small flames, to burnt wood.

So far, I’ve had the most success playing with these using cheap sample wood (though preferably of same/similar wood type and height to what you’ll ultimately use, so the settings work the same) to find the highest power (deepest cutting) and highest speed (finishes fastest) that don’t overly burn the wood, then doing multiple passes of the lasercutter (not touching the material at all in between, so that it remains exactly perfectly registered with the cuts going in the exact same places each time).

What’s involved: advanced

I’m not at any advanced stage doing this yet :) but lots of folks are, including users on the Briar Press forum, and some of the folks producing new wood type available via online stores too. Cordell recommended starting cuts on a lasercutter, then using a CNC router to dig out most of the wood farther away from the left-as-type-high bits faster and deeper than a lasercutter can.

There are also a number of folks creating blocks and type completely via CNC router; I took a very fun and informative virtual workshop from Ryan Molloy on this topic via Partners in Print last fall.

* P.S. Thanks to Ryan Cordell (Skeumorph Press) for generously sharing insights on his lasercutting letterpress experience. And unrelatedly, to the extremely generous Briar Press forum users platenman and jnbirdhouse, who’ve helped Scholars’ Lab be able to get closer to starting to teach full-size letterpress to the public!

Claudia Berger is our Virtual Artist-in-Residence 2024-2025; register for their April 15th virtual talk and a local viewing of their data quilt in the Scholars’ Lab Common Room!

This year I am the Scholars’ Lab’s Virtual Artist-in-Residence, and I’m working on a data quilt about the Appalachian Trail. I spent most of last semester doing the background research for the quilt and this semester I get to actually start working on the quilt itself! Was this the best division of the project, maybe not. But it is what I could do, and I am doing everything I can to get my quilt to the Lab by the event in April. I do work best with a deadline, so let’s see how it goes. I will be documenting the major steps in this project here on the blog.

Data or Design first?

This is often my biggest question, where do I even start? I can’t start the design until I know what data I have. But I also don’t know how much data I need until I do the design. It is really easy to get trapped in this stage, which may be why I didn’t start actively working on this part of the project until January. It can be daunting.

N.B. For some making projects this may not apply because the project might be about a particular dataset or a particular design. I started with a question though, and needed to figure out both.

However, like many things in life, it is a false binary. You don’t have to fully get one settled before tackling the other, go figure. I came up with a design concept, a quilt made up of nine equally sized blocks in a 3x3 grid. Then I just needed to find enough data to go into nine visualizations. I made a list of the major themes I was drawn to in my research and went about finding some data that could fall into these categories.

What my initial planning looks like.

But what about the narrative?

So I got some data. It wasn’t necessarily nine datasets for each of the quilt blocks but it was enough to get started. I figured I could get started on the design and then see how much more I needed, especially since some of my themes were hard to quantify in data. But as I started thinking about the layout of the quilt itself I realized I didn’t know how I wanted people to “read” the quilt.

Would it be left to right and top down like how we read text (in English)?

Or in a more boustrophedon style, like how a river flows in a continuous line?

Or should I make it so it can be read in any order and so the narrative makes sense with all of its surrounding blocks? But that would make it hard to have a companion zine that was similarly free-flowing.

So instead, I started to think more about quilts and ways narrative could lend itself to some traditional layouts. I played with the idea of making a large log cabin quilt. Log cabin patterns create a sort of spiral, they are built starting with the center with pieces added to the outside. This is a pattern I’ve used in knitting and sewing before, but not in data physicalizations.

A template for making a log cabin quilt block by Nido Quilters

What I liked most about this idea is it has a set starting point in the center, and as the blocks continue around the spiral they get larger. Narratively this let me start with a simpler “seed” of the topic and keep expanding to more nuanced visualizations that needed more space to be fully realized. The narrative gets to build in a more natural way.

So while I had spent time fretting about starting with either data/the design of the visualizations, what I really needed to think through first was what is the story I am trying to tell? And how can I make the affordances of quilt design work with my narrative goals?

I make data physicalizations because it prioritizes narrative and interpretation more than the “truth” of the data, and I had lost that as I got bogged down in the details. For me, narrative is first. And I use the data and the design to support the narrative.

