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The artist, the craftsman and the coder

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Elio Garis < Co-de-iT > Bruno De Masi

Vigone + S. Maurizio Canavese (TO) – 45°13′5.33″N, 7°37′54.27″E

2010

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When it comes to the use and implementation of digital strategies and tools one of the most common temptations is digital exhaustion: the project starts and becomes perfect in the digital realm. According to this obsession the digital outcome takes command and dictates the rules to which all material aspects should be subjected. Emergence material effects and any kind of post-machine work is seen as a flaw in a search for a fully file-to-factory process. Another common temptation which usually pairs the one we just described is the pursue of digital perfection: since digital tools allow accuracy and precision extreme specificity is often seen (and not without reasons) as a goal or an improvement. These are the case that serve optimization for iterative production, but we think that this shouldn’t be a universal rule.

Digital strategies and tools in our mind are not a substitute of all existing tools and techniques, rather they have their own specificity; they integrate and expand the existing set, adding new extended potential and novel possibilities to it. Substitution happens when the new tool is not only performing the same tasks than the old one but also adds new or improved qualities (performance in speed, accuracy, variation, added features, etc.).

This is an exploration of the territory that lies in-between the digital and the physical realm, usign the digital as a resource to amplify the expressive palette of an artist (Elio Garis) working in tight connection with a craftsman (Bruno De Masi, we already worked with him for the Bosco project) for the design and realization of Mensa, an altar which should enrich the restoration of the Antica Chiesa Plebana, a XV century church in S. Maurizio Canavese (To). The design was conceived by Elio Garis, then developed by Bruno De Masi under his guidance, while Co-de-iT operated as a mediator between the digital realm of the information model and the physical sculptural expressive potential, translating the initial design into a coarse fabricated model in plywood. The model was purposely kept coarse to allow a final physical interaction by the artist in order to let him orchestrate material properties and effects according to his sculptural sensibility and experience.

Sculptural sensibility is not a pure hylomorphic process. There is an intensive logic underneath, something that is even more evident in pottery making, where the potter should constantly interact with material properties in order to tease a shape out of clay: temperature, finger pressure, rotational speed of the plate, humidity are all intensively interacting at the same time and directed by the artist’s sculptural sensibility. To that extent, this project explores vagueness as a quality that could be implemented through digital tools: sculptors often take inspiration from pieces of material, guided by vibrant sensibilities they feel resonance and envision a potential to be disclosed.

Our contribution with the digital tools is to explore through generative strategies a wide range of rule-based vague forms that can be coupled (according to material and fabrication logics) to several material palettes and let the final part of their morphogenetic process to be directed by the artist’s material sensibility.

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Flowerstore

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Alessio Erioli + Antonio Vacca (alfa301) as A.V.A.E.

unspecified location

2008

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Flowers are considered mainly as symbols of grace, beauty, fragility and transiency of things. They were the very first form of human body decoration (such as jewels), used to enhance seductive qualities. Besides their semiologic value, flowers are exceptional organs in which performance and economy of form are highly evolved: space, structure and material are tightly connected to environmental behavior.

Flowering plants, thanks to sexuated reproduction, are one of the most adaptive specie; flowers are their sexual organs. Entomophilous flowers rely on insects as hosts to perform sexuated reproduction (through pollination), so they base their reproductive potential on attraction. Differently from anemophilous flowers (which rely on wind and are mostly white and inodor), entomophilous show a wider range of forms, spatial organizations, color patterns and odors. Beauty then performs an essential function, triggering different strategies which are actuated through morphological conditions.

Starting from the analysis of the properties of the Cyclamen Graecum, we investigated the particular conditions of its petals: they are the main tool through which the flower signals its presence to insects. In the Cyclamen the weight of the head bends the stem downward, thus easing insect approaching from below, while petals elongate and bend upward signaling the flower position, creating a very interesting topological condition around the corolla. Their plication creates a continuous passage from outer to inner space, just like some typical topological surfaces, such as the Klein Bottle, which are continuously spatially connected. The differentiation of inner spaces out of continuous surfaces is a typical topological condition in living organisms and it is a phenomenon which starts in the embryo, when the initial cell aggregation (blastula) starts bending inward and creates the first spatial differentiation between outside and inside; it is called gastrulation. Another concept related to the Klein Bottle, this time  from the side of mathematics, is involution, a mathematical function which applied twice brings back to the starting point.

The petals condition (along with the concepts of involution, gastrulation and with the translucency and color properties of the petals) was then explored under TopMod®, a topological mesh modeler, testing different strategies within an open process that led to the final shape through generative process driven by the program and a selection criteria based on consistency with the conceptual basis, avoiding a mere biomorphic translation.
The pavilion is a continuous surface that differentiates environment into 3 different spaces: an exterior outside the pavilion in which the envelope surface defines the overall shape and two different interior spaces, a ring that embraces a court and creates different gradients of use within it. Different gradients of transparency/translucency, established according to a map of activities based on performative qualities of morphology, are implemented through the use of holes in the surface and not only relying on material properties (pigmentation).

Additional info:

[attr]-action is a project developed together with Antonio Vacca from alfa301 during “flower obsession” studio, held by SPAN
(Matias Del Campo + sandra Manninger) in the Biodigital Architecture Master at ESARQ, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya,
2008. Thanks to Matias & Sandra for their inspirational studio & teaching.

Featured on:

:: 2008: . Beijing Architecture Biennale, selected among others to represent ESARQ
:: 2009: . AAST/// exhibition Settimo Torinese 17.04>17.05 2009
. AAST/// exhibition Torino 23.06.2009
. SuckerPunchDaily.