Lee Mawdsley

Some interesting photographs from the project "Sci / Tech / Med"  by Lee Mawdsley. See more;

via | #0000FF

SAILOR by Norman Leto

Sailor is a film project made by Norman Leto in 2010. This is a great opportunity to watch the whole movie online, which is a 100 minute love story between a neurotic, high-school physics tutor and his girlfriend, Nel. The movie consists about the scientific approach from every day situations. It also shows really interesting parts such as his egocentricity and illustrated lectures on various sociological issues.
In the film you will find "Lifeshape" a sequence from Sailor which was published separately here while ago. The movie is based on the book titled the same "Sailor", written also by Norman Leto.  See the whole movie into the post!;

Sailor was created independently by the author, without any external production company. The budget was below $10.000. This movie will be only for a limited time on Youtube.

Norman Leto is currently working on a new project/movie called "Photon", which will have an international distribution on Bluray and DVD. More info about here.

Irrational Computing by Ralf Baecker

Irrational Computing by Ralf Baecker, 2011, is an artistic test of material, esthetics and potentials of digital processes. The installation is based on semiconductor crystals – the basic commodity of information technology. The installation consists of five interlinked modules that use the varied electrical and mechanical particularities and characteristics of crystals and minerals and, through their networking, form a kind of primitive macroscopic signal processor. “Irrational Computing” is not supposed to “function” – its aim is to search for the poetic elements on the border between “accuracy” and “chaos” amplifying the mystic and magic side of these materials. See more;

“Irrational Computing” investigates material, aethetics and potential of digital processes. The basic raw materials of our surrounding information technology are semiconductor crystals such as silicon, quartz or silicon carbide, which, thanks to today’s advanced microtechnology and extremely sophisticated procedures, are processed into transistors or integrated circuits (IC), with the materiality of modern microprocessors having long since ceased to be graspable. The extreme miniaturization and the black-box set-up elude visual interpretation. The Installations circuit runs counter to the developments in information technology, representing the system in a dimension that is enlarged many times over. The project thus corresponds to an extreme zooming-in on the smallest “physical” units of digital processes.

The installation consists of five interlinked modules that use the varied electrical and mechanical particularities and characteristics of crystals and minerals and, through their networking, form a kind of primitive macroscopic signal processor. The crystals used for the purpose are either taken directly from nature, industrial waste products or have been especially cultivated for the purpose. A silicon carbide crystal, for example, is made to light up at numerous points with the help of electrodes (LED). On the crystal piece, there appears a kind of display, which is targeted by the data flows generated by other modules. At the same time, the crystal functions as a sound generator, since the electrical impulses change the surface of the crystal, causing it to vibrate. Via loudspeakers, these microscopic reverberations are made audible for visitors.

Digital systems, in their function, are conceived logically and rationally. The lowest physical or electro-technical level (crystals with semiconductor properties) are based, however, on quantum mechanical, i.e. statistical or unpredictable processes. Modern computer technology has thus tamed and domesticated the chaotic, so to speak. In his work, Ralf Baecker comments on this paradox by examining the aesthetics of the materials from which has developed a global digital network. “Irrational Computing” is not supposed to “function” – its aim is to search for the poetic elements on the border between “accuracy” and “chaos.”

Irrational Computing by Ralf Baecker, produced by DOCK e.V. with support of the Schering Stiftung.

Yoichiro Kawaguchi

"Yoichiro Kawaguchi was born in Tanegashima Is, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan in 1952. He was graduated in Visual Communication Design at Kyushu Institute of Design in 1976. He received his Master degree from Tokyo University of Education in 1978. After teaching at Tsukuba University of Tokyo. Kawaguchi started to create computer graphics since 1975, he is an internationally acclaimed CGI artist. He achieved a unique style using his "GROWTH Model", a model based on growth algorithm. Selforganinzing artificial life media metropolices and highly dense creations of primal wildness represent sailent characteristics of his work. Since SIGGRAPH'82, he consistently presents work in the United States." See more;

"Professor Kawaguchi is an expert on the "GROWTH model," a self-organizing method to give form to one's rich imagination or to develop one's formative algorithm of a complex life form. As the art or a time progression, a program generates a form and this form is allowed to grow systematically according to a set formula. Howwever, this "GROWTH Model" is not based on a static process that allows constructive mathematics to take its course.