Time to sketch it out

This is my absolute favorite part of the whole process. I get to play with dot grid paper and all my markers, what’s not to love? Granted, I am a stationery addict at heart. So I really do look for any excuse to use all of the fun materials I have. But this is the step where I feel like I get to “play” the most. While I love sewing, once I get there I already have the design pretty settled. I am mostly following my own instructions. This is where I get to make decisions and be creative with how I approach the visualizations.

(I really find dot grid paper to be the best material to use at this stage. It gives you a structure to work with that ensures things are even, but it isn’t as dominating on a page as a full grid paper. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I love nothing more than doodling geometric patterns on dot grid paper. But using it really helps me translate dimensions to fabric and I can do my “measuring” here. For this project I am envisioning a 3 square foot quilt. The inner block. Block 1, is 12 x 12 inches, so each grid represents 3 inches.)

There is no one set way with how to approach this, this is just a documentation of how I like to do it. If this doesn’t resonate with how you like to think about your projects that is fine! Do it your own way. But I design the way I write, which is to say extremely linearly. I am not someone who can write by jumping around a document. I like to know the flow so I start in the beginning and work my way to the end.

Ultimately, for quilt design, my process looks like this:

1. Pick the block I am working on
2. Pick which of the data I have gathered is a good fit for the topic
3. Think about what is the most interesting part of the data, if I could only say one thing what would that be?
4. Are there any quilting techniques that would lend itself to the nature of the data or the topic? For example: applique, English Paper Piecing, half square triangles, or traditional quilt block designs, etc.
5. Once I have the primary point designed, are there other parts of the data that work well narratively? And is there a design way to layer it?

For example, this block on the demographics of people who complete thru-hikes of the trail using annual surveys since 2016. (Since they didn’t do the survey 2020 - and it was the center of the grid - I made that one an average of all of the reported years using a different color to differentiate it.)

I used the idea of the nine-patch block as my starting point, although I adapted it to be a base grid of 16 (4x4) patches to better fit with the dimensions of the visualization. I used the nine-patch idea to show the percentage of the gender (white being men and green being all other answers - such as women, nonbinary, etc). If it was a 50-50 split, 8 of the patches in each grid should be white, but that is never the case. I liked using the grid because it is easy to count the patches in each one, and by trying to make symmetrical or repetitive designs it is more obvious where it isn’t balanced.

But I also wanted to include the data on the reported race of thru-hikers. The challenge here is that it is a completely different scale. While the gender split on average is 60-40, the average percentage of non-white hikers is 6.26%. In order to not confuse the two, I decided to use a different technique to display the data, relying on stitching instead of fabric. I felt this let me use two different scales at the same time, that are related but different. I could still play with the grid to make it easy to count, and used one full line of stitching to represent 1%. Then I could easily round the data to the nearest .25% using the grid as a guide. So the more lines in each section, the more non-white thru-hikers there were.

My last step, once I have completed a draft of the design, is to ask myself, “is this too chart-y?” It is really hard sometimes to avoid the temptation to essentially make a bar chart in fabric, so I like to challenge myself to see if there is a way I can move away from more traditional chart styles. Now, one of my blocks is essentially a bar chart, but since it was the only one and it really successfully highlighted the point I was making I decided to keep it.

These are not the final colors that I will be using. They will probably all be changed once I dye the fabric and know what I am working with.

Next steps

Now, the design isn’t final. Choosing colors is a big part of the look of the quilt, so my next step is dyeing my fabric! I am hoping to have a blogpost about the process of dyeing raw silk with plant-based dyes by the end of February. (I need deadlines, this will force me to get that done…) Once I have all of those colors I can return to the design and decide which colors will go where. More on that later. In the meantime let me know if you have any questions about this process! Happy to do a follow-up post as needed.

Each year educators, students, and staff of university makerspaces gather to share research, ideas and projects at the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces conference. This was the first year since it’s founding in 2016 that the conference was held internationally, at Sheffield University in England. It was, perhaps, the international appeal that convinced several SLab Makerspace Technologists to submit a paper or project to the conference. Unsurprisingly (because these students are amazing) all of the papers and project were accepted for the conference.

