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Project 7, The Final Robo-Tour

Not entirely pleased with the negative space on this one.. we are redoing it before the cast!

I would have preferred a different one of our foam blocks, since I felt that even though none of our molds was created entirely “successfully” (according to design), they were still more formally exciting than this near-extrusion. The rest of my group wanted to use this particular form because it most clearly showed the profile of a face.

Despite multiple tries, my group was unable to get the foam to look like my renderings. First there was the issue of having set too few points in Grasshopper, causing a disappointingly “smoothed” appearance, followed by discovering that I had accidentally duplicated one of the cut files instead of producing the three necessary Kuka files. Despite setbacks, we got some interesting forms, including multiple different scale profiles of my own face.

Group members: Grace Earl, Henry Peters, Caroline Petersen, Kristina Dittrich

On Haraway

The reading argues for a more nuanced and complex way of seeing the world, or at least for an approach to knowledge that allows such a view to form. Haraway makes it clear that she is against both the idea that any single viewpoint is a complete view of the world, and of the idea that all viewpoints are equally valid. Instead, she talks about how accepting the shortcomings of your own view can allow your views to develop and grow as you learn from and accommodate others’ views. The title, “Situated Knowledge,” refers to the idea that every view is not without influence from who possesses that view and what their interests are. She argues that it is these particular biases and limitations that make other views valuable.

I found the connections to technology a useful metaphor for the differing ways in which things can be viewed. But, this reading seemed disconnected from all the material covered prior in the course. It also required very careful and patient reading, as well as background knowledge about Marxism, feminism, and philosophy. Additionally, it was often unclear if Haraway was using vision as a metaphor for ideology or not, because sometimes she would talk quite literally about ways in which different animals see the world. I nonetheless found the reading highly valuable, but imagine that the same ideas could have been communicated in a clearer and more accessible way.

A second idea for the hot wire cutting - multiple face profiles are scaled differently from each other, then lofted. I am unsure if the foam could allow such a form (very detailed in parts, held up by a very thin part).

For the cutting/casting exercise, I plan on recreating the vase/face optical illusion. The same cut will be repeated three times on three different faces, creating a foam block which elevationally appears as the negative of a human face, and a cast inverse which has faces shaped like a human face

Since the battery for the provided LED light burned out, my group experimented with alternative light sources. First, we tried a small, green directional light (2nd image) which didn’t work so well, since it turns out that the robot was not necessarily trying to stay perpendicular to the plane of the text. For the second attempt, we used a phone flashlight, which was far brighter and less directional.

The bright spot in the “l” of “hello” is the result of the robot pausing to untwist itself.

I had some difficulty with getting the robot arm to actually follow the desired curve, but you get the idea. After creating this animation, I figured out how to get it to conform more closely by adjusting the Grasshopper settings.

“Hello world” is the first code one is generally taught in a new programming language. Apart from logistical reasons why the text is in cursive, I like the implication of handedness, of a robot learning to write as a child does.

On Crawford

“The Jig” seemed a particularly well-timed reading. It tied in closely with the Carr, which covered a similar notion but used the term “automation” as opposed to “jig." Crawford broadens the notion of the jig from a mere physical tool to any form of spatialized order that can “offloading” the number of cognitive details that need to be kept track of while performing a task. He distinguishes between externally imposed jigs (such as the highly orchestrated kitchens at McDonald’s) which offload mental function to the point that it impedes the development of skill, whereas the self-development of a jig (a master chef’s apparently messy kitchen during a dinner rush) could itself be seen as an indication of a high degree of skill at an activity.

As for the second reading, I wished Crawford had explicitly defined the terms “agency” and “autonomy” – there is a fair amount of overlap between their definitions, and although he seemed to quite deliberately employ one term versus another, I was often unsure why he had done so. Apart from that confusion, I agree with his observation that we desire to be highly skilled but not have to struggle to reach that point. He asserts that we wish we felt as great a connection to the mass-produced goods we consume today as we did to the things we often crafted ourselves in the past. The suggestion that marketers have offered endless customization to fill this void resonates particularly well.

On Keramas

In Chapter 1 of “Robot Fundamentals,” Keramas provides an overview of the capabilities, applications, history, and social and economic issues related to robots. The piece is in textbook format, complete with practical review questions, and despite a date of publication nearly twenty years ago is still quite accurate. There is a focus on robots’ use in automotive manufacturing, and discussions of cost-effectiveness as compared to human labor, as well as brief mentions of concerns regarding robots putting people out of work.

