Philosophy

We see every tool as a set of bicycle gears: they match our innate human nature to a particular task we wish to accomplish. Hammers accumulate energy slowly as we swing our arm, and release it instantaneously thru a steel head much harder than our own hands. A 3D printer converts our digital designs into tangible objects via the mind-numbingly tedious, and yet extruciatingly meticulous, task of laying down plastic layer-by-layer.

The simple truth is that most tools are single-speed bicycles, and that there is no universal tool.

We believe that the notion of “access to tools” extends well beyond the priveledge of walking up to a tool and using it, perhaps at your local FabLab. Access to tools means being able to bend the tool to your will. Only in this way can we find the perfect impedance match between our minds, bodies, and the objects of our creative intent.

We hope that pyGestalt will bring about this alternate reality in two ways:

1. By lowering the barrier to building custom automated tools, individuals will be empowered to roll their own.
2. Once a critical mass of tools has been build using a modular and open approach, it will be much easier to modify tools to meet particular needs.

One thing you’ll notice is that we don’t use g-code (which, if you’re not familiar, is the standard language of machine control invented in the 1950s). This is contrary to many digital fabrication tools on the market today, particularly desktop 3D printers and CNC machines. Not only is g-code far too restrictive for the breadth of applications we have in mind, it is a vestige of the core idea underpinning the entire automation industry: that large up-front investments (e.g. capital equipment, training, part programming, setup time, etc…) are amortized by the mass-production of output. pyGestalt turns this philosophy on its head by optimizing for the creative capacity of the individual at the expense of output rate.

We’ve compiled a reading list that you might find interesting, which includes Ilan’s Gestural Design.