Critters
Categories
Material Research
Team
Dominic Muren
Project
Critters
Timeline
4 weeks
Year
2024
Critters was a radical making course taught by Dominic Muren. The assignment: form a relationship with a plant and make something from it. I chose the broad-leaved dock — a weed so common it's almost invisible — and spent six weeks learning what it could become.
Critters was a radical making course taught by Dominic Muren. The assignment: form a relationship with a plant and make something from it. I chose the broad-leaved dock — a weed so common it's almost invisible — and spent six weeks learning what it could become.
I made three things. A golden ink, extracted from dock leaves and salt — a surprisingly simple process that revealed a pigment the plant had been holding quietly all along. A bowl, cast from the fiber leftover after ink-making, using cornstarch and flour as binders. It cracked, I rehydrated it, I started over. The final form is rough and imperfect in a way that feels honest. And a therapeutic duster, woven from dock stems and leaves, made while sitting in the dirt in a city park — the same kind of cracked, overlooked environment the dock itself grows in.
I made three things. A golden ink, extracted from dock leaves and salt — a surprisingly simple process that revealed a pigment the plant had been holding quietly all along. A bowl, cast from the fiber leftover after ink-making, using cornstarch and flour as binders. It cracked, I rehydrated it, I started over. The final form is rough and imperfect in a way that feels honest. And a therapeutic duster, woven from dock stems and leaves, made while sitting in the dirt in a city park — the same kind of cracked, overlooked environment the dock itself grows in.
The project was less about design outcomes and more about learning to work with a material on its own terms. The dock kept resisting my first instincts — the alcohol extraction didn't work, the bowl cracked, the hat became a duster. Every adjustment taught me something about patience and about what the plant actually wanted to be. That instinct — to follow material constraints rather than force a predetermined form — is one I carry into interaction design, where the best systems tend to emerge from understanding resistance rather than overriding it.
The project was less about design outcomes and more about learning to work with a material on its own terms. The dock kept resisting my first instincts — the alcohol extraction didn't work, the bowl cracked, the hat became a duster. Every adjustment taught me something about patience and about what the plant actually wanted to be. That instinct — to follow material constraints rather than force a predetermined form — is one I carry into interaction design, where the best systems tend to emerge from understanding resistance rather than overriding it.
