THING THING`S LO-FI PLASTIC INDUSTRY

F o r Immediate R elease
J uly 10, 2015
TH IN G TH IN G ’S LO-F I PLASTIC IN DU STR Y
Simon Anton, Rachel Mulder, and Eiji Jimbo of Thing Thing interviewed inside the Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead.
Amy C o rle, M OC AD c urato r o f educ atio n: H o w did T hing T hing c o me to gether?
Simon Anton: We all went to architecture school at the University of Michigan. We met as students and
after graduating started to work with one of our professors, Tom Moran, who is the fourth member of
Thing Thing. We started working on a project for the Venice Architecture Biennale, which was our first
foray into plastic. At the end of the summer in Venice, we realized that we loved working with each
other, and we decided to make an art and design collective named Thing Thing.
Rachel Mulder: We hit the ground running. We made Rainbro right after returning from Venice, so that
was our first official Thing Thing piece. It showed first at Art Expo Chicago and later at New York
Design Week.
Where did yo ur lo ve o f plastic begin?
Simon: One of the first things that we did was to drive around Detroit looking for discarded objects that
we could use. We realized that though there is a lot of material, a lot of it has been water damaged or
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weathered in a way that makes it unusable. So we saw plastic as this material that already comes in an
amazing spectrum of colors, is ubiquitous, and is practically free.
Rachel: Designers don’t usually work in plastic because the machines and processes used to produce
plastic objects on an industrial scale are complicated and very expensive. By taking on the process
ourselves, we are able to design intuitively and learn from the process in order to make weird, colorful
objects. This sort of rainbow surfacing technique only happened because of many experiments,
realizing that if we mixed all of the colors together we could open it up and have a crazy color palette.
We showed it to an industrial manufacturer and he told us that our extruder was not working properly
because the colors weren’t mixed. We were like, we like that!
Simon: Yeah we’ve had a lot of consultations with industrial manufacturing facilities. There are a lot in
this area that use plastic for the automotive industry.
Rachel: Detroit is the number one plastic manufacturing region in the U.S.
Simon: When we showed them what we do they said, “ah, there’s a mistake.” We said we liked the nonhomogenous colors, the different surfacing textures… all the things that are eliminated from industrial
manufacturing. We can explore the accidents and the weird anomalies in plastic.
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We w ere talking abo ut ho w plastic is o n the o ne hand the c heapest material, but o n
the o ther hand the mo st expensive.
Rachel: If you were to purchase colored plastic it would be very expensive, but because we are recycling
the color, they give it to us for free. Recycling facilities lack the technology to sort by color. Since we’re
doing it by hand, we are able to sort everything by color and then we have our own consumer color
palette to work with.
Simon: Yeah I think that’s one of the anomalies or interesting paradoxes of working with the plastic is
that it’s a totally free material for us, thanks to the gracious donations of recycling centers and the
people who let us rummage through their trash piles…
Rachel: But they let us do that because the material is basically worthless to them.
Simon: They sell it by the ton in gigantic bales. So for us to take some garbage bags filled with the
plastic is not a big deal. But we have to put in all the hand labor to process it back into a usable material.
And that’s where the cost rises for us… all the sweat equity and hand labor that goes into it. We don’t
have an automated process; we’re not a giant plastic facility; we’re just four people working with it by
hand.
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C an yo u talk abo ut ho w yo u c ame to learn the sc ientific and mec hanic al pro c esses
yo u’re using?
Simon: A lot of it was experimentation and watching videos on YouTube. There was a lot of trial and
error. The extruder that we have in the exhibition is maybe the eighth iteration of machines that we
made that didn’t really work correctly. We’ve done research in plastic from a scientific or academic
perspective, but that’s all worked into our process of working with material by hand.
Eiji Jimbo: We based it off of actual industrial extruders, but kind of toned down all the machining
components. The extruder we have can be mostly made with parts from the hardware store. And the
rest is trial and error. It was getting too hot so we’d tone it back down, etc.
Simon: Everything is kind of a lo-fi version of what they do on an industrial manufacturing level. It’s
been an interest of ours to take these processes that are usually reserved for huge runs of a product
and being able to make small editions and to play with the machines.
Rachel: An industrial extruder costs over $100,000. So it’s not like you can just purchase these
machines - you have to make them. Which is its own design problem, and sometimes solution.
D o yo u remember the first mo ment w hen yo u tried and tried and finally had a suc c ess?
Simon: Originally we were going to get plastic bottles and cut them out with scissors by hand. We
realized pretty early on it wasn’t going to work. So then we tried to make a shredder, and that failed. We
then purchased a paper shredder, and took it apart and that was a total eureka moment.
Rachel: We also tried deep-frying the plastic, which is a process that is often used in third-world
countries. Water doesn’t get hot enough, but oil or wax gets hot enough to melt the process.
Jimbo: Deep frying it made the plastic smell like fries.
Rachel: It was greasy. And disgusting.
Jimbo: So we decided to use wax.
Are yo u the o nly artists in the w o rld w ho use this pro c ess, as far as yo u kno w ?
Rachel: Some of the processes, yes. There are a few other artists who are making their own extruders.
But there aren’t that many. I think that the learning curve is so steep that even those of us who are using
the same machines are making completely different things and going in pretty different directions.
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So yo u’re sitting o n so me o f the o bjec ts that yo u’ve made [sto o ls w ith extruded
plastic seats]. D o the o bjec ts alw ays have a use value? What’s yo ur relatio nship to the
things themselves that c o me o ut o f the pro c ess?
Simon: One of the ideas that inspires us about design in general is the opportunity to make things that
have open-ended uses, things that don’t necessarily produce a solution but give you an emotion or
make you respond in an interesting way. So we like to make things that are playful, or funny…
Rachel: Or challenging.
Simon: You’ll put it in your house and you won’t know exactly what you’ll use it for. You’ll have to
respond in a way that opens up new possibilities for yourself rather than it necessarily being
ergonomic.
Rachel: It’s almost the same attitude that we have with the plastic. It’s a challenging material that we’re
using in a different way, and we’re learning from that.
T hank yo u fo r speaking w ith us to day and fo r being o ur seaso n’s Art as So c ial F o rc e
artists in residenc y here at the M ike Kelley M o bile H o mestead!
Thing Thing’s artist residency runs until August 2, 2015.
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