It was a great conference, a fun trip, and we all did great on our presentations. The most unfortunate thing was that Link Fu came down with COVID two days before the trip and was too sick to travel with us. Resourceful as always, she recorded her part of the presentation and we were able to play that during our session.

by J.Phan and J. Truong

Recommending Makerspace Best Practices Based On Visualization of Student Use Data

by Holly Zhou and Ammon E. Shepherd

Typewriter Poetics: Creating Collaborative Memory Maps

by Qiming (Link) Fu and Ammon E. Shepherd

Mutualism between Interdisciplinary Student Organizations and Makerspaces: The Nutella Effect

I coded a quick web app for a particular book arts need: Limited Letterpress Synonym Finder. If you too also only have 1xA-Z letterpress type on hand (ie just the 26 characters of the alphabet, 1 sort per letter) and what to figure out what you can print without needing to carefully position (register) your paper and do multiple pressings between moving the letters around, you can enter words here to see only those synonyms you’re able to print (i.e. only synonyms using no more than 1 of each A-Z letter).

My presentation on “Zine Bakery: borderless DH research, methods training, and scholarly communication via zines” was accepted to the Spring Global DH 2025 conference. My talk abstract is below:

People often picture zines thinking of their 20th-century origin as collaged, xeroxed, free paper booklets about subcultures, social justice, marginalized experiences. Today, though, creators make “zines” that vary widely in format and topic, including 100+ page tiny books, feminist tech tutorials, creative websites. Most zines stay true to the form’s original vision of radically low-barrier authoring, publication, and reading, though.

Using data visualization, an ethics charter, database and metadata creation, and exemplar Global DHy zines, this “Zine Bakery” presentation demonstrates zines as welcoming, accessible, effective formats for borderless do-it-yourself scholarly communication, friendly digital method teaching, public humanities outreach, just-in-time crisis response. ZineBakery.com is a portal to zine-inspired DH scholarship, including:

• Public, relational-database-driven zine catalogue
• Data visualizations
• Zine-related DH theory and practice research blog (e.g. dataset-building, catalogue interface design, coding documentation)

ZineBakery.com’s zine catalogue contains 375+ DHy zines, with 60+ descriptive metadata fields/zine. The catalogue’s focus on zines at the intersections of tech, culture, and justice means it strongly overlaps conference themes: socially just, accessible, global DH; public, citizen humanities; tech and academic equity, diversity, inclusion; DH pedagogy. 45+ of its zines are by non-U.S. authors and/or about non-U.S. experiences; 40+ of its zines are explicitly DH-focused, with another 110+ zines in adjacent DHy areas (e.g. feminist tech, coding tutorials, data science). This presentation will share a list of links to free Global DHy zines (e.g. Bangalore hardware craft, heritage podcasting across Africa, Puerto Rican digital crowdsourcing).

This scholarship will interest DH and library staff managing public spaces/events (for potential zine sharing, instruction); digital methods teachers seeking new ways to support learning; folks new to DH seeking friendly documentation around a current DH project’s in-progress successes and failures; and DH researchers desiring more ways to share their work with the public.

In February of 2024, Qianqian Shao, Makerspace volunteer, and Ammon Shepherd, Makerspace Manager, were awarded a Library IDEA grant to provide opportunities for underrepresented students.

In 2022, the Library’s IDEA Committee received library staff requests to help support programming related to IDEA. The success of these projects encouraged the committee to create a process to support and promote staff-generated programming pertaining to inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility across the library.

Our proposal was to welcome 4 female Black and Latino/Hispanic students, along with 2 teachers, from Annandale High School to the UVA campus and the library for the Spring of 2024. The students will have a tour of Grounds with a focus on UVA libraries. The students will visit the Lawn and Rotunda to learn about the history of UVA. They will visit Brown, Clemons, and Main Libraries to learn about the resources available to UVA students. The Scholars’ Lab Makerspace will host a workshop for the students while they are at UVA.

The following is taken from a presentation that Qianqian gave to the Library at a monthly “Town Hall” meeting to report on the success of the initiative.

