The seven-year-old Emma Mærsk can carry more cargo than a 41-mile-long train and has a turning radius of almost a mile. Even compared to oil tankers, she’s more like a city than a boat—albeit a city that few people ever get to explore. But in 2010, a young photographer named Jakob Wagner became one of the few non-employee passengers to board Emma.
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The explosion of interest in digital modeling and fabrication technologies like 3D printing, robotic and laser cutting has resulted in a number of interesting projects, from printed Valentine’s Day chocolates to models of yourself. The revolutionary potential of fabrication has been much talked about, and now an exhibition hosted by Tokyo University of the Arts has gathered a group of well known creators who are using these technologies to explore the possibilities of digital design in architecture, design and art.
Titled ‘Materializing’, the exhibition is centred on the idea of ‘not just information, and not just materials’, and showcases an emerging form of creativity that is broadly concerned with exploring how programmability can be materially presented, whether this is in the form of images, sounds, architectural models or animations. Supported by the developments in small scale digital modeling and fabrication technologies, these types of approaches allow for a quick means of prototyping and exploring a greater number of various design and artistic possibilities.
We visited the exhibition to check out the projects on display for ourselves.
studio_01 + yakul
‘Epoch I’
studio_01 is a Tokyo and Toyama-based partnership between designers Alex Knezo and Akinori Hamada that works on projects ranging from architecture to lighting, furniture, and branding. Their designs typically use Japanese elements of design alongside digitally designed elements.
‘Epoch I’ is an installation project done in collaboration with installation design studio yakul. A small-scale environment of the exhibition space was replicated in a glass box which was connected to a computer and bags of sand.
The project placed a number of tracking cameras around the exhibition, and a program was created to visually model and map how visitors moved throughout the space. This mapping was used to gradually fill the glass box with layers upon layers of sand that accumulated in areas where the presence of visitors was greatest. Ultimately, an installation that physically and temporally records how a large group of people moved and affected the space throughout the exhibition’s history was created.
N&R Foldings + Heavy Back Pack
‘[ORI-CON]‘
N&R Foldings is a London/Tokyo based design studio that was co-founded by Rodrigo Solorzano and Naoki Kawamoto. The studio is particularly interested in digital generation and fabrication techniques, and draws inspiration from Origami.
‘Ori-con’ is the name of a software devised by the studio that automatically calculates and converts data to create customised wrappings that can be used to transport goods and gifts. Dubbed “Orishiki”, a portmanteau of the words “Ori” from Origami and “Shiki” from Furoshiki, these customised wrappings take the form of a single 2D structure made up of triangular segments that can be folded up and wrapped around objects.
Users 3D scan an object that they wish to wrap and carry, and the Ori-con software creates a mapping of an Orishiki for that object which can be designed instantly based on the data from the scan. A white control panel allows users to control a number of parameter values, such as the number of polygons or the thickness and width of each section, allowing them to easily adjust the design of the Orishiki. This design can then be exported to 3D printers, CNC and the like.
noiz architects
Located in the same office space as Mandalah, noiz architects is an architecture, design, and planning studio based in both Tokyo and Taiwan. Founded in 2007, the studio takes its name from the tendency to call new, innovative forms of music as ‘noise’, and this part of music history serves as an everyday reminder of the firm’s commitment to creative design solutions.
noiz architects’ project used 3D modeling and fabrication tools to structurally explore the Voronoi diagram, a way of recording information about the distances between sets of points in any dimensional space, which has typically been used in two-dimensional spaces.
000Lab based in Keio Shonan Fujisawa Campus’s display , ‘TPG Kit’ (Topological Grid).
Shio Imai’s ‘Trepak – The Nutcracker’ is a set of two sculptures created using motion capture technology that allowed for movement in real time to be captured and represented digitally. The trajectory of a composer’s hand was taken as data and printed using 3D printing technology.
Utilising plaster, cement, gravel and water, [gh/e]‘s project titled ‘she’ presented a way of joining one object to another.
While ans Studio’s ‘Neuro-Fabrics’ project highlighted the possibilities of the tree/wood in an era dominated by steel and glass as a material in computational design.
Tachi Tomohiro’s “free-form origami”, made from a folded 1,100mm x 1,300mm stainless steel sheet.
‘Materializing’ is one of the first exhibitions in Japan that has brought together such a diverse group of architects, designers and artists interested in exploring the burgeoning developments between information and fabrication. It will definitely be interesting to see how different groups continue to push the boundaries of what can be done with digital fabrication and modeling as the technology develops.
Though this prank video is an obvious attempt at force inducing viral-ity by Pepsi Max, it’s still a pretty fun watch. The magician Dynamo tricks people into thinking he can levitate by ‘magically’ following a bus around as it moves across London. Watch people freak out when they see him float.
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When you’re painting, drips are usually bad. But if you’re clever enough, you can put ’em to good use. That’s what artist Ben Dehaan did with his project "Uncured," by using a print loaded with some ultraviolet cured ink to create face-melting portraits worthy of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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An eye for good design isn’t something you’re born with; you’ve got to learn it. But everyone has to start somewhere, and this is what it looks like when kids take their very first awkward stabs at furniture design. The results are sort of horrifyingly cute.
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It’s the longest day of the year, so I don’t really know what you’re doing not being outside right now. But since you’re here, take a moment to check out some of the best pieces of art, architecture, and design, we found this week.
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The atrium of New York’s Guggenheim Museum is usually a bustling space, filled with crisp light and crowds of visitors. You wouldn’t have known it from the scene yesterday, as the museum opened its long-awaited James Turrell show: saturated in shimmering cobalt light, visitors quietly sprawled around the space, gazing up at Turrell’s “skylight.”
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Thanks to it8bit, I’ve found one of my new favorite artists: Billy Butcher. His collection Come Play My Game, I’ll Test Ya! is an edgy and lively mashup of pop culture, headlined by my favorite pastime: videogames. Can you name the references in each illustration?
My favorite has to be the Akira/Pac-Man/Ghostbusters mashup. “Tetsuoooo!!! Waka-Waka!!!”
Head to Red Bubble to get prints, posters, clothing, stickers and greeting cards featuring Butcher Billy’s artwork. You can also check out his Tumblr blog for more of his art.
Tomás Saraceno‘s M.O. as an artist is to make you float—either on top of millions of yards of plastic, or inside of hexagonal sky pods, or on top of an inflatable balloons. His latest Jules Verne-tinged installation, which opened today, is no different.
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If you think that playing video games for too long makes your head hurt, just imagine how these guys feel. In fact, these awesome skulls should be used as a gamer PSA. “This is your brain on Super Mario Bros.” Well, if they were human skulls. They may have been human at one time until addiction to the game mutated them to look more like Bowser’s skull.
Artist Tobias Wüstefeld from Germany sculpted these skulls which have partial levels from Super Mario Bros. on them. This is what it looks like to be addicted to Nintendo games for sure. Koopas and Goombas crawling around in your skull. Never a moment’s peace.
They will be exhibited at the We Love 8Bit Art Show this September in Berlin.
[via Obvious Winner]
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
