svitoora – 02 Looking Outwards

Michael Hansmeyer‘s Generative Columns 

The artist worked alone to digitally generate these column, but collaborated with others to technically execute these into physical objects. Each column starts off with a cube. The cube is then algorithmically folded along certain “humanly invisible” spots. These “humanly invisible” spots refers to the mathematical maxima or minima on the surfaces of the object based on certain mathematical interpretations such as: tangency, tension, normals ,etc.

Columns are exemplars of the century. From the Chinese to the Greeks, columns carry with them the aesthetic and moral values of the culture at a given point in time. Task with the job to design columns for 21st century, Hansmeyer decided to digitally generate these column and made them from stacking laser cut paper. According to Hansmeyer, the 21st century can be classified by the rise of the Digital Age and algorithms, therefore columns that are permuted and generated digitally by the computer to exemplify this era’s aesthetic seems appropriate.