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Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Qianqian, I’m a PhD candidate (graduated on November 5, 2024) from the Chemistry department. Today, I’m excited to share with you the highlights from an impactful event that took place as part of my IDEA project.

First of all, I would like to thank you for funding my proposal, which made this event possible. Your support allowed me to create a truly impactful experience for underrepresented Black, Hispanic and Latino female high school students, showing them the opportunities available in higher education.

On Wednesday, April 24, 2024, we had the pleasure of welcoming five students and two teachers from Annandale High School for a one-day visit to the University of Virginia. The goal was to inspire these young women by introducing them to both the academic and social aspects of college life, showing them what’s possible for their futures, and what kind of resources our library can provide.

The day began at the Chemistry Department, where they were guided by Dr. Marcos Pires, the Director of Graduate Studies of Chemistry. He provided an overview of the chemistry program and offered insights into the broader STEM opportunities available at UVA.

Following that, with the help of Kalea Obermeyer and Michelle Bair, program coordinators of the Hoos First: First-Generation & Limited-Income Initiatives, along with Kimberly Wong, the students had the opportunity to connect with UVA students from their home countries. This connection helped them see how they could build a community of support as they begin their own college journeys.

Then, we had the privilege of hosting Dr. Adrienne Ghaly from the English Department, who gave an inspiring presentation on global citizenship and global policy. She also shared her project, “Read for Action: Climate, Conflict, and Humanitarian Crisis,” which is in partnership with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Dr. Ghaly’s session sparked meaningful discussions, helping the students understand how reading books in a library can connect to a deeper understanding of broader global issues.

After the presentation, the students enjoyed a campus tour and lunch in the Shannon Library, where they met two guest speakers, Samuel Wachamo and Giovanna Camacho, who are pursuing MD and PhD programs at UVA. These interactions provided the students with first-hand insights into the experiences of Hispanic, Black and Latino individuals in higher education and how they can navigate similar paths.

The students also got a chance to audit Dr. David Kittlesen’s immunology lecture after lunch.

To wrap up the day, the students visited the Scholars’ Lab Makerspace, where the students explored a variety of hands-on activities, learning about the innovative equipment available to UVA students. They even made personalized buttons as part of their experience. It was a fun and interactive way to introduce them to the creative and collaborative opportunities they could expect in college.

Overall, the visit was a tremendous success. The students and teachers left UVA having made valuable connections with both professors and current students, and they expressed a newfound sense of excitement about their future educational possibilities.

Special thanks to Makerspace manager Ammon Shepherd, who supervised my project, and to Makerspace technician Kroesna Chour for assisting during the event. I managed all aspects of the event myself, except during lunch when I had to arrange catering at Shannon Library. At that time, Summer (Wenxin) Xu kindly picked up the food while I guided the students to meet Dr. Ghaly in the English Department. Later, Kroesna helped lead the group to the library, allowing me to finalize the setup for catering. I couldn’t have accomplished this event without their support.

(link josef, alphabuzz, bookbeetle, blog bookbloosom) (link provisional press co) bookbinding (makerspace link, Leah Phan shoutout) apprenticeship vandcook: (link books arts memberships)

Zines

“Speedweve for mending” zine

A 16-page standard-size, full-color zine, “Speedweve for Mending” introduces you to speedweve-style mending looms for fixing small holes in socks and other fabric: What are they? What’s cool about them? Why might you want to try one? How would you get started using one? It’s a zine-ification by me, of a 10/15/2024 #DHMakes Methodz Talk and slides by Sam Blickhan. (#DHMakes Methodz Talks is a public maker talk series I organize.)

In-progress zine writing

I’m currently drafting a zine about making zines, based on Claudia Berger’s 10/31 (#DHMakes Methodz Talk on the topic, in Canva. I’ve got a new paper draft of a mini-zine on researching and procuring your first set of letterpress wood or metal type. I’ve also got a full paper draft of a mini-zine introduction to letterpress typesetting and Vandercook press printing, started back in August.

