Title: From Code to Atoms

Category: #digitalfabrication #generativesystems #formsgeneratedbycode

Author: Marius Watz

Year: 2012

Url: http://www.imal.org/activity/generatorx3

Description: Participants will explore how software processes can be combined with digital fabrication to produce physical objects that are the result of dynamic software systems. They will look at how generative systems can be used to create objects according to a programmed logic, allowing for great complexity and a semi-automated model of creativity.  Digital fabrication drastically changes manufacturing by democratizing access to industrial tools as well as changing the way objects are produced, opening the door for the on-demand creation of bespoke objects. Combined with the “craft” of code it becomes possible to directly connect parametric software processes to an instant manufacturing workflow, turning bits into atoms and introducing a paradigm that is radically different from traditional 3D modeling.  Generative systems shift the focus from static models towards a computational logic – what Bruce Sterling calls processuality. Here objects are understood as mere instances of a family of forms, produced by a specific interaction of parameters. Such forms may be data-driven or created through interactive means, adapting to conditions coded into the system. The artist becomes a “gardener” of possible forms, harvesting desirable results in an iterative process of coding and prototyping.

Title: Robot pebbles cooperate to copy and build 3D models

Category: #reconfigurablerobots

Author: Daniela Rus, Kyle Gilpin

Year: 2012

Url: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/2/2921270/mit-research-robot-pebbles-sand-3d-model

Description: Some researchers at MIT have created a system that allows a pile of “smart pebbles”  to create a 3D copy of whatever gets placed in it. In order to reproduce a 3D model, the first step is figuring out what you’re reproducing, and the pebbles do this by figuring out if they’re surrounded on all sides by other pebbles (in which case they’re not touching the object to be copied), or if they’re on a border somewhere (in which case they might be touching the object). Once the pebbles figure out where the model is they can send messages to neighboring pebbles to bond together and reproduce the same model. The actual bonding is done with electropermanent magnets on the cubes’ sides that can be switched on and off, unlike conventional electromagnets, which require a constant current in order to maintain their magnetism. Finally, any unused pebbles remain in the heap, and shake free when the copy is removed.

Title: How can technology transform the human body?

Category: #biologicalarchitecture #bodyarchitecture

Author: Lucy McRae

Year: 2012

Url: http://www.lucymcrae.net/home/

Description: Lucy McRae is a body architect. She imagines ways to merge biology and technology in our own bodies. In this visually stunning talk, she shows her work, from clothes that recreate the body’s insides for a music video with pop-star Robyn, to a pill that, when swallowed, lets you sweat perfume.

Title: sPhysical

Category: #roboticenvironments #form-making #form-finding #form-adapting

Author: Peter Testa & Devyn Weiser at SCI-Arc

Year: 2011

Url: http://www.machinators.org/2011/12/15/sphysical-2/

Description: This project subsists on the translational discrepancies that arise during interplay between an excessively controlled but exceedingly irresolute digital environment and its materialization into the reality of physical space. sPhysical seeks the epitome of synthesizing digital tools with physical expression by re-conceptualizing material design processes and applications in the field of architecture.  The problem of materialization exists as the limitation of digital control and resolution. Matter and form are subjugated through a logic of rigging, a concept derived from and informed by robotic motion-control, and embedded with a certain propensity and agency. A design methodology, one that realizes the potential of designed properties, will be achieved through the conceptualization of rigging matter and form.

Title: HYDRAMAX Port Machines

Category: #responsiveenvironments #softsystems

Author: Jason Kelly Johnson & Nataly Gattegno. Future Cities Lab

Year: 2012

Url: http://www.future-cities-lab.net/hydramax/

Description: Future Cities Lab’s HYDRAMAX Port Machines project proposes a radical rethinking of San Francisco’s urban waterfront post sea-level rise. The proposal renders the existing hard edges of the waterfront as new “soft systems” that would include aquatic parks, community gardens, wildlife refuges and aquaponic farms. A synthetic architecture is introduced that blurs the distinction between building, landscape, infrastructure and machine. Using thousands of sensors and motorized components, the massive urban scale robotic structure harvests rainwater and fog, while modulating air flow, solar exposure and intelligent building systems.

