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Repost from Clara Roth

Exercise 7.1 - Material Process: Cutting Foam

These three cuts investigate curves through duplication and manipulation.

The yellow and green series were created by mirroring and flipping the same curve without disrupting the geometry of the curve at all. The resulting concrete cast that we hope to produce from these foam iterations will be formed from the negative space that is a result of the flip+mirroring functions, filling in negative space that is produced when to identical forms are inward-facing and forced together.

The blue series was created out of two curves mirrored onto each other. One of the curves, while maintaining the same geometry, exaggerates each of the curves, producing a dynamic surface that is sharper on one end, and shallower on the other. The topography of this surface is of particular interest in ways that it can be cut and cast in concrete.

[Group work with Anoushka and Allegra]

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Week 11 // Exercise 7 // Part 2 // Concrete Casting

Our series of concrete cast objects investigates how surface and texture can be used to produce a variety of implied origins and uses for the concrete, breathing life and character into smooth grey concrete. 

The casts were created by inverting foam-cut casts and using the negative space produced by a single profile curve to fill in concrete. Single tone and two-toned objects were produced, and the rough, crumbling edges of the concrete were intentionally maintained. Bubble wrap (small and large sizes) was used to test and push the boundaries of concrete’s physicality by producing texture and the permanent impressions of crumbling plastic air bubbles into this solid form. 

Group: Allegra, Clara, Anoushka

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Week 11: Crawford // Patterson

Crawford begins his piece by defining a jig as "a device or procedure that guides a repeated action by constraining the environment in such a way as to make the action go smoothly." This focus on environmental control without changing the output interesting, and seems to oppose many other readings that imply the process can be used to manipulate design outcomes. I initially read Crawford's jigs, however, are a means to simply optimize a series of tasks. He writes, “the sequence of orders, as well as the content of each order, is represented in a spatial arrangement that is visible at a glance.” This sentence is particularly intriguing because of its emphasis on the visual and the spatial, that define the doer of the action as a human rather than a machine. While reading, I wondered if the emphasis on a spatial order and a particular visual arrangement would work the same way for a robot and for a human: whether it holds psychological importance while doing a task, and whether this would matter to a machine performing the same task. Can mechanical systems overcome the relation of visual, spatial, and temporal boundaries that a human relies on to perform a jig? This is especially intriguing, since a jig, the way Crawford describes it, seems simply like very performative mise en place for a design process (an analogy especially fitting given his use of a cooking metaphor in the reading). I later identified and agreed more strongly with his justifications of the jig and its benefits, especially in the way jigs permit mental space to be freed up to produce more creative works.  In terms of language and diction: Crawford's descriptions of optimizing a process, structuring the environment, and focusing on a single task imply the transformation of a human into performing a mechanized function. Crawford seems to be arguing that the only way for a human to "deal with competing structures of sequence" is to behave like a robot of sorts, focussed entirely on a single action. The analogy of the cook makes it would be seem like the human is operating on a complex "IF" function while performing a jig, constantly manipulating and editing process as new variables (or new orders) enter and complicate the situation. The human is acting mechanically, "with minimum expenditure of scarce mental resources," on autopilot (the use of the prefix auto also implying inherent non-humanness to the action) to complete a task. How valuable and useful is a jig, when performed by a human? It is creative in that it searches and forces creative processes, but its true potential is realized not when it makes a process more efficient, but in inducing efficiency, provides space for creativity and affects the outcome of the situation. Crawford mulls on the value of a jig too, suggesting that “in the tension between freedom and structure, which shows itself with special clarity in skilled practices, there is something important to be learned about human agency in general.” I believe that jigs are valuable in their ability to streamline process at any level, for any field. However, they could pose as limiting: limiting risk, rejecting solutions that are not pre-determined, and essentially, producing robotic processes (exemplified in Patterson's example of the Juilliard string quartet, "frantically... grasping at hundreds of different tones... still trying to find their unique, personal tone.")   

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Exercise 7 // Part 1 // Series 2 & 3

Series 2 and 3 investigate curves through duplication and manipulation. 