Though observation of eddies and spirals, repetitions of simple form of inner mathematical principles, which are hidden behind the seemingly complex outlook of living creatures, are deduced. Placing subtle forms like that of a conch shell as a starting point, the shapes of ammonite, nautilus, tentacles, plant vines and coral become visual references for this model.

The most important concept of the "GROWTH Model" is the "recursive structure," which is a repetition of simple rules within complexity. By running a genetic program implemented with this structure, the computer continuously creates multiplying images until it maximize its memory space. Beginning with an initial shape, the computer generates how the final image appears. Therefore, the "GROTH Model" is a way to give an unforeseen form to the progress of time.

The model is not intended to create or a faithful representations of reality but to produce a new bionomic pictorial space backed by an algorithm. A self-organizing form created by the "GROWTH Model" represents a creature that sesually moans and squirms and might have existed in the evolutionary past or that may appear in the distant future. It is a "life form of probability."

The following video shows an episode about Yoichiro Kawaguchi, from the UK Channel 4 series "283 Useful Ideas From Japan" first shown in 1990.

via | DIAMOND VARIATIONS

DESIGN RESEARCH LAB

Ji-Ha Lee, Behdad shahi, Junyi Wang, Ahmed Abouelkheir

This year the DRL (Design Research Lab) concluded the first full cycle of the three-year design research agenda Proto-Design, which investigated digital and analogue forms of computation in the pursuit of systemic design applications that are scenario- and time-based. Considering controls systems as open acts of design experimentation, the DRL examines production processes as active agents in the development of architecture. Behavioural, parametric and generative methodologies of computational design are coupled with physical computing and analogue experiments to create dynamic and reflexive feedback processes. New forms of spatial organisation are explored not as type or context-dependent but by examining scenarios that evolve as ecologies and environments that seek adaptive and hyper-specific features. See more;

This performance-driven approach aims to develop novel design proposals concerned with the everyday. The iterative methodology of the design studio focuses on the investigation of spatial, structural and material organisations, engaging in contemporary discourses on computation and materialisation in the disciplines of architecture and urbanism. Five research studios run parallel to each other exploring the possibilities of Proto-Design. 

Theodore Spyropoulos’ studio, Digital Materialism, investigates behaviour as the means to explore self-regulating and deployable soft systems. Proto-Tower, led by Patrik Schumacher, Mirco Becker and Christos Passas, focuses on the design of inherently adaptive prototypes that intelligently vary general topological schemata across a wide range of parametrically specifiable site-conditions and briefs. Alisa Andrasek’s studio, Protocols, looks at infrastructure implants within the context of heterogeneous networks and non-linear time. Marta Malé-Alemany, Daniel Piker and Jeroen van Ameijde’s studio, Machinic Control, examines architectural design processes incorporating novel digital fabrication methods that challenge current industrial (repetitive) modes of production. Lastly, Proto Tectonics, led by Yusuke Obuchi and Robert Stuart Smith, explores how non-linear design processes may be instrumental in generating a temporal architecture with a designed life-cycle.

