reading response six | morphogenetic design | jd pirtle

Since this text is fairly large in scope and covers a multitude of areas, I will try to respond to each section separately, but in a way that (hopefully) is tied together through a common thread.

Reading the first section about biology/ecology, I thought many times about algorithmic art. There is a great deal of recipe making in modern computational art, which leads to a virtual product. The potential to grow art, which is being done in a crude manner through the design-to-CNC process, exists--but what about the future of art in relationship to biology? A great deal of post-19th century media art was physics based--and if we can follow the logic of the text--what is the implication of the heavy presence of biology on future media art? Will we be able to properly grow art?

The section about urban landscape seems at odds with the hierarchical nature of our minds, socially. We accept an arrangement of capital and power being located in a physically high or structurally dense environment, and we associate prosperity with large, isolated structures. Can we embrace the heterogenous spaces described in the text with that mind set? Do the nature of our strict building codes prevent modularity and flexibility? Also, considering that the majority of everything built in the USA was completed at the cost of the lowest bid, can these type of “smart” structures be funded and leave the theoretical/academic environment?

It is somewhat interesting to read about the various ways cell phone data is recorded and visualized, but it seems like there is something missing in what is being done with the results. While metadata in the form of user comments and embedded info is useful, it is not very interesting from the point of view of art.

In the section about wood, I was unclear about whether the many amazing properties of wood as a building material were greatest when they remain part of a living tree or only as timber? Related to my first comment, can we program trees to form living structures?

The section on self-organization included a really interesting component, that the entire process, from analysis and simulation to computer aided manufacturing, could be one large process. I wonder about aesthetic concerns--what happens when you add psychology and emotion to the beginning of the process? Will it yield a product that is not only self-organizing, but also beautiful and fulfilling as a structure? Or are they the same thing?

The form-finding aspects seem like the opposite of the initial few chapters--we have returned to physics. While the digital growth concept does change over time in response to changing shape (through the geometric seed and the morphing of shape through reinterpretation of current shape), it remains physics/geometry based.

The entire text, as stressed in the conclusion, shows the power of biomimetics. What we comprehend and achieve through the observation of "natural" phenomena and experimental design may enable us to realize that there is nothing unnatural that we produce; the things we produce through a biology-centered design paradigm could be flexible, modular, self-organizing, healthy, communal and ecologically-friendly in such a way that they no longer merit the term “unnatural.”

JD PIRTLE | DIY PROJECT DOCUMENTATION: PHASE II

Here is the documentation of phase II of my DIY project. The project is split between two parts: an easy to build momentary switch that has numerous uses and folded trapezoidal (diamond) pleated forms made of various materials that are lit with LEDs.


This is the step-by-step process to making the switch, which in this example, is actually housed in the freezer bag the kit is shipped in. Alternatives to the freezer bag are floor tiles or cushions.


the kit



the process, which will be described in greater detail in phase III when it is uploaded to instructables.com



















These are three forms I constructed. After experimenting with different materials, paper vellum was the best for strength and flexibility, and did not require scoring (like most plastics). Paper vellum also retained the diamond structure best when stressed and diffused the light source better than regular paper. The forms are lit with various iterations of the switches.










This is a diamond pleat template I created for download. The red lines represent valley folds and the blue lines represent mountain folds. I will also put detailed instructions on instructables.com on how to fold and form this structure, with tips on how to modify it based on the number of intersections and folds.

reading response five | digital fabrications: architectural and material techniques | jd pirtle

Again, artists, designers and architects incorporating digital techniques with no qualms about the efficacy of doing so. This text provided an interesting and cohesive insight into the advantages of parallel design processes (computer-aided design and fabrication). Projects such as Digital Weave, Mafoombey and (Ply)wood Delaminations show the potential for repetition and recursion combined with cheap and readily-available materials. This is not a new aesthetic, as is mentioned in the text and evident from the work of luminaries like Le Corbusier, but access to digital processes and computer-aided tools has created a fairly democratic (within the very developed world) playing field for artists and designers. This type of work is the very opposite of abstract art, it is concrete art. Particles are formed, repeated, translated and scaled to form clouds that reflect the individual parts, but are greater than their gross sum.

Science already has a legacy of vocabulary to discuss these types of formations, but how can we grasp this aesthetic properly in the world of art? The forms are often beautiful in a way that successful figurative art has been for 1000 years—an accurate sculpture of a figure is pleasing to the eye and mind for its mimicry of shapes with which we are well accustomed (e.g. Michelangelo’s David). Similarly, the Programmed Wall, for example, reflects sinusoidal patterns found in nature, constructed with the same accuracy and consistency as natural formations, and therefore it is pleasing to the eye and mind. These forms and patterns are embedded in our development as a species—we have known them forever and have looked at them, either consciously or unconsciously as a species for all time.

What interests me most about this type of work is what is beautiful about these structures beyond the presence of accuracy and repetition—what is next for this type of work? Architects are naturally thinking of the aesthetic married to structural benefits, but what of artists? What do these forms reflect from the deeps of our minds? Why is geometric repetition in nature beautiful?

reading response five | responsive architecture | jd pirtle

While reading this text, I was continually pleased at how the various designers, architects and artists seamlessly incorporate mathematics and sciences in their work. Lately, I find myself at odds with a coherent definition of art and artists, one which is contemporary enough to encompass the many modern movements of art making, and will accurately describe the ever-changing roles artists embody. What is clear from readings such as these, is that any struggle to codify what art is or what an artist does is not only difficult, but completely useless. What is useful is to be mindful of what role artists have played historically—for example, Slatterly’s example of what art and philosophy can explain or examine that mathematics and science fail to properly describe or understand.

Many of these artists and designers are all working to solve or understand human problems using or replicating nature’s structures, such as Steven Vogel. His section describing biomimetics and trending away from traditional design paradigms in favor of ones that make more sense (like in the natural structures all around us that are the result of billions of years of robust evolution). As I am most interested in fine art and what is happening in fine art in this era, I wonder what types of conversations we should be having to foster this type of attitude in our work—how can we change the very traditional formats of lectures, critiques and curriculum to enable us to best work out how it is we are going to make art? If these scientists, architects and designers are easily picking up new tools and attitudes as they are needed to solve the problem that is in front of them, can we do the same? What rigid structures of the art academy and the art world can be remade to solve the changing subjective problems that modern artists face?

A great example of this is the legacy of participatory installation art. At some point, a simple one-way or two-way interaction that was obvious to the viewer (e.g. a chain of causal events that was initiated by a sensing mechanism and ended with some obvious output within the art piece) was enough to stimulate art audiences. Decades later, shouldn’t we be creating “smart” art? Shouldn’t we be holding this type of art work up to similar standards, as enumerated by Addington when describing smart materials, the criteria of Immediacy, Transience, Self-actuation, Selectivity and Directness?