Series 2, rendered in dark blue, is created out of two curves mirrored onto each other. One of the curves, while maintaining the same geometry, exaggerates each of the curves, producing a dynamic surface that is sharper on one end, and shallower on the other. The topography of this surface is of particular interest in ways that it can be cut and cast in concrete. 

Series 3, rendered in green and yellow, are created by mirroring and flipping the same curve without disrupting the geometry of the curve at all. The resulting concrete cast that we hope to produce from these foam iterations will be formed from the negative space that is a result of the flip+mirroring functions, filling in negative space that is produced when to identical forms are inward-facing and forced together. 

While cutting the foam, we also experimented with the speed of the robot arm to see how that affected the quality of the cut surface -- a slower cut resulted in a more granulated, rough surface, while a slow and steady cut produced a smooth finish to the topography. When cast in concrete, it will be interesting to observe how these differences manifest in the topography.

Group: Allegra // Clara // Anoushka

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From Series 1: A wire-cutter attached to a robot arm reinvents Canova’s sculpture

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Exercise 7 // Part 1 // Series 1

Recreating Canova’s Pauline Bonaparte Borghese as Venus Victorius

This series investigates questions of authorship, materiality, and limitations of computational tools. 

While the wire cutting ABB could cut and create one face of the sculpture in about a minute, the materiality and the tool (temperature/diameter of wire) prevented the tool from capturing nuances from the sculpture’s profile. Interestingly, the tool can perform undercuts, which this particular shape exemplifies. 

The shape also leads to questions about traces -- through the process of creating a profile curve, iterating it into a mesh, cutting it into a foam block, and then casting it in concrete, the process exemplifies that would could be product could also become trace, and vice versa. Another layer to the trace/product dilemma is that the profile curve itself is created from an image of the sculpture, which adds additional layers to Allen’s conception of remainders and indexes. 

Modern computational tools and technology, while looking forward, can also be productive ways of re-negotiating the classical -- iterating a face of the sculpture in both foam and concrete produce different contexts and frames to read the very same curve, which is an interesting consequence to unpack.

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Week 10: Stan Allen, Plotting Traces

“To call these traces is to insist that concepts are produced in and through the materials and procedures of architecture itself an not grafted onto them from outside. it opens the possibility of understanding the trace not simply as absence reified, but as a condition made possible precisely by architecture’s promiscuous presentness.”

In his "Plotting Traces," Stan Allen frequently refers to indexical signs as "remainder," or part of the process and not the product of design. He also suggests that physicality is part of the definition of an indexical sign (such as footprints in the sand). To him, the indexical sign, or trace, is identifiable by reconstructing the cause from the effect, thereby inverting causality. These ideas are interesting specifically in the context of this class, in which exercises have focussed on process as well as product. A lot of the exercises we have engaged in emphasise process, where the "profile curve" we create in Rhino can be through of, rather literally, as the trace, which rather than a remainder, serves as a starting point for a physical product. In the sphere of technology, it is likely that the trace remains computed, while the product is physically manifest, which is an interesting inversion of Allen's logic and the relationship he construes between index and product. The trace is no longer "filling in the empty space" and "reconstructing from clues left behind," it is not "what remains," rather, the rhetoric towards our exercises in class have leaned engaging with what is manifest as "what remains" after conditions have been applied and manipulated.

Part of understanding process and making deliberate decisions involve engaging with trace as the primary device, rather than one that is identified and analyzed retroactively in relation to its product. Allen does refer to a shift in the treatment of the trace with Rosalind Krauss and her analysis of 1970s art, which looked to use "the immediacy of indexical operations" to "engage meaning in more specific terms," and began to recognize trace and process as a legitimate candidate for product, narrowing the gap between the two and entering the genre of self-referentiality and post-modernism.

While reading the piece and attempting to overlay it onto how we have been working through our exercises in class, I found it harder and harder to identify what was trace and what was product. The last exercise with the wire cutting and concrete casting speaks to this confusion specifically, where every stage of the process produces a different physical object, and a different "negative space" one associates with it. We begin with a profile curve, turn that into a mesh, produce a solid foam cast from this shape, and then fill in the emptiness of the cast with concrete. Which of these is the trace? Does the trace depend on how you negotiate the product?

