LookingOutwards-03 – Page 6 – [OLD FALL 2018] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Looking Outwards 3

https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/projects/sets/kinematics-dress/

The ‘Kinematics’ dress made by nervous system.

I chose to explore the fashion side of the computer generated physical forms. I really admire the movement that the creators were able to achieve with the dress. I inserted a photo of the dress above, but the clickable link includes a GIF of a person walking in the dress, and it really sways like a fabric that has shape but also has fluidity, which is incredible considering the fabric is nylon. It is also amazing to see that the creators have made a garment that is able to be fully customizable and can fit any body type. It is clear that the creators have strong artistic direction in addition to being extremely competent with the computer generation aspect of their art as well. There isn’t much information on the algorithms they use but the creators make their designs very accessible to the public and able for anyone to customize.

Han Yu Looking Outwards 03

Meshu is a project started by two technological artists Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang. It generates artistically crafted earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings from the map data entered by users. I admire this project because the products are both aesthetically pleasing and meaningful to whoever ordered them. You can use it as a sweet reminder of a memorable trip or a special place in your heart and wear it all the time. The all designs are in a minimalist style but guaranteed to be unique.

Binx and Hwang use custom algorithm to generate a Meshu based on the cities and locations that customers have entered. I haven’t been able to find the exact algorithmic technique that they use to design the Meshu but each designs are 3D printed before any further work.

Alexandra Kaplan – Looking Outwards – 03

One project I found while looking on the Digital Fabrication Flicker that is linked to on the course website really stood out to me. It is a project created by flickr user fdecomite who 3D prints seashells. These seashells seem to be so much like the real thing that at first I couldn’t believe they were 3D printed.
I am not sure how the different code and algorithms helped to make the seashells but I think it could use some sort of random pattern generator for the color and an algorithm for the ratios for the different parts of the shell. The art really shines through in the patterns on the shells and just how natural they seem. I can imagine it must have taken hours of studying seashells to understand the complex patterns that appear upon them.

Note: I tried to find a website for the artist but was unable to.

Yingyang Zhou-LookingOutwards-3

Strand Garden/ Matsys/ 2016

Inspired by the organic curves of Art Nouveau and translated through Matsys’s unique approach to digital craftsmanship, these four new pieces explore the champagne-making process and its emblematic materials.

Strand Garden’s three screens of curved strands, evoking tree trunks or vines, mark out a central area: “You’re in a small clearing,” Andrew Kudless explains. “You get hints of what lies beyond, but it’s an inward-looking, reflective space.”

Strand Garden, Matsys for Perrier-JouÃ«t, DesignMiami/ 2016, Photo Â© Perrier-JouÃ«t.â€‹

Strand Garden

chiars in organic form

Details of the table

prototype/ 2014

Strand Garden

Strand Screen

Stand Table

Strand Tower Prototype

This project prototype explores the capacity of lightweight tubular structures to create an immersive experience for a lighting festival. Due to the short duration of the festival, the structure needs to be both lightweight as well as quickly deployable. Each tube is made from three planar pieces of CNC-cut HDPE. These parts are riveted together causing the planar material to slightly bend which also results in local stiffening of the material. Globally, each tube is twisting along its central axis which also adds a general rigidity to the tube.

In order to create an experience for the festival visitors that is engaging, playful, and innovative, the tubes transition from a bundled network at the top to individual strands at the base that allow visitors to walk between. A LED light strand is positioned at the centre of each tube and reacts to visitors’ movement as well as ambient conditions such as wind. This network of strands resonates with the complexity of local mangrove forests and provides a space for interaction, exploration, and play.

what I admire about this project is that it create a great atmosphere and subtly react to people passing through. My guess about the technology is using Arduino programmed to react to the movement of people and wind

Sean Meng-Looking Outwards 3

Silk Pavilion

The final form of Silk Pavilion

The Silk Pavilion is a project designed by Mediated Matter Research Group at MIT Lab. For me the most amazing part of this project is it creates a breathtakingly beautiful installation with not only digital fabrication but also biological fabrication. It is really hard to tell whether the researchers or the silkworm is the author of this project. The primary structure was a system of 26 polygonal panels made of silk threads laid down by a CNC(Computer-Numerically-Controlled)machine. Inspired by the silkworm’s ability to generate a 3D cocoon out of a single multi-property silk thread, the overall geometry of the pavilion was created using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density. The algorithm enables designers to engage such a sophisticated pattern combined with natural fabrication. As a result, the final work has both artificial designed overall shape and natural fabricated surfaces.

