This project uses archived 3d models as a basis for creating ‘reconstituted objects of meaning’ via algorithmic unwrapping and craft-derived digital manipulation. 

We align this process with themes of memory and reclamation, recognizing the impossibility of perfect recall/reproduction, especially within the digital/physical flipflop.

Craft Basis

Our goal was to create meaningful deformations through flat pattern manipulation – a family of methods for cutting, translating, and re-marking the unrolled flat pattern of a 3d object to change the final model. There are examples of this type of manipulation in both paper craft and garment production.

The Process

Each team member was tasked with first choosing a meaningful object that they didn’t have physical access to, then find a representative model of that thing from an online library. With that model in hand, we followed distinct design pipelines to generate the final model. Our methods were unified by an overarching set of steps.

Our Separate Processes

Celi’s Process

Skinning

I chose to work with a model of a Star War’s AT-AT that I have at home but do not currently have with me.

I used Blender to break a model of my object into different sections and then unwrapped each section using the blender Paper Model add-on.

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Manipulation

The goal of my type of manipulation was to create organic growths on my model in order to cover certain parts that I did not remember well. I wanted to use addition material to “blur out” these parts, attempting to simulate what my mind does to parts of the memory of the object.

I created an illustrator script that would output a random-sized growth to designated edges of my unwrapped model’s net. This growth consisted of tessellation origami patterns that could then be folded into an organic-looking addition.

Reconstruction

The reconstruction of my model was made by folding, pasting and reassembling the different parts. The origami additions were folded up onto the model in order to cover up and “blur out” certain parts.

David’s Process

Lea’s Process

Skinning

I chose a Kitchenaid mixer. This object is an icon of domesticity and is in reality quite heavy and difficult to move (which is why I don’t have it with me in Pittsburgh). When thinking about memories and domestic confinement, I continued to return to the theme of hermit crabs — of repurposing a cast-off object at body scale; of “making do and mending.” I decided to sew a lightweight fabric “shell” of my mixer to inhabit.

The mixer has smooth curves that felt perfect for cutting as seams; however, my sketchy shareware model file was full of quirks and oddities. I initially planned to use Stein, Grinspun, and Crane’s intriguing Developability of Triangle Meshes code to cut the seams, but the model’s irregularities caused so many problems that by the time I had fixed them, I decided to mark the cut lines on the model in Blender by hand.

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This process was very manual, with the result that, by the time I had a nicely carved model, I knew the digital model more intimately than I have ever known the physical one.

Manipulation

I noticed that I really liked the back part of the mixer head, and I would like to use it as a sleeve cap. So I marked that part with UV painting in blender, and unwrapped again. With Illustrator scripting, I wrote a length-aware scale to match the relevant seam lines (marked in red) to the seam length of a known sleeve cap.

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Also in Illustrator, I performed a computational “smearing” operation to add pleats. This operation is based on the flat pattern manipulation technique “slash and spread” and it functionally lengthens one seam length while maintaining the others. The lengthened seam can then be pleated or gathered back into its previous length, adding three-dimensional fabric volume.

Reconstruction

To reconstitute the digital model at body scale, I used a pico projector to project and trace onto fabric. I numbered the parts and referred to the digital model for how to re-assemble them.

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System Insights

Sewing has a deceptively simple constraint: you can frankenstein/kitbash patterns together as long as their seam lengths match. This system therefore is one that scales objects by reference to body, via flattening all the way to the one dimension that is seam length: a sort of variational autoencoder for translating from model data to body space.

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Reflections

Our collection of manipulations explores how the process of digital and craft based deconstruction can expose novel and creative ways of reinterpreting an object.

Many computational processes are about filtering data. This project imagines how a craft person can act a part of a filtering process for 3 Dimensional Data.

This project will use photogrammetry and archive data as a basis for creating “reconstituted objects” via algorithmic unwrapping and craft-derived manipulation. We align this process with themes of memory and reclamation, recognizing the impossibility of perfect recall/reproduction, especially within the digital/physical flipflop. We will focus on items of our daily lives in our newly-narrowed worlds — our personal domestic surroundings.