Finally, Allen's suggestion of the index as "illegitimate image" or a "copy of a copy" that is "endowed with resemblance" strongly alluded to Plato's conception of art and aesthetics -- that art is imitative, and merely a copy of ideal forms, or, as Allen claims, it "cannot claim the sanction of the Idea. I found it interesting that this age-old suggestion has persisted despite a plethora of attempts to close the gap between design and "real" form. Still, Allen claims that "a radical modernity" would erase the traces, that were previously an inarguable component of "living." I wonder how modernity and technology would engage with the idea of traces being absent, since I do believe traces of life are still very much present, simply non-physical, that while altering the human experience, still very much remain a central part of it.

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6 // Robotic Toolpath // Floating Furniture

A series motivated by negotiating the physicality and three-dimensionality of long-exposure with robotic toolpaths with the immateriality of the object being created. Red and blue electric lights were used to simulate three-dimensionality. The series was motivated by an artwork that Clara is familiar with, exhibited in   the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, Germany, which consists of bed frames floating in space.

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6 // Robotic Toolpaths // Euclidean Geometry

This series of cubes investigates how the perception of the shape changes when rotated in space and viewed from different camera angles, and how it succeeds and fails in convincing the viewer of its physicality

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6 // Robotic Toolpaths // Testing Variables

This series evaluates at how deploys different light sources alters a produced three-dimensional object significantly. A blinking light and a glow-stick were both used to understand how the same object being traced by the robotic arm can be rendered on camera differently by altering variables like angle, light source, light intensity, and speed of the robotic arm.

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6 // Robotic Toolpaths // Mirror Studies

This series provokes thinking about light and physicality but capturing on camera a three-dimensional object that does not exist, but furthering the illusion by also reflecting it in a mirror, doubly rejecting and manifesting the object twice over.

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6 // Robotic Toolpaths // Electromagnetic Waves

This series simulated the motion of an electromagnetic wave -- the means visible light travels by. Tracing this pathway allows for physically manifesting the light wave using light, but also reconciling this physicality as an illusion that is simply light - not object.

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Week 10: Sara Ahmed

I found Ahmed abstraction of the "body" as particularly interesting to read as she navigated a multitude of fields in her analysis of willingness and part-to-whole relationships. This abstracted "body" could be imposed with a number of meanings: from a human body, a social body, a system like capitalism, or even a mechanized body. In light of this class and the assignments we have been doing, my reading of Ahmed's "body" was founded in understanding it in terms of a robotic system and a human intervener in that system. Ahmed suggests that "if a part is to have a will of its own, then it must will what the whole of the body wills. The body part that does not submit to its will is the willful part." Her language suggests that will, willfulness, and willingness are all conscious, deliberate actions, whether or not they are understood by the entire body or governing system as such. Her later examination of heirarchy within the body furthered this suggestion of consciousness, deliberation and control. While I previously imagined the "body" as a robotic system, I later began to read the "body" as one that contained both the human and the technological system working together. This also enabled me to reconcile her linguistic lexicon, which is highly charged with 'life' -- she describes the "knowledge and love of self," the many "members" of a system, and a body as having "sympathy." Like most of the other readings we have attempted to break down this semester, hers was also one where human-created systems or constructs are bestowed and embedded with some kind of life-force or overlaid metaphor. 

However, her negotiations of the human and the tool (which I thought of as technological/robotic) subverted my expectations. She suggests that “human beings reduced to working parts” and “the body of the laborer can become not only like a tool, but a tool,” which offer valuable ethical justification for replacing manual labour with mechanization. However, over this, she seems to engage with the idea of humans and machines in which one takes precedence over the other (my understanding was that the human was the "willful" part of the body, and higher up in the systemic hierarchy). However, by suggesting that “the human body is a machine, after all - one that has evolved functional parts,” Ahmed raises interesting questions about how to grapple with this human-machine "body," both in how it is controlled, and in how it loses control.