Keramas states that robots are generally preferred for the "4 D jobs" - dull, dirty, dangerous, and difficult (so long as they are cost effective). While the research architects do may eventually lead to the cost-effective automation of tasks we generally consider to “human,” this does not at all appear to be the primary or even tertiary interest of the field; we are less interested in outsourcing “4 D jobs” than in seeing what novel forms can be created by robots, or finding the robot’s inherent biases.

On Smith and Carr

Smith is interested in the specific material properties of metals, and the particularities of how they respond to and index various shaping techniques. I found it notable that he takes a rather scientific approach to his analyses and descriptions, despite talking about ancient artifacts, which we far more often discuss in an anthropological or art history-oriented way than a science way.

Carr argues that while “uninitelligent” forms of automation, such as the mechanization of repetitive, unintellectual tasks, frees up the mind to entertain more difficult and creative ideas, more “intelligent” forms have begun to consume the territory of more intellectual pursuits, and actually prevent us from gaining a true mastery of these tasks. Such forms of automation keep us from truly understanding the processes, or fail while learning, we are denied the ability to gain an internalized comfort; we instead externalize the familiarity with the process and are left to confusedly fumble with the software when things go wrong. But how does this apply to design? Are generative processes making us forget how to design, or digital drawing making us forget how to conceptualize space more abstractly?

Article about AI, DJing, the Japanese game of Go, and the stakes tied them. "Controllerism acts as a release valve that reinscribes our mastery over "our” machines. “The future is still ours,” controllerism dramatically declares."

kylerossetti

Wrapping the form for this last part of the project was interesting as it posed the issue of creating a surface of geometric shapes that could mold onto the more abstracted surface. Using a larger number of panels created a problem for this as the panels continuously misaligned. Using a few panels would have allowed for a cleaner, concise wrapping.

Group: Emily Delius, Jordan Turkomani, Kyle Rossetti, Mitchell Curtiss

jordan333blog

The sheet plastic material snapped when bent backwards, but it was also clear that other groups using different types of plastic were having the same problem. Perhaps a museum board or chipboard would have been better candidates.

On Kolarevic

Kolarevic addresses the changing notion of craft as it relates to digital fabrication. Explicitly building on McCullough’s Abstracting Craft, he defines craft as a process in which “the quality of the result is continually at risk during the process of making” - yet this risk is no longer present in tightly controlled, digital fabrication processes, which he compares to manufacturing. Kolarevic argues that rather, this risk has been displaced from the production phase of a project to the design process. There is some discussion of the nonlinearity of the design of digitally fabricated projects, which felt similar to the Delanda and Burry readings. It seems that Kolarevic implies that the parametric design process has absorbed the risks previously inherent to craft, but I am skeptical of this implication that the same amount of risk as before is present.

The CNC router has one interesting difference from the Zund cutter - while the Zund guides the blade along the x, y, and z axes, the CNC router guides the drill bit only along a rail and up and down, while the table moves back and forth along the remaining axis. I wonder if the scale ad weight of the equipment is the reason for this.

On Iwamoto

Iwamoto is interested in the way that new technologies’ qualities and abilities push us towards new methods of design. In the assigned chapter, she focuses on sectioning, which is now approached not only as a construction drawing or design method, as it was before, but can even also be approached as an integrated combination of the two, or even nearly avoided until the end of the design process. Where before, design would generally occur in orthogonally projected sections, we are moving towards designing in three dimensions, then digitally sectioning the completed design. The section drawing that was once a drawing tool, has become more a product, an expression of the “finished” design, rather than of the process. The Birds Nest by Herzog and de Meuron referenced in the reading also demonstrates that oblique sections can also be used as a foundation for design; previously unimaginable applications of the section become possible with digital design and fabrication.

After crashing Rhino multiple times, I finally discovered that min edge and max edge are the two other adjustable parameters. They control the size of the segments that the surface breaks up into in the x-y plane. I found that by adjusting max angle, min edge, and max edge independently of each other, I could encourage the surface to break up into a nonstandard grid, or even triangular segments.

I also found that the A-B parameter is also adjustable, and works with both a float or integer value. As I increased its value, the surface shifted as though a tide were coming in and filling it with water (positive value), or having material added to its underside, as though milled from a thicker piece of MDF (negative value).

Through the experimental tab styles, I was interested in seeing what the limits were to the geometries that could be cut by the Zund machine, if any. I discovered that the limitations were not with the Zund but with humans’ ability to join the pieces together, and of the plastic material to bend at the extreme angle required by the decoratively extended tab width. While the “frilly” tab style posed no problem once I had found a strategy for joining them, the triangular ones were extremely difficult even when using this strategy, and we ended up creasing most of them or even just leaving them joined incompletely. Had the triangular tabs projected sideways slightly less, I am sure there would have been no problem.

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