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The Silk Pavilion (2013 – CNC Deposited Silk Fiber & Silkworm Construction; MIT Media Lab) is a fascinating project inspired by the natural constructive habits of actual silk worms. The basic premise of this project was to study the silk worm’s ability to create relatively large scale fiber structures starting with a single multi-property silk thread in an attempt to create a structure in which the surface varies in density based on outside stimuli such as sunlight. The algorithms used to create this structure were derived from documenting actual silk worms placed in a controlled environment where they were allowed to do what they do best. I thought the final product of this structure was especially fascinating when you considered how the algorithms accounted for what silk worms might have wanted to accomplish by leaving gaps or creating more dense patches of silk based on exposure to sunlight and heat. The ultimate goal of this project may have been to explore “the formation of non-woven fiber structures generated by the silkworms as a computational schema for determining shape and material optimization of fiber-based surface structures” but resulting structures look like works of art in their own right.
SILK PAVILION from Mediated Matter Group on Vimeo.