Heleen Sintobin

Heleen Sintobin is a designer who holds a deep appreciation for craft practices and the mastering of technique. It’s the curiosity inherent to making that’s meant her areas of research have expanded to other disciplines and technologies. So far there have been three stages of craft: pre-digital, digital, and post-digital. What comes after ‘post’, we can only speculate. But Heleen’s practice has materiality at its core while fully embracing the process of retooling; meaning the CNC and 3D printer sit naturally next to chisels, planes, and pottery wheels.

For re-FORMAT 2020 Heleen will explore how post-digital artisanship enables her to unpack technology from a crafts perspective. Using a 3D ceramic printer she will explore the exacting properties of the machine vs her material experimentations. Different mixtures of clay will reproduce different digital designs with unpredictable gradients of expanding clay. During the coming months Heleen will explore the soft space of materiality between design and ‘happy accidents’.

Here ‘the risk of craftsmanship’ is brought into the world of digital manufacturing through the uncertain nature of materials. It is through craft-made things that the performativity of making can be experienced; connecting and confronting the visitor with previous histories, conflicting notions of making, hybrid processes, people and machines.

How can imperfection become more than an alchemic glitch in a highly controlled environment?

Mentors: Studio Unfold

Heleen Sintobin (1992) was born in Belgium and now lives in Ghent, and studied Design Products at the Royal College of Art.