Title: Alive Spaces Module

Category: #responsivematerials #livingmaterial

Author: IAD Interaction Design

Year: 2012

Url: http://iad.zhdk.ch/

Description: New kinds of responsive materials are active in themselves: they can self-illuminate (electroluminescent paper) or self-move (electroactive polymers). What do such materials want to do? What kinds of shapes and structures are possible? What applications?

Title: Grower

Category: #responsiveenvironments

Author: Sabrina Raaf

Year: 2004

Url: http://www.raaf.org/Electronic_Works/Grower/Grower_frames.html

Description: Grower is a small ‘rover’ vehicle which navigates around the periphery of a room. It hugs the room’s walls and responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air by actually drawing varying heights of ‘grass’ on the walls in green ink. The Grower robot senses the carbon dioxide (CO2) level in the air via a small digital CO2 sensor. This sensor is mounted high on a wall of the exhibition space and sends data wirelessly to the robot.Grower is a small ‘rover’ vehicle which navigates around the periphery of a room. It hugs the room’s walls and responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air by actually drawing varying heights of ‘grass’ on the walls in green ink. The Grower robot senses the carbon dioxide (CO2) level in the air via a small digital CO2 sensor. This sensor is mounted high on a wall of the exhibition space and sends data wirelessly to the robot.

Title: Self-Assembling Virus

Category: #selfassembly

Author: Arthur J Olson

Year: 2012

Url: http://phyllotax.is/self-assembly/

Description: This video shot in real time with no tricks shows the process of self-assembly driven by random motion. It demonstrates how viruses and other complex biological organisms put themselves together without direction from the outside, except random motion from heat.

The Self-Assembly Line aims to construct a large-scale version of self-assembly virus modules as a user-interactive and performative structure. This is an installation that builds installations, where people engage the assembly process by rotating the enclosure, changing the speed/direction and adding parts to influence the performance of self-assembly at macro-scales.

Title: Performative Topologies

Category: #evolutionarymodels #form-finding

Author: DesignedByEnergy

Year: 2011

Url: http://www.designedbyenergy.com/site/?p=202

Description: An evolutionary shape optimisation framework for daylighting performance coupling a particle-spring system with an energy simulation tool

Title: Robots that fly … and cooperate

Category: #roboticenvironments

Author: Vijay Kumar

Year: 2012

Url: http://www.ted.com/talks/vijay_kumar_robots_that_fly_and_cooperate.html

Description: In his lab at Penn, Vijay Kumar and his team build flying quadrotors, small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other, and form ad hoc teams — for construction, surveying disasters and far more. At the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, at the University of Pennsylvania, flying quadrotor robots move together in eerie formation, tightening themselves into perfect battalions, even filling in the gap when one of their own drops out. You might have seen viral videos of the quads zipping around the netting-draped GRASP Lab (they juggle! they fly through a hula hoop!). Vijay Kumar headed this lab from 1998-2004; he’s now the Deputy Dean for Education in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, where he continues his work in robotics, blending computer science and mechanical engineering to create the next generation of robotic wonders.

Title: Urban Weave

Category: #responsiveenvironments #responsivestructures

Author: Roland Heuger and Lionel Michel

Year: 2011

Url: http://urbanweave.net/

Description: The “Schlossplatz” in Berlin is a big empty area in the center of the city that appears like a huge urban gap since the “Palast der Republik” has been teared down in 1994. Up to the beginning of rebuilding the former castle, “Urban Weave” is a proposal for an interactive installation, that would temporarily cover the “Schlossplatz” and let the visitors collectively reshape the place. Technically, Urban Weave consists of a grid of rotating pylons which are connected by Electroluminescent wires that are influenced by the movements of the visitors.