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Week 7: Burry/Kolarevic

Prototyping For Architects, Mark Burry and Jane Burry

Manufacturing Material Effects, Branko Kolarevic and Kevin Klinger 

I thought both the assigned readings were incredibly illuminating, both in how they worked in conversation with each other, and also how they addressed topics and dialogue on the role of generative technology in architecture, the changing role of the designer, and the value of parametric design and how it narrowed the division between conceptualization and fabrication. It was interesting to read both pieces in light of having just completed Exercise 5, which relied on generative and non-anticipated design. I was interested in particular in the changing role of the designer, which both readings address. While Kolarevic identifies the architect as a craftsman, he also acknowledges the role of this human figure as that of an "editor" in the design process. He pushes the limitations of the role to suggest that the "craft medium does not need to have a material substance, and the craftsperson need not touch it directly," which made me wonder where, or how, it is possible to draw the line to identify intentionally thoughtful design and skill over simply celebrating technology. Kolarevic relies so much on risk and technology that I felt like authorship was less important that the value of the final product, which is quite revolutionary for a design field. I wondered: if a result is not pre-determined, how can you attribute success to a human designer for producing something non-anticipated? I also could not help but wonder about the limitations of design that relied so heavily on technological and material specifications. Although Kolarevic claims that there are "infinite" possibilities that can be generated, I wondered if design was losing out on natural creative impulses with so many quantifiable limitations at the commencement of a project, since they are now "designing specifically for the capabilities of the machines" (122). The Fields Exploration problem and its initial failure suggests the very same limitations. This also tied into the Burry reading -- while this one iterates the value of prototyping for architects, it seems like even scaling down some models would not be valuable given the very tight constraints of generative and parametric design that designers seem to be working with. Although prototyping is meant to "test the reality of something," the constraints of computational fabrication would limit the value of that too. Finally, I was reminded of the Bauhaus curriculum wheel while attempting to understand the new role and demands of a "designer" as specified in both readings -- a depth and breadth of knowledge of technology and material, one that values the design process over the end product.

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Exercise 5: Surface to Solid

views of the profile curve, mesh surface, and solid volume

top, perspective, and side views 

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Exercise 5: Surface to Solid

Manipulating ‘Virtual DNA’ // Human Intervention in Design Processes

“Like traditional drawing, digital production is a generative medium that comes with its own host of restraints and possibilities. Digital practices have the potential to narrow the gap between representation and building, affording a hypothetically seamless connection between design and making. As with any design process, however, there are invariably gaps among the modes of making. and, as with all tools of production, the very techniques that open these investigations have their own set of constraints and gear particular ways of working. innovation is born out of this fissure and advances design.” - Lisa Iwamoto

While experimenting with the Grasshopper file, we found we were most interested in manipulating the maximum edge and the minimum edge of the meshed surface.

We were interested in testing and pushing the limitations of the meshed surface, technological limitations of the mill, and materiality. We wanted to exploit the gap both between and within design and fabrication processes, and recognize the possibilities and limitations embedded in each step. This impulse was catalysed by a desire to manipulate what DeLanda calls the ‘virtual DNA,’ and experimenting with the ‘population’ variable he describes: ‘adding points at which spontaneous mutations may occur’ to the ‘sequence of operations.’ The experiment reflects the ability of computation to mimic ‘mutant instructions to propagate and interact collectively over many generations.’ This was done by altering what we established as extensive qualities (maximum edge and minimum edge).  

Our initial surfaces, made from lofting 2, 3 and 4 closed curves, proved to be too complex for the fabrication process. Paring back was necessary. We created and meshed a surface with two curves to form a surface. We duplicated this surface. The maximum edge and minimum edge of both the volumes were manipulated, producing visually different volumes that are both borne out of the same profile curves and meshed surface. Our final product combines these two, one half complex, the other a simpler rendition of the same initial geometry. When milled, both shapes produce very different aesthetics, emphasizes how altering variables can alter the fabricated volume so drastically.

complex side:

min edge: 0.958

max edge: 8.989

simple side:

min edge: 5.762

max edge: 8.882

Conclusively, although technology has such incredible ability to streamline design and production and eliminate intermediary steps between design and fabrication, the exercise brought to light the sometimes overlooked human influence and human choice on design to control the product, since the curves we meshed could produce over a thousand different surfaces with a different combination of variables, all aesthetically varied.

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fossil/stone/rock is produced from synthetic plastic 

Natural Elements