Bluesky follower/following/list management tool using coding

I coded a Bluesky follower/following/list management app for myself, since I couldn’t find one. You can achieve a surprising amount with just HTML and a little JavaScript: I made a webpage with a sortable table of Bluesky accounts, linked to their profile pages, with columns for various metadata like last-posted date—without needing an API access token.

Letterpress/book arts x lots of project work!

Building a Provisional Press tabletop letterpress printing press from a kit

I used the Provisional Press kit to build a wooden tabletop letterpress printing press:

A Hobonichi-Techno-style notebook using bookbinding methods

I took student Makerspace Tech Leah Phan’s Scholars’ Lab Makerspace workshop (recommended!) on using bookbinding methods to create a a Hobonichi-Techno-style notebook:

A year-long letterpress printing apprenticeship

I’m just starting a year-long letterpress printing apprenticeship with the Virginia Center for the Book Book Arts, focused on typesetting in metal and wood, showcard press practice, and especially projects and practice toward certification to run their Vandercook proofing press on my own (and hopefully help teach it to others, too). Shane is also doing this—let us know if you’re interested in learning or collaborating on letterpress, book arts, and adjacent digital work.

This follows up on the August 4-day letterpress printing intensive we took, as well as my other recent letterpress and book arts work.

BookBeetle screw press & letterpress printing pedagogy

Last Saturday was the 1st session of Josef Beery’s Alphabuzz at the the Virginia Center for the Book Book Arts: a cohort of letterpress folks learning how to teach public & K-12 letterpress printing with the BookBeetle, a reproduction historical screw letterpress designed to be ultra-accessible for public and teaching use. We did 6 letterpress printing exercises aimed at public teaching various age groups from kindergarten up, including letterpress printing with legos, Josef’s new BookBlossom wood type, a Declaration of Independence photopolymer plate, & my fave: cutting craft foam to make a bestiary book!

The remaining three sessions will involve: our teaching K-12 teachers how to teach with the press, our teaching those teachers and their students, and a daylong intensive on letterpress history and practice (including printing on a Franklin Common Press!).

Fabrication

I made progress on my neon ghost books project, an attempt to emulate Aidan Kang’s Luminous Books described in my “Book-adjacent data” journal article.

I learned:

• hot glue gun doesn’t work well for these glass & acrylic joints (too thick, dries too fast; had to peel off and re-glue with clear Loctite superglue)
• leaving paper wrapping on the on glass & acrylic to protect it from the glue meant that it is now annoying to remove; and I discovered that excess glue actually cleans off it easily without leaving a cloud
• the jigsaw-edge box design calculator I used, and/or the glass cutting measurement tolerances are off (resulting in gaps between the joints)

This is a very practical post describing how I’m trying to improve a public space zine display! My current zine rack in the Scholars’ Lab Common Room currently looks okay—the metal rack allows you to see there are zines hanging on the other two of its three sides, and the rainbow of clothespin colors makes me smile.

Photo of the current Scholars’ Lab public space Zine Bakery free zine rack

The rack isn’t ideal, though: the clothespins are plastic and come apart easily, bend the zine covers, and make adding multiples of one zine difficult (you have to start at the bottom of your intended column of zines and layer them upwards, given the clothespin needs to attach to the top of each zine). We’ve also got some clear acrylic wall ledges I’d intended to use for zines, but we want to save the little wall space we have (we’re lucky to have a ton of windows, looking out both onto UVA’s chapel and Rotunda, and into the new skylight atrium in the center of the library building). The whole thing is a little wobbly—I had to reinforce it with metal cable ties (an amazing tool, highly recommend having some on hand) and the whole rack pieces easily unseats from the shallow wheeled base.

I’d like something where it’s easy to place stacks of zines rather than needing to pin them one at a time, since I already have limited time to re-impose, print, fold, and staple all the zines myself. (Colleagues have offered to help, but I need to finish getting the imposition/print instructions correct and documented for each zine first). I also think it’s more inviting to folks who are unused to getting to take a bunch of things for free, to not need to unpin a zine first before being able to flip through it. I’m imaging a combination of a lare flat surface where I can keep a large percent of the SLab-relevant zines in stock, plus a smaller table display where I can place new-to-us zines, or gather small thematic collections of zines.