See all projects and details at Architectural Association of Architecture;  DRL Phase 1 & DRL Phase 2

Dan Wang, Luis Costa, Michael Rogers, Sean Rasmussen

Daghan Çam, Ulak Ha, Alexandre Kuroda, Karoly Markos

Gabriel Morales Olivares, Bryan Oknyansky, Alejandro Mieses

Anais Mikaelian, Bita Mohamadi, Laila Selim, Lukasz Bzlachcic

Markus Kayser

I'm really impressed after watching the last two projects by Markus Kayser, these are two of the best and experimental processes I have seen lately to make self-production. Both projects use the sun as a main source  for producing or manufacturing the final object or product. The first one is called "Sun Cutter" 2010, works like a laser-cutter, exploring the potential of harnessing sunlight directly to produce objects. The second one called "Solar Sinter" 2011, sunlight and sand are used as raw energy and material to produce glass objects using a 3D printing process, that combines natural energy and material with high-tech production technology. See more;

Sun Cutter Project

"The Sun Cutter Project explores the potential of harnessing sunlight directly to produce objects. The machine is a low-tech, low energy version of a laser cutter. It uses pure sunlight, focused by a ball lens, to repeatedly cut programmed shapes in up to 0.4mm thick plywood as well as paper and card. The project also explores the merit of analogue mechanized production that draws on the machine technology found in pre-digital machinery and automaton. It uses a cam system, moving an X & Y- board to control the shape of the cut. The cams are set into synchronized motion by a small solar-powered motor driving a timing belt.

Each pair of sunglasses made, even though very similar in shape, is still unique, creating a juxtaposition between the machine-made, repetitive and individual, unique object."

Aluminium, Acrylic, MDF, Glass Sphere, Photovoltaics W400X D400 X H500

Solar Sinter Project

"In August 2010 I took my first solar machine - the Sun-Cutter - to the Egyptian desert in a suitcase. This was a solar-powered, semi-automated low-tech laser cutter, that used the power of the sun to drive it and directly harnessed its rays through a glass ball lens to ‘laser’ cut 2D components using a cam-guided system. The Sun-Cutter produced components in thin plywood with an aesthetic quality that was a curious hybrid of machine-made and “nature craft” due to the crudeness of its mechanism and cutting beam optics, alongside variations in solar intensity due to weather fluctuations.

In the deserts of the world two elements dominate - sun and sand. The former offers a vast energy source of huge potential, the latter an almost unlimited supply of silica in the form of quartz. The experience of working in the desert with the Sun-Cutter led me directly to the idea of a new machine that could bring together these two elements. Silicia sand when heated to melting point and allowed to cool solidifies as glass. This process of converting a powdery substance via a heating process into a solid form is known as sintering and has in recent years become a central process in design prototyping known as 3D printing or SLS (selective laser sintering). These 3D printers use laser technology to create very precise 3D objects from a variety of powdered plastics, resins and metals - the objects being the exact physical counterparts of the computer-drawn 3D designs inputted by the designer. By using the sun’s rays instead of a laser and sand instead of resins, I had the basis of an entirely new solar-powered machine and production process for making glass objects that taps into the abundant supplies of sun and sand to be found in the deserts of the world.

My first manually-operated solar-sintering machine was tested in February 2011 in the Moroccan desert with encouraging results that led to the development of the current larger and fully-automated computer driven version - the Solar-Sinter. The Solar-Sinter was completed in mid-May and later that month I took this experimental machine to the Sahara desert near Siwa, Egypt, for a two week testing period. The machine and the results of these first experiments presented here represent the initial significant steps towards what I envisage as a new solar- powered production tool of great potential." - Markus Kayser

via | Colossal

Compressed 01 by Kim Pimmel

Compressed is a video series by designer Kim Pimmel that looks at the beauty of natural forces in everyday objects and materials. For the first of the series, Kim used magnets to manipulate ferrous printer toner particles floating on the surface of water. The process was captured using a macro lens and time lapse equipment. The visualization of magnetic patterns and motions that result are strangely ordered and organized.

Time-lapse sequences shot with Nikon D90, custom macro lens and custom Arduino based intervalometer. Sound created with Ableton Live. See video;

Cymatics

Experiment called Cymatics by Opiumble + ZIZIZIC.
Cymatics is the study of visible sound and vibration, a subset of modal phenomena. Typically the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane is vibrated, and regions of maximum and minimum displacement are made visible in a thin coating of particles, paste, or liquid. Different patterns emerge in the exitatory medium depending on the geometry of the plate and the driving frequency. See more;