Looking Outwards 03: Computational Fabrication

Project Title: Wooden Carpet

Year of Creation: 2009

Artists: Elisa Strozyk

The project is a wooden textile carpet. I admire how the veneer pieces are assorted in color (light to medium brown) because this adds to the rendering’s depth, and makes the artwork look especially fascinating when contorted and crinkled. I also admire how it combines two of the most common floor coverings as this has me questioning other familiar materials and imagining how these can be hybridized with each other. A critique might be that the artwork would be even more interesting to observe if the pieces used on a single carpet were varying shapes instead of all triangles. The geometric shapes were generated by an algorithm unknown to myself, and then realized in wood-veneer through laser cutter machinery. The creator then bonded the pieces onto fabric. Strozyk’s artistic sensibilities include viewing substances in different ways than they are normally viewed and the “possibility of surprising elements.” The final form transforms wood to appear and be malleable as it can bend and maintain a unique shape unlike a typical carpet rug or wood floor, encouraging the audience to rethink our assumptions about the resources we use and expand our creative bounds.