Jeremy helped me out by creating a Pinterest board of DIY zine options, which helped me build my own Pinterest board with a combination of his pins and some researching those inspired. Ultimately, I want something requiring as little cutting and attaching as possible, so that I actually finish it this fall; and it needs to be free-standing (given lack of wall space) but not take up a huge footprint. Finally, it needs to have some kind of rail around “waist height” (halfway up) standard zine height, so that the zines don’t fall forward and off the ledge.

I think I want to do something like this rack with a solid rectangle leaned on an A-frame, except make the back part more like this rack that uses less total wood so we don’t have to mess with hinging crossbars.

I think that means we’ll need to source:

• for the front, finished (or paintable) flat board with a frame around it
• shallow L-shaped ledges for zines to sit on
• dowel rods, or wires shaped like [_], to keep middle of zines from falling forward (if dowel rods, need the wood rectangle to have a frame around the edge the dowels can be attached to)
• 2 hinges attaching the back frame to front rectangle
• back frame (3 boards)

And I’ll need to figure out:

• Width/spacing of ledges and dowel rods (and size of the large, front flat piece the zines lean back against; this may depend on what the hardware store has on hand)

The two zine rack inspiration images are below. I’ll update if I manage to build this (quite possible I’ll just decide we need to buy something ready-made instead, but I wasn’t finding anything reasonably priced doing what I want, and I really just need a few basic features).

Source.

Source.

Claudia Berger maintains a Zotero “physical data viz” group library containing nearly 100 articles, datasets, and other relevant reads.

I added several items to that library this past week, and wanted to capture my Bluesky thread about them for the blog:

Personal stress data as commentary on stress-impacted health issues

Laurie Frick’s “Stress Inventory” uses leather discs on stretched linen, piled and colored to record daily irritation levels & highlight stress’ contribution to chronic health issues. (HT Laura Miller)

Weaving data analysis of speculative fiction

Quinn Dombrowski’s “The Locked Loom 1: Gideon the Ninth” discusses a weaving text visualization and analysis based on elements of everyone’s favorite “lesbian necromancers in space” fantasy novel (the Locked Tomb Series; highly recommend, it is not silly/pulp despite that being a fitting descriptor, but rather epic, page-turning speculative fiction/sci fi).

Baking data-displaying cakes for climate change advocacy

An interview with “baker-turned-glacier guide” Rose Mcadoo on her “Cakes for Climate Change” combating climate demise through educational cakes and desserts that explain the natural processes behind glaciology and climate change.

Workflow for turning ambient audio data into 3D prints

Audrey Desjardins’ and Timea Tihanyi’s “ListeningCups: A Case of Data Tactility & Data Stories” documents a workflow for capturing data, creating 3D printed porcelain cups embedded with datasets of everyday ambient sounds; and shares reflections around experiences such as “data accidents” (HT Beth Mitchell)

Reflections from installing a data physicalization exhibit

Claudia Berger and Chris Alen Sula’s piece on lessons learned from installing a data physicalization of a HASTAC conference’s metadata, published in Nightingale (the journal of the Data Visualization Society).

Building data intended for (sometimes physical) art

“Datasets as Imagination” by Lisa Shroff argues for collectively built datasets shaped specifically for reuse by artists for art, including for physical data exhibits. (HT Zoe LeBlanc)

Library research guide for data physicalization

“Data Driven Creativity: Making Data Physicalizations” is a library guide by Ariel Ackerly, Sarah Reiff Conell, and Ofira Schwartz, gathering datasets, projects, and writing about data physicalizations.

(“HT” is shorthand for “hat tip”, a minimal-characters way people say “I found this link via this other person sharing it in the past; thanks to them”.)

This post is by Amanda, Claudia, and Quinn—a few of the many #DHmakes community members, who’ve described the community in a couple places. We’re gathering those descriptions into one post (though a hashtag in use across multiple platforms is defined by its users, so we aren’t the authority, and its use will evolve over time!).

