Jaclyn Saik Looking Outwards 02

After exploring a bunch of generative artist’s portfolios and the websites of a lot of different design and art firms, I found a generative art project that really grabbed my attention. The design studio “Nervous System” created and exhibited a project called “Growing Objects” which, simply put, explored patterns that occur in nature and then simulated them. This caught my eye particularly because the project was hosted by the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, but the images of the objects and visuals they created were beautifully delicate and artistic.   The above picture is just one of the many digitally fabricated sculptures in the series, called “Laplacian Cave.” Laplacian growth is one of the four computational systems that the studio featured and explored: this one particularly “involves a structure which expands at a rate proportional to the gradient of a laplacian field.” This type of growing and the resulting pattern can be found in nature in crystallization effects and with different types of fungi and algae.

The studio produced a variety of both 2D and 3D models that used a similar algorithm. They made sure to specify why they were not trying to recreate exactly something that is found in nature, but rather explore how synthetically building objects using these algorithms brings up similarities in the natural world.

I think this project is a really interesting combination of math and art, and I think it is fitting and very “full-circle” that the mimicking of nature and living organisms brings about such an elegant synthesis.