Near Unison | Dan Dodds | Kinetica Art Fair 2013

Near Unison, my project exploring harmonographic traces is currently being shown at Kinetica Art Fair. The exhibition is in Ambika P3, the exhibition space attached to the University of Westminster on Marylebone Road. For more information on the exhibition, and details about tickets and opening times please visit the Kinetica Art Fair website.

The exhibit features a prototype of the interactive harmonograph swings that could form part of the larger installation proposed for Burning Man Festival, along with casts of the harmonographic traces left in sand, and photographic work documenting the process.

“The 5th Kinetica Art Fair returns February 28th – March 3rd 2013 at Ambika P3, as one of London’s annual landmark art exhibitions and a permanent fixture in the Art Fair calendar, renowned as the UK’s only art fair dedicated to kinetic, robotic, sound, light, time-based and new media art.

Kinetica is hosting the work of over 45 galleries and art organisations nationally and internationally, with representatives from UK, France, Russia, USA, Poland, Holland, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Indonesia and Japan, collectively showing over 400 works of art.

A huge interactive light sculpture from Dutch artist Titia Ex will greet visitors as they enter the impressive Ambika P3 venue, and giant 3D sculptures from Holotronica will hover above the main space of the Fair. Other highlights include an exoskeleton hybrid of mananimal-machine by Christiann Zwanniken; a giant three dimensional zoetrope by Greg Barsamian; and a life-size ‘Galloping Horse’ made of light by Remi Brun”

Kinetica Art Fair Press Release

Material Matters

Here is a video explaining the workshop “In Silico Building” (tutors: Paul EHRET & Philipp EVERSMANN) taking place in the Faculty of Architecture at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). They produced the stunning folded steel structure which you saw on during our unit trip and which was part of the “Material Matters” exhibition at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, france.

A Week at Grymsdyke Farm

We just finished our week at Grymsdyke Farm, Buckinghamshire. Ten students spent about two nights each working on their individual projects, building a 1:1 to 1:5 prototype using the available technology: a CNC Milling Machine (with RhinoCam), a laser cutter, a Z-Corp and a RepRap 3Dprinter.

DS10 would like to thank Guan Lee, Ed Grainge and Kate for their precious help and patience on the CNC, Jessie Lee and Keith McDonald for their great advices!

Below are some pictures of the week.

Above: Dhiren Patel’s “Ear Parabola” being assembled

Above: Dan Dodds testing the fiber optic cables of his Sectionned Harmonograph

Above: Emma Whitehead cutting her convection cell models out of plywood

Above: Thanasis Korras’ CNC milled components for his giant fractal building.

29/09/12 Grasshopper Plugin Workshop

Below are two videos made from the exercises shown at the DS10/Inter9 Grasshopper class at the Architectural Association.

The first video shows the trail left by points constrained by springs, end points and gravity. The Arch moves up and to the side, leaving a beautiful trace which reminded me of the pictures of Edouard Muybridge. It was done with Grasshopper and the free Kangaroo plugin by Daniel Piker.

The second video is a very simple example of recursion using Hoopsnake byVolatile Prototype for Grasshopper: A line rotates on another line and this new line becomes the currrent one on which the rotation is done and so one and so forth. Depending on the angle of the rotation and its location on the curve, these amazing patterns get created.

Arduino Workshop at the Google Campus

This is an Arduino workshop that we are organising at the Google Campus, London, in November 2012 with Simply Rhino. It is a is a five days long initiation to the concept of adaptive structure. After two days of advanced Grasshopper, Processing and Arduino training, we will provide simple physical modeling components as well as actuators and sensors to create responsive structures reacting to movement, light and forces.

Tutors: Gennaro Senatore, Daniel Piker, Ollie Palmer and Arthur Mamou-Mani.

You can register on my website or on by calling Simply Rhino.

Obuchi Lab – Critical Mass

Obuchi Lab  Is the Studio led by Yusuke Obuchi at Tokyo University‘s Global 3.0 Architecture and Urbanism. Yusuke is a former Intermediate Unit Master at the Architectural Association with Alan Dempsey and Eugene Han as well as director at the AA DRL Masters. He won the Archiprix for the Wave Garden project (below) in which a large membrane made of Piezzo-Electric components generated electricity from the waves movement.

 Above: The Wave Garden by Yusuke Obuchi

Below is a short description of the course and couple images and videos taken from the Critical Mass blog. Critical Mass is also the title of a book written by Philip Ball.  “The course is dedicated to the research on the emergence of global network society and its effect on architecture, urbanism and design culture. It is an interdisciplinary experimental design research connecting architecture, engineering and computations to theorize and to develop design proposals for the contemporary environments.”

Above: Stick Team’s Project on Self-Organizing components

Above: Images from a workshop at Obuchi Lab

Above: Minimal Surface Pavilion

Building Fashion.

Design in all disciplines is becoming more and more centered around digital tools. Previously very specific manual skills were prioritised, however increasingly digital tools are being learnt, skills that can be applied across disciplines, such as Architecture, Fashion and Industrial design.

With this in mind and having always had a interest for the body, textiles, and dealing in 1:1 scale, I recently joined the a AA Paris visiting school, ‘BUILDING FASHION’, which, used various Architectural techniques and 3D Modelling software to develop garments.

We began by material testing, both physically and digitally, taking the opportunity to utilise and develop my Grasshopper and Kangaroo skills on the surface of the body. I looked at the idea of tenacity and opacity and translating it into a simple material system. I developed a simple strip system, which when manipulated increased the complexity of the elements, creating interesting geometric shapes and performative functions.