It was a welcoming change to have an afternoon session that did not focus on digital humanities. The 3 D printing lab was very interesting to both witness and experience. However, we learned that the 3D printers were very temperamental. It took Lauren and me three tries to print out our names. After I successfully printed out my name I decided to print out something more complicated. I settled on the Doctors famous TARDIS. I crossed my finger and hoped that the base layers would go down smoothly and they did. For a solid 30 minutes, the TARDIS was coming into form. Then something terrible happened, the TARDIS moved and was out of line. It was more than half way done and in one split second, it was ruined. I was crushed. Discouraged, I decided to print out smaller and low-risk objects.
When R.C returned to the lab I told him about my half TARDIS. He then reminded me that failure is okay. I realized that failure allows for creativity. If you fail at something once try something else. As we have discussed before, much of digital humanities is trial and error. If something doesn’t work out the first time, try it again or try something different. I will try to keep this lesson of failure in the back of my mind as I continue to create my digital project.
The TARDIS does have a mind of its own … maybe it just didn’t want to be 3D printed?