For the past few years I’ve been very interested in creative making. In high school I began sewing with my mom, making clothing, bags, and accessories, and I repaired and altered items to give them new life. I later became very interested in making with recycled materials. I joined my interest in environmental sustainability with my awe and inspiration of my grandmothers tapestry weaving and began creating my own looms and weaving with plastic bags and fabric scraps. It was so liberating: I loved letting my creative flow and curiosity guide my learning. No agenda, I could problem solving and take risks on my own terms.

At a similar time in my life I began fiddling around more freely on the piano in my house and on my guitar. I had always played songs I knew, but for the first time had began to develop a real faith in my own creative intuition within music and making. What caused me to feel more comfortable doing art in a creative way at this point in time?

These improvisational artistic experiences represented important progress in my self-confidence, but I still struggled to not over criticize myself, especially in front of people. Sitting in a tent, safe in the woods with my friend during a hike through Pennsylvania we passed my harmonica back and forth. An artist, my friend was loose and relaxed, and the sounds she made were beautiful. I didn’t feel the same way about what I was producing.

When I got to college one of the first bonding activities with the other first years in my co-op that I participated in was collaborative art making. My friend pulled out a giant notepad and thick markers in bright colors and began doodling. Fruit and monkeys, their drawings were silly and carefree. I sat there trying to contribute but mostly just watched, inspired but scared. I wondered why didn’t I feel comfortable making random doodles in front of my new friends.

It was intimidating to contribute to a group art piece, no matter how casual it was. Every mark I made felt forced and pointless, and when I lifted my marker and looked at the page it seemed to have ruined the previously cute array of images my friends had created. Though sobering, this experience was formative for me. I was inspired by my friends’ artistic freedom of expression, and eventually became much more comfortable doodling in a purposeful way both alone and around others. Now, creating a group drawing is one of my favorite activities.

Similarly, in my first year of college I continued to explore music improvisation alone and with friends through instruments and singing. We would sit in dorm rooms and grassy fields and “soundscape” [verb: to soundscape], which, to us, meant creating any sounds whatsoever. It was an activity that relied on trust and intuition. Each person had to believe they would not be ridiculed by the others, and had to accept themself for whatever sound they wanted or happened to make. Sometimes it was calm, somber and serious, and other times it was fun and sporadic, but it was always therapeutic. I never thought I would be comfortable doing such a thing, yet there I was, letting my intuition guide me as I contributed to an improvised group song.  

These fruitful experiences led me to become extremely interested in community making, and over the past year I developed a bit of an obsession with makerspaces – areas where, theoretically, anyone can make whatever they want using art and maker materials such as sewing machines and 3D printers. So for my final project in Music and Ecology, I decided to attempt to make a 3D printed harmonica and analyze the significance of my creative experiences in order to tackle the question: what makes people feel comfortable being creative?

Generally, there are many social dynamics at play within a given situation that have the capacity to change and affect people’s level of comfort in addition to an individual’s own level of confidence. Specifically, gendered, racial, and financial factors affect accessibility significantly. Also, considering the physical making of art and musical materials, issues of sustainability along with access are relevant.

Instruments made traditionally require specific materials. Whether it’s the ivory on piano keys or mahogany guitars, high demand creates a scarcity of rare materials as well as ecological degradation and social conflict due to over-harvesting and competition. While certain resonances are prioritized by serious and professional musicians, novices are more concerned with learning basic skills than the specific materiality of their instrument. Thus, I thought a harmonica made from 3D printer plastic filament would be sufficient for my purposes. However, unrecycled plastic is also a highly unsustainable building material, as it is made from fossil fuels and devastatingly pollutes the ocean, which has detrimental effects on ocean life.

In pursuing the making of my harmonica, I first had to hunt down a 3D printer. Luckily, I attended a liberal arts college that funds programs such as a winter-term which allowed people to build their own 3D printers, and which my friend had participated in. Using a harmonica pattern for a 3D printer found online and with my friend’s guidance, I began my process, eager and enthusiastic. In an effort of sustainability, the first thing I considered was the issue of plastic, so I posted in my school’s barter and trade group, which was unsuccessful, and then pursued buying recycled filament online. Pictured below is seemingly the only option for such a thing. At 30 euros, it would have costed me a total of 60 dollars including shipping to order from the Netherlands.

Right off the bat, it was discouraging to see how inaccessible it is to make something sustainably with a 3D printer. This was surprising given my place of privilege being at an elite educational institution and having access to a printer. It was frustrating, too, given the fact that recycled plastic is not technologically hard to make, and is sourced from what would be discarded as trash – a true valorization of material. I decided to stick with my friend’s filament so as to save myself $60 and possibly avoid the carbon emissions of overseas shipping transport.

I downloaded a program called Cura which allowed me to upload my pattern and format the pieces so that they could be then transferred into the printer via USB. The harmonica pattern contained 5 segments that layer on top of eachother. The top two and bottom two pieces are symmetrical and the middle piece or the “comb” is pictured below in Cura.

With each piece taking almost 3 hours to print, the total printing time adds to about 14 hours including transition time to let pieces cool and then be removed from the plate. However, that time estimate actually falls short, because it doesn’t take into account the amount of failed prints. I tried to print the top piece multiple times, adjusting the plate angle and having my friend rework the manual settings on the printer. This trouble-shooting was something I was not prepared to do given my lack of expertise and confidence with technology. It ultimately made the printing an inaccessible process to anyone without the knowledge of the machine that my friend had, which is in large part because he built it.

In the end, one out of the 5 pieces was able to be printed, though it wasn’t fully functional due to the edges being too thin. By this time, I no longer had a spare 14 hours to print the harmonica, nor did I have access to a car to use the 3D printer at the local Lorain County Community College when my friend had to pack up his printer. Ultimately, it was a time and labor intensive process, and would have been far more so if I had been able to print the whole instrument.

Most people do not have this kind of spare time on their hands, the initiative to learn about the inner workings of 3D printers, or the basic access to makerspaces or university resources. Being raised as a girl, I’m already in a position to believe math and electronics aren’t for me. While I know this is false, this experience didn’t particularly make me want to pursue 3D printing further. And for a person of color, maker-spaces full of white men could be even more discouraging.

Thus, I ultimately came to the conclusion that 3D printing it not a feasible option for the general public. These kinds of barriers can ultimately limit confidence in certain fields and environments. I still think makerspaces should be made more accessible to people who aren’t cis-white-men, but I now have a more nuanced perspective on making. Not all creation is simply creation, some, like 3D printing favor complex systems of access that may likely rely on race, gender, finances, or education.

Bibliography

“Refil.” About, http://www.re-filament.com/.

Thingiverse.com. “3D Printable Harmonica by Slarson.” Thingiverse, http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1168855.

Trifkovic, Stanko. Sustainable Supply of Wood for Music Instruments. International Journal of Sustainable Future for Human Security, 2015.