Soon after her artist residency at CYENS Thinker Maker Space, Marisa was awarded a 6 month scholarship at fabricademy, a new school specialising in textiles, digital fabrication and biology! At the moment she is finishing the first half or her fabricademy journey and so far she has experimented with digital fabrication techniques, biofabricating materials, biochromes, computational couture, technical textiles as scaffold, e-textiles, wearables and open source hardware for turning fibres to fabric. During the second half of the fabricademy program, which will take place from late January until late March, Marisa, is focusing on her final personal project whilst continuing her collaborative independent research, online teaching and instructing.
Since my residency at CYENS Thinker Maker Space, I have progressed into my master’s in Material and Visual Culture at UCL. As an artist as well as a researcher, CYENS Thinker Maker Space has facilitated a space to transfer my theoretical and creative ideas into making – providing me with a dialectic between theory and practice. Progressing from an interest in archival objects, as seen in The Resident Artists Exhibition, I am now theoretically engaging with Cypriot monuments and cultural heritage; their phenomenology as well as digitisation. I am currently an assistant curator in UCL’s Ethnography Collections, formulating both a digital and a physical exhibition with ethnographic artefacts. Perhaps most importantly, the exposure I have gained as a Resident Artist at CYENS Thinker Maker Space has allowed me to network with other creative individuals interested in technology, art and heritage in Cyprus, opening up potentials for future collaborations.
During my time as an intern here, I got to learn new 2D and 3D modeling programs. Skills like mechatronics and programming got a revamp, finding use in the real world, while my network circle expanded from strictly academic to the industrial area. Also, my first participation in an exhibition with the v-plotter attracted people to my skill set, giving way to the creation of JustMakeItStudio. JustMakeItStudio is focused on creating blueprints of products from furniture to complex machinery. After having this training and space to work, I managed to move up the ranks from the internship position to a junior technician here at CYENS Thinker Maker Space.