Link: http://matter.media.mit.edu/environments/details/silk-pavillion

John Legelis – Looking Outwards 3 – Computational Fabrication

Meta-Mesh is a project that employes a biomimetics design philosophy (meaning to mimic nature) to create body armor that functions in a similar way to the exoskeleton of an ancient fish. The implementation of this project is cutting edge and uses state of the art tools such as additive manufacturing and algorithmic computational fabrication to execute the desired manufacturing process.

The design process, stems from fish scale armor

Due to this project’s copycat nature, the creator’s artistic touch is simply an effort to mimic the original artistic touch of nature. The algorithms that synthesize this project are likely complex, but due to the finite number of “links” in the armor, the bits can be treated as module. This allows finite element analysis (FEA) to be very useful in digital trial and error before the forms are even physicalized.

Jessica Timczyk – Looking Outwards 03

The photo above depicts a 3D printed glass vase.

A project of the MIT Media Lab, MIT Glass Lab and Mediated Matter Group, including researchers: John Klein, Michael Stern, Markus Kayser, Chikara Inamura, Giorgia Franchin, Shreya Dave, James Weaver, Peter Houk and Prof. Neri Oxman,  the G3DP project was created in 2014 to 3D print translucent glass into different shapes and sculptures. This project is excessively interesting because it takes an ancient art, like glass blowing, and translates it into modern technology. Many ancient arts like this have been kept to traditional methods of creation, so glass making and blowing’s introduction to 3D printing marks a milestone in the digital art world. Although the algorithm used to create these glass sculptures can only be inferred, it would make sense for an algorithm to be made to digitally construct the design and execution of each layer for each of the glass sculptures, before being sent to the 3D printer. While glass is usually seen in the form of vases, bowls, cups and etc, this project allows the creator to manifest their artistic style in the form and pattern in which the translucent glass sculptures are created, resulting in many varying and interesting shapes and forms.

A close up shot of translucent glass being printed into a vase form.

The video above shows an in depth look into how the sculptures are printed and the algorithms behind them.

Jenny Hu — Looking Outwards 03

Dio (Consummation) is a sculpture by Ben Snell, an artist based in Queens and a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon. What I admire most about this work is actually the poetic process and perspective Ben takes. The first paragraph really says it all:

“Dio is the name of my computer. I trained it to study classical sculpture, then asked it to close its eyes and dream of a new sculpture—one which has never before been seen. Then, I ground Dio to dust and re-formed it into its dream. This sculpture is both the computer and the computer’s dream.”

This piece was generated by an algorithm, but he doesn’t go into its specifics. Instead, we’re asked to think about the algorithm as the computer’s dream, thoughts that it owns.

Erin Fuller LookingOutwards-03

Image result for ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2013/14 at the Design Society — ICD ITKE Research Pavilion 2013-14

This Research Pavilion, 2013 – 14, was created by the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) of the University of Stuttgart. The main goal of this structure was to continue to investigate in bionic research. The design of the structure was generated by algorithms meant to mimic the natural strength of the fiber composition of shells and exoskeletons. The students and researchers translated this to human scale installation by using lightweight fiberglass strings, taking place of natural fibers in cytoskeletons, wound around a steel frame.

I like this project because it is not only beautiful, but it shows a new path for architectural construction – by bringing nature back into the design rather than creating the orthogonal structures we live in every day.

Jonathan Liang – Looking Outwards – 03

This is a work by Benjamin Dillenburger called Rocailles. Professor Dillenburger is a professor of architecture at the University of Toronto. What I find amazing about this work (and other Dillenburger works as well) is how it uses parametricism to generate beautiful sculptures. What I also admire about many of Dillenburger’s works is that they look that they are incredibly random, but have a computational formula behind how the forms are constructed. As an architecture student, I am pretty familiar with parametricism because it is now part of our core curriculum in school. Architecture now is turning to parametricism and computational design for housing units and designing buildings that can be integrated and be built by robotics. I have never been a big fan of computational design in architecture, but I love computational design when it comes to sculptures, installations, pavilions, and smaller scale works in general.

http://benjamin-dillenburger.com/projects/