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For this exercise, we programmed the robot to run a series of basic lines through foam. The wire ran through the foam with remarkable ease and precision. We ran three different files, with lines curved at different degrees of resolution. It took a fair amount of fiddling and testing in order to find the proper placement of the blocks, but after a few scrap pieces, we were able to execute the final products.

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Nyan Cat (By Mitey)

This project encountered several setbacks, including robot malfunctions, file issues and group logistical issues. The Kuka’s are very finicky, clunky and slow machines that require great finesse to operate successfully. However, as shown in the photo above, our group still succeeded in recreating an internet spectacle through the light-brite exercise. 

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Keramas Response

An interesting part of James Keramas' book “Robot Technology" quotes Issac Asimov’s 1942 rules for robots, the second of which reflects an interesting fear of robots which proliferated sci-fi culture between Capek’s 1921 play and the 1960s. The necessity of a rule stating “Robots must obey the orders given to it by human beings” has, in a sense, been thrown to the wind in the 21st Century (pg. 3). In terms of interface, computers are still machines which need to be told what to output in order to be beneficial to human kind. However, our cell phones are constantly running background programs without which our experience of the technology would be severely hindered, programs that, in human terms, are similar to involuntary muscles for breathing and swallowing. These sub-surface operations perform simple tasks, but at the same time give the computer an autonomous element which lifts up from the realm of simple human intelligence. Whether or not we should be afraid of this is probably not even worth debating today, but it is interesting to think that the Kukas, without some sort of background scripts that generate interface responses and interpret our input into language the robots can understand, these pieces of machinery would be entirely useless to us. Perhaps robot intelligence is not as terrible as Asimov predicted, though the future, to be sure, holds much which has yet to be discovered. 

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Physical Output

I am a person who learns by doing, particularly in regard to producing tangible objects. This is the main reason why I believed the Arduino project was so valuable. Learning how manipulating code can have real effects in the tangible world was a revelation, and the servo project last week actually prompted me to want to experiment more with the code of Arduino and its various components, if given the time. Mass and easy digital making, of course, is only becoming a more attainable goal with the passage of time, and learning the history of this craft, even with humble beginnings in Arduino, is essential to inspiring its future. Even when compared to the clunky Kuka’s, whose digital interface, I believe, needs a study of ergonomics to render the robots a truly useful tool, Arduino’s simple code-to-motion relationship, especially accessible due to its ability to operate through the comfort of an individual’s computer, is an extremely educational tool which I find important to this course. 

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the tragic ending of our aperture

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(the saddest moment of my life)

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Arduino work: we created a 1-ply museum board window aperture that opens and closes with the swivel of a tab. We mounted both the aperture and servo arm onto a basswood table, adding jig arms and plinths to get the two units level.

Adjusted the delay time, waited for the right moment to drop the tab onto the servo arm…… and then it broke. Completely. In retrospect, we blame the material (1-ply museum board). It was too flimsy to withstand the resistance of the servo arm, and tore incredibly easily. 

If we were to do this again, it would be helpful to consider the size of the servo arm before designing a larger aperture. Also, sturdier material is always a good thing.

(See videos to watch it break)

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Haraway Response

I waited writing this response to Haraway’s essay until today because her pedantic prose blocked my comprehension of any significant idea in her article. Mitch’s lecture today helped somewhat, and proposed an idea which I reiterated in discussion today. Haraway’s concept of a partial perspective, a mediator between complete bias and an unreachable “objectivity” in terms of vision, did seem applicable to this course when Mitch reiterated this claim through the lens of Taubman’s robots. Mitch claimed that one’s use of the robots echoes this scale of “truth” in vision: if used to produce a completed Rhino model (run following a code), they are used as an objective instrument, whereas if they are employed in the process through which the Rhino form is created, they are given an authority which renders them a form of partial perspective. They are neither biased or objective, but simply exist with a set of limitations which shape the design process. I found this concept eerily relatible to an earlier conversation about tools and medium. In this analogy, tools represent vision’s “God’s Eye”, an object which exists in a single way with or without human intervention. However, a medium, then, exists in Haraway’s state of partial perspective, a means with which to see the final product, but through a lens shaped by the medium’s character and restraints. 

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Figuring out arduino. Several technical difficulties at first: finding the “upload” command, selecting the proper settings, and plugging into the breadboard. Settled easily into the process after that.

Both blink sketches were straightforward. The motor was the most entertaining with its mini, minute motions. Attempted to plug in the breadboard and run the rangefinder, but the distance kept coming up as a static 350-358, despite frantically moving hands in front of it.

As for brainstorming mechanisms, our group is playing with the idea of an origami cocoon or frog. With the cocoon, the servo arm could expand and collapse it. With the frog, the servo arm could move its mouth up and down.

More to come later.

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Work necessary to prepare our Rhino landscape for folding and Zund cutting is shown in this image. The original mdf landscape, at far left, was interpreted as a surface and, using the Grasshopper program, abstracted into a variety of faceted surfaces. The final linework for cutting is at the top right. 

