chixinz@andrew.cmu.edu – IDeATe: Inflatables https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a CMU | 53-330A Wed, 24 Jan 2024 02:00:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.6 https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/cropped-CMU-inflatables-S18-web-image2-5.jpg chixinz@andrew.cmu.edu – IDeATe: Inflatables https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a 32 32 Music Tower : Tracy Zhang https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/music-tower-tracy-zhang/ https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/music-tower-tracy-zhang/#respond Tue, 14 Mar 2023 05:28:19 +0000 https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/?p=8994 Continue reading "Music Tower : Tracy Zhang"]]>

In the 70s, David Bowie had a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s futuristic-dystopian classic novel 1984. It’s harsh, ridges, structured, dark, pessimistic, and gloomy but also enlighting and inspiring. Thus, as suggested by the theme of the book, I adopted the book flipping motion along with concrete stabilized footing to hold up the weight of the message.

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Tracy Zhang: Music Tower https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/tracy-zhang-music-tower/ https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/tracy-zhang-music-tower/#respond Tue, 28 Feb 2023 09:26:26 +0000 https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/?p=8963 Continue reading "Tracy Zhang: Music Tower"]]> Hello! The song that I chose to inspire my form was Koi geba– by ATARASHII GAKKO!

The song is about being rebels and questioning the world. So I choose to constitute a classical architecture that is very ridge: it uses elements like repetition, symmetry, and rhythms. BUT outside of the facade is strings that comes form the center of the dome that is free flowing and had droplet/ball that falls off of them to show the uncertainty and add a little more playfulness to the tower, much like the song.

The construction was relatively easy. The overall structures are made of basic geometrical shapes that are connected and subtracted from each other to create depth and a sense of grandness.

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Tracy Zhang: Push-Pull https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/tracy-zhang-push-pull/ https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/tracy-zhang-push-pull/#respond Mon, 27 Feb 2023 07:53:19 +0000 https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/99-361/s2023a/?p=8900 Continue reading "Tracy Zhang: Push-Pull"]]> In this project, I explored different forms and developed three odd, playful, interactive while fluffy and squishy objects. Enjoy!

Ballon Dog

This object was inspired by the famous balloon dog. I think it would be cool to explore the boundary between the textural, material, and property differences between the stuffed fabric made by ‘balloon dog’ and its original form. To understand how objects can transform into an entirely new form, a basic geometry through folding, twisting, and closing/opening is the goal of the push and pull project. To accomplish the fabric version of the balloon dog, a tube was made with one side closed and the other for stuff. By following the procedure to make the original balloon dog, I had to fill and fold to the ideal shape and then secure it with strings to maintain the shapes. After that, I swapped out some linkage with velcros and pins to make the form more natural.

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Meat

This object was inspired by the fabric sculpture ‘meat carcasses’ by Tamara Kostianovasky. The image of slaughtered livestock – the vulgarity of fleshy carcasses – is softened into plush cuts of meat. The grotesque, gross-looking, agitating form contrasting with the soft, sweet, detailed material creates great chemistry I want to explore in this object. The artist makes these sculptures using her own cloth, and I chose to get inspired by the leftover scrap pieces by our peers. I want to let those forms inform my design.

  1. Things I want to capture in the meat: flesh, bone, and slabs of fat.
  2. Things I want to do with the object: interactive, different textures, surreal colors

With knowing those, I started mutilating the fabric using darts, strengthening them to create volume, inverting them to create contract and etc. The interactive portion is that the bones ate removable, and the pieces of green, and purple fabric are all pullable to shrink and expand the form. Overall this is definitely a tough yet rewarding object I created.

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Oranges *baby edition

This object came to my mind as my friend peeled open a mandarine while commenting on the orange fluffy fabric. And ya, here is where that landed. This is the only object that I had a pattern created for constancy and uniformity. The challenges in this object lies in the constacution: from sewing the peel becuase the flfy frabic are very thick or to stuffing all the slices into the peels, to have the explosive effect when someone takes out the stem to picking out the correct ratio of colors. It took a lot of thought and try and erros to get it right.

Now! You can pluck the stem, slowly peel open the ‘skin’ and take out the slices of ‘baby mandarines’!

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