1. DH = digital humanities (folks using or building digital tools like websites, code, VR to explore humanities areas like culture, history, art, ethics; folks using those kinds of humanities approaches to critique technology)
2. Makes = craft, making, makerspace types of creative work

We published a peer-reviewed article in the Korean Journal of Digital Humanities,”#DHmakes: Baking Craft into DH Discourse”, if you want to know a lot about the community’s origins, history, and outputs.

If you want a ✨tl;dr✨ though, here’s a FAQ!

Who started this?
We’re digital humanities people who incorporate physical making/art into our work (or do it as a hobby and share it online somewhere)!

Who is this for?
#DHmakes is loosely folks in digital humanities/libraries/academia/learning-work who craft/make (including as non-job hobby), open to anyone interested.

What kinds of things get posted?

• “I made/am making a thing!”
• work related to including craft/textile work in making
• works-in-progress, fails, public figuring-out how to do some method/project
• explicitly celebrating, amplifying, encouraging neat craft/make work, whether or not the creators are digital humanities people
• encouraging sharing “this is my hobby, not my job” crafts
• getting started

What kinds of making/crafting?
All of them? We’re interested in an expansive definition and especially things that have sometimes gotten left out of how people think of makerspaces/making, such as textile art. Other frequent areas of interest tagged #DHmakes include craft/making work related to:

• history
• culture & pop culture
• zines
• data visualization & embodiment, including personal data
• queer/feminist/critical tech, social justice
• play with historical craft practices
• expansive definitions of making that assert awesomeness of areas like fabric arts, cooking, fashion

For examples, check out Quinn’s Textile Makerspace, Claudia’s and Gabby Evergreen’s “Pockets of Information”, Jacqueline Wernimont’s “Visualizing Energy Data or Visceralizing Energy Transitions”, and Amanda’s Scholars’ Lab “expansive makerspace”-tagged posts page.

Why have I been tagged #DHmakes?
Folks RT/repost cool, relevant craft/making work with the tag so others get to admire them too.

Am I “DH enough” to use the hashtag?
The “DH” in #DHmakes is digital humanities. We’re guessing the other most active hashtag users agree with us: anyone curious about DH (not necessarily “experienced” or in a “DH job”) should participate! Workers, students, hobbyists in areas like gallery/library/archive/museum/learning that are DH or feel adjacent too.

Have you done things beyond using a hashtag?
Yes!

• A collaborative making project as part of a conference session (ACH 2023) plus a blog post explaining the different crafts/crafters included
• A mini-conference (at DH 2024)
• A journal special issue: dh+lib Critical Making Special Issue
• A peer-reviewed journal article: ”#DHmakes: Baking Craft into DH Discourse”
• Series of public “intro to x method” talks (#DHmakes Methodz Talks, Fall 2024)

You can follow #DHmakes using a feed of all tagged posts, or a feed of just the #DHmakes posts that include photos.

Over the years, the Makerspace staff have helped with numerous projects connected to the UVA Medical School and Hospital. Here are six projects I have worked on over the past year or so.

Woodchuck Liver Tumor Slicer

In the summer of 2022, two medical students reached out to the Makerspace seeking support for making a 3D model from CT and MRI scans. The students were working in a radiology lab over the summer and need a process for creating a mold from the scans. What were the scans? Livers. Livers from woodchucks. What did they want to do with the mold? Put the liver in it. And then slice it up so they could do tests on the tumors in the liver. And that was how the woodchuck liver tumor slicer was created.

Imagine my surprise, when in the summer of 2023, another student asked for the same thing!

Files for Replication

• Fusion 360 file
• 3D printing file - Slicer top
• 3D printing file - Slicer bottom

3D Printing Protein

In Fall 2023, Ilya Levental asked about 3D printing a beautifully structured protein called caveolin.

With a little effort and a lot of support material removal, we were able to get a nice model of the protein printed.

Files for Replication

• 3D printing file - caveolin protein

Mouse Pup Anesthesia Bed

Lou Legouez, a post doctoral researcher at UVA’s Neuroscience department, requested help with creating a bed and mask cone adapted for mouse pups that undergo anesthesia. It sounded like an interesting project, so I was able to model a part and 3D print a prototype.