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Ishii Response

It is unfortunate that architects do not propose videos through Vimeo. In a sense, they do through rendering, but the abstraction of a planned reality through digital graphics still lacks an element of realness. In a programmed, prepared rendering, even a fly-through video of a modeled space, the video watcher cannot choose what they look at, the rendering directs them; and everything that is seen emits a prepared quality, one of existing completely before the video focuses on it, and thus lacks an element of suspense or discovery. This is the opposite of Ishii et. al.’s inFORM video which, even if their fragmented interactive surface is not depicted fulfilling any really practical purpose, sells the viewer on the success, ingenuity and excitement of their investigation’s final product. This discrepancy, perhaps, is a boundary that needs to be crossed if architects ever hope to get the general public involved in and excited about architecture. A miniature cinematic production which imbues concrete with the same life and excitement as Nakagaki, Follmer and Ishii’s LineFORM, or shows occupants interacting with a work of architecture in as surprising and interesting ways as the iPad man interacts with the inFORM surface, would allow architecture to excite and speak to people in new ways which, of course, blend the physical, tactile world with the digital and human worlds.

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CNC Milled Surface (complete)

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CNC Milling (in process)

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Time lapse over 2 hours of milling!

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An Eclectic View of the Properties of Matter Response

The Smith reading uses ancient artwork to analyze an interesting relationship between artists and scientists: the history of scientific discoveries through tactile means before chemical science was itself discovered.  Ancient artists worked “sensually,” with an aesthetic objective, to discover the same “properties and structures that are measured and explained by the scientist” (pg. 26). Architecturally, this relationship is evident in the broad context of architect’s uselessness in the big world. People don’t need architects to design aesthetically engaging shelters – equally impressive, functional and pleasing manipulations of the medium of form have been discovered ‘sensually’ by laymen, here equivalent to the ancient artists, as they are studied and employed by architects, the scientists. However, on a micro level there is another lesson to be taken from this text that is more relevant to Arch 333. Smith claims that “the artist has had even more involvement with technology than he has had with science,” which is especially true when considering architects’ involvement with designing form in Rhino or Cad in lieu of writing code (pg. 23). Engaging forms are generally designed without advanced knowledge of how a digital drawing program works, but rather by discovery and by following commands based on a knowledge of “how they have behaved in the past,” a method by which architects have designed quite beautiful digital objects (pg. 25). This does not necessarily equate contemporary designers with ancient artists, but there are certainly similarities in their working methods which beg comparisons to be drawn.

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Manufacturing Material Effects Response

In Branko Kolarevic’s “The (Risky) Craft of Digital Making,” two entangled definitions of “craft” are presented in an effort to justify digital modeling as such. The first is Renzo Piano’s, who states broadly that craft “involves a circular process that takes you from the idea to a drawing, from a drawing to a construction, and from a construction back to an idea,” in which case digital modeling and drawing is affirmed as a form of craft (pg. 120). The second is David Pye’s, who restrains Piano’s definition somewhat by claiming that “the quality of the result is not predetermined” by the craftsman, and that in craft, “the quality of the result is continually at risk during the process of making” (pg. 120). Pye’s definition provides a point of contention, for although the process of computer modeling emphasizes the creation of an object as equal in importance as the final product, there is little risk involved. A piece of expensive wood can be sanded or carved beyond recovery, and thus an element of craft exists in the craftsman’s ability to read and converse with this medium’s constraints without superseding them and ruining his material. By contrast, iterations of digital modeling can be saved in separate files, preserving various states of existence throughout the design process, and work can always be undone or begun anew at one of these save points if the process yields unsatisfactory results. Luckily, Kolarevic defines “risk” as “the inherent lack of predetermined design outcomes” to fold digital craft into Pye’s definition (pg. 121). However, I believe it would have strengthened Kolarevic’s argument if he had delved into this point of contention and fully justified his inclusion of Pye’s quote, instead of hastily writing off this dispute with an assumed definition that suited his argument.  

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My first surface mimicked a simple paraboloid shape which I used simply to experiment on. By attaching number sliders to the “Custom Mesh Settings” variables, I figured out that adjusting Max Distance, Planes, Stitch and (surprisingly) Angle had no impact on the created form. The first picture above illustrates what happened when I adjusted Refine; as the number approached 0, fewer, larger terraces made up the surface. Adjusting Min Edge (second screenshot) increased the block size from small to large between 0 and 5, after which the terraces stopped growing. Interestingly, the blocks created by this adjustment remained angled, while adjusting Refine gave squared-end blocks. Adjusting the Aspect Ratio arranged the numerous little blocks in a variety of ways around a central axis.

I created the second surface by executing a “NetworkSrf” command through 4 lines arranged in a square, which appeared more like a landscape than a parabolic slope. Adjusting the same variables as above yielded similar results, but this time I also messed with the object’s extruded height by adding an integer slider to the “B” port on the “A-B” function widget. Unfortunately, I could never get the extruded height to disappear, or go to 0, leaving only a surface.

I baked both of these experiments and have both extruded objects for use with my group in this week’s MDF carving adventure.

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For Exercise 3, I chose to model beds, a piece of furniture with three easily identifiable, and thus easily variable, parts. A1 and A2 represented two types of mattresses, B1 and B2 types of footboards, and C1 and C2 two types of headboards. The first photo shows all eight combinations of these beds in their respective places arranged in a circle. The second two photos showed how I used the block command to adjust a single A2 mattress, which in turn replaced all the A2’s in the circle with my updated version.