Section Animation

Sectional Analysis

Skin and Bones

In Leibniz's writings on folds and how they differ from the concept of skin and external membrane, I found myself questioning the deconstructive rational of blobs, skins and stretched membranes. If these forms were to be true to the architecture they are trying to represent, it would seem to me that they would not just reflect their skeletal structure, but also begin to have their own skeletal structure. The "skin" or "wrapped membrane", if indeed an animate form, would also have to react to its internal forces as well as its external forces. Once a skin if pulled taught around its generating skeleton, there would be a new concentration of external forces on the areas between that which is held taught by frame. This membrane needs to react to these forces not in their physical application but in their conceptual existence. I was intrigued by this idea of the "fold" being the space between where these internal and external tensions exist. "The Libnizan fold is in continuous movement, enveloping former folds and creating new ones