Recompose is a new system for manipulation of an actuated surface. By collectively utilizing the body as a tool for direct manipulation alongside gestural input for functional manipulation, they show how a user is afforded unprecedented control over an actuated surface. It was developed by Matt Blackshaw, David Lákatos, Anthony Devincenzi, Daniel Leithinger, Hiroshi Ishii from MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group. They describe a number of interaction techniques exploring the shared space of direct and gestural input, demonstrating how their combined use can greatly enhance creation and manipulation beyond unaided human capability. Check out the video below. via media.mit.edu/recompose
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One Hundred and Eight by Nils Volker, is an interactive wall-mounted Installation mainly made out of ordinary garbage bags. Controlled by a microcontroller each of them is selectively inflated and deflated in turn by two cooling fans.
Although each plastic bag is mounted stationary the sequences of inflation and deflation create the impression of lively and moving creatures which waft slowly around like a shoal. But as soon a viewer comes close it instantly reacts by drawing back and tentatively following the movements of the observer. As long as he remains in a certain area in front of the installation it dynamically reacts to the viewers motion. As soon it does no longer detect someone close it reorganizes itself after a while and gently restarts wobbling around. Videos and more images after the break. via Nils Volker
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New addition to our 3rd column scripting++ section wework4her
_Context and argument.
Ted Kruger , in his lecture series, Instrument and Instrumentality , uses Herbert Simon’s distinctions between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ sciences to describe the ‘sciences’ as operating on two agendas: understanding the world ‘as-is’ and speculating on ‘as-it should be’. Subscription to, and extension of the argument would mean that ‘applied science’ could be posited as the bridge between the two. Further, (architectural) ‘design as research’ could be argued to exhibit similar properties of using, translating, transposing and adapting the descriptive tools of natural science to engineer an imagined and wished world. However, it could also argued that this ‘translation’ has to be negotiated against more ‘weathered’ concerns of design including discourses on formal language, performance fitness, spatial perception and experience, socio-cultural implications etc. The over-arching context of this paper will be ‘apposing’ the current interest and rapid evolution of computation within architectural design, against such an idea of applied science. read more
New addition to our 3rd column scripting++ section
biothing is working on an algorithmic articulation of the interface between the material behaviors and computational instruments in an attempt to engage with complexity. Computational patterns are understood as deep in terms of their potential to produce expressions at various scales. At the core of the work is an accumulative library of scripts and methods for their transcoding, networked with constraints of materials, structure, esthetics, fabrication and assembly. Evolving algorithmic infrastructure allows a designer to work at the scale of information linked to various forms of materialization. read more
SOFTlab participated in Random Number’s SYSTEM:SYSTEM exhibition with their site specific installation, pAlice. The piece connects all of the openings in the room with a singular surface, turning it inside-out and giving viewers reference to the exterior of the room without physical access to it. Viewers can also look inside the surface from the outside of the room and see a space that is the surface average of these openings without actually seeing the interior space of the room. pAlice is made of over 2400 laser cut triangles and over 3600 custom connections. All of the tooling and labeling was automated using a custom written MEL script.
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