Our goal is to use an algorithm to unroll the chosen 3D model at logical seam points. We use various hand transformation techniques to manipulate the pattern – cutting it apart and adding material (as one would do for certain techniques in garment patterning), or collage other 3D patterns onto it. See example precedent of this below. The output of this project will be some fabric or paper artifacts with a range of transformations applied to them.

Conceptual Notes

• Memory — hints of an object, not photographically perfect
• Objects, impossibility of re-capture
• Encoding actions over time — objects identifying past actions
• Reclamations (hermit crabs, internet detritus)
• Annotations, recollections

Initial Explorations

For our initial exploration each group member explored the concept of memory with the tools of flat patterning, paper, and fabric.

The goal of this project was to create a sort of three dimensional pixel and use it to recreate objects as memories. This project plays with the idea of memory distorting objects, and the representation of that through modular origami.

Technical Process

On a technical level, the “unwrapping” pipeline is already somewhat complex. We are using the research code from Stein, Grinspun, and Crane’s “Developability of Triangle Meshes” (SIGGRAPH 2018) to form the basis of the first stage of unwrapping. However, that work relies on preprocessing (using the authors’ existing tool) which introduces some distortions of its own — here is a model which began as a cube:

And the unwrapping is output as an OBJ file, which must undergo further processing to become a set of edges. Here are results from rendering the OBJ through Blender’s “Freestyle” svg rendered (colored in Illustrator for readability):

We will explore computational approaches to further manipulating this data, e.g. in Rhino or Processing, in line with inspirations from sewn flat patterning technique and modular origami.

Process Plan

Our plan is to recreate objects in a distorted way that simulates how our memory stores versions of these objects. It starts by scanning three dimensional objects, and deconstructing them into different components or “pixels”. These “pixels” will then undergo a computational or physical distortion before being put back together into a new version of the original object.

Ways of putting these objects together may include the separation of the structure of the object (the skeleton) from its texture or feel (skin). This separation dictates the way that the distorted version of it will be re-constructed.

As output, we expect to re-phsyicalize the data in a variety of media in line with our own tool and material access. For this part of the process, we will work in parallel.

Available Resources

Collectively, we have the following resources:

Machines: Macs, windows computers, Cannon DSLR camera, Nikon camera, sewing machines, scanners, 3D printer, projector

Materials: Paper, fabric

Coding knowledge/ programs: Adobe Suite, Java, Python, Grasshopper

Other resources: Arduinos, motors, sensors, Kinect, PrimeSense sensor

Initial Experiments

Paraffin Experiments:

In our initial studies we found ourselves most fascinated with plaster poured into molten paraffin. As we pour the cold plaster and water slurry into the molten paraffin wax we observe the plaster curl and bubble through the wax. The final forms show the unique, originally fluidic, state of plaster.

Towards a System Design

As we looked to turn our experiments into a tool for generating plaster forms we considered the many parameters that defined the outcome of our process:

• paraffin temperature
• additional pigments/dyes
• water-cooling to create solid skins in the paraffin
• jigs to encourage flow direction
• plaster dripping height
• size and shape of mold
• And many more…

Our explorations surfaced many parameters available to us in the plaster and paraffin system. Amongst these, we were particularly intrigued by the breadth of form possible throughout the setting process of the plaster itself, especially considered as a tactile, intuitive transition over time. Throughout the project, we have kept our focus on the chaotic, the sensuous, and the raw. How might we design a tool which embraces and frames these? We propose a system which scaffolds our process with two givens:

First, a mold which unifies three time-steps into one tile of the arch.

Second, a framework for considering how the time-steps are sampled. In this, we look to instructional artworks (e.g. Yoko Ono or Sol LeWitt), and we suggest that the specific choice of instructions should be unique to the artisan. We provide examples here to illustrate the system:

After each sample…
• wait for the next visual food cue step (cream, milkshake, peanut butter).
• run one lap around MMCH.
• message a friend and arrange the next time you will see them.
• close your eyes and count to 100.
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• (clean up the spilled paraffin from the leaking mold)

Final Tiles

Our final iteration was a set of united paraffin – plaster tiles in which each tile captures a separate phase of the plaster phase change process.

We envision that the entire arch might be completed as a collaboration amongst several participants each with individual sampling criteria, filling in the space clocklike as an exploration of personal time.