Files for Replication

• Fusion 360 model
• 3D printing file - mouse bed

Neonatal Rib Cage

One of the earliest efforts to assist UVA’s medical field was in from 2021; an inquiry from the Medical Simulation Center to 3D print a baby sized rib cage for students to practice placing chest tubes in infants. Apparently, the center would use chicken rib cages for this purpose. With models available online for this, I was able to 3D print some rib cages for the center.

Files for Replication

• 3D printing file - ribs

Motion Capture Clusters

Dante Goss, a PhD student in Kinesiology, was looking for some replacement motion capture clusters. The department had received these clusters some years ago, but who created them and how was lost to history. One of the clusters had recently broke and was unusable. I was able to take the measurements from the old ones and model some new ones in Fusion 360. A usable model came after a couple of iterations.

I decided to put the files on a popular 3D printing website so anyone can use them. The Fusion files and .3mf files are available for download at the following site:

Files for Replication

• 3D files for clusters

Petri Dish Comb

While most of my help ends up successfully, some do not. Point in case is the attempt to print a petri dish comb for Louis Wilson from UVA’s Molecular Physiology & Biological Physics Department. They had a filament 3D printer available, but printing in PLA was not an option as the part deformed and warped when applied to the hot temperatures in the medical equipment. This meant using a more sturdy material, which we could do with our resin printer. Louis was able to procure the materials and we provided the printer.

I tried several times and with several different resins to print a usable comb, but most of the attempts had too much support and left spurs on the comb tines rendering it unusable, or the finished product was so brittle and fragile that the tines broke off, or the resin was so old that it produced more of a mess than a prototype.

Files for Replication

• small petri dish comb

While I have no formal training in biomedical engineering, or engineering in general, I love the opportunity to help people solve problems. And that’s what life is pretty much all about anyways. We all have problems and issues. Finding people to help us find solutions can bring happiness!

I’d like to develop some kind of scale to show what a reader can expect from a zine I author, in terms of their reading experience and perception of the effort and care that went into a given zine. For example, was it hand-lettered in one sitting with a few grayscale images pasted in, or does it have extensive digital design work (and digital font, possibly allowing denser legible text)? Does it represent significant research and/or creative writing, or is it something quicker (like a short quick blog post)? I’d like to create all kinds of zines, and I think having language for different kinds of approaches could help people know that when I share I’ve made a new zine, it might look different from my zines they’ve seen in the past. I think these are all great forms of zine to have in the world, though, so I don’t want to use language that treats one level of time/effort/etc. as inherently higher “quality” or better, than another.

I liked the idea of “trash games” that Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux shared at a past workshop for the Scholars’ Lab—the idea was to create more quick, probably crappy art/games, as a way to enjoy making things, make more things, expand your game design knowledge in ways that could ultimately contribute to non-“trash games” as well. I like the “make more bad art” idea I saw on a laptop sticker somewhere.

I’m a bit uncomfortable with using “trash” to describe this kind of zine (assuming I make some), given classist/racist/gross applications to people and cultures it’s been part of. I also don’t think such games, zines, other art actually are trash—they’re worth sharing, preserving, discussing, and I don’t want people unfamiliar with the term to assume otherwise. I do dig how a term like “trash zines” could be freeing in terms of lowering a mental barrier—just sketch a thing! Don’t worry if the writing is legible to others! Include arrows when you realize you ned to move chunks of text elsewhere! And maybe you just have some personal creative enjoyment, which is enough in itself. But it might also help you get comfortable with sharing or polishing a zine?

I’ve been thinking of “initial rise” for Zine Bakery homemade first-draft zines, but that depends on my running bread puns. I also think initial draft is not the same as deliberately crappy zine sketching in spirit or outcome. Regardless of what terms I end up using, I think developing a list of features I sometimes include in zines I make could help in how I describe them—things like what kind of research went into a zine, amount of time spent on art and layout, maybe other kinds of media formats I think a given zine approximates (e.g. journal articles vs. quick blog post).

Ideas for other ways to refer to this kind of “do bad art quick” than as “trash art”/trash games/trash zines? Let me know! (e.g. on Bluesky; check out my friendly academic/DHy guide to Bluesky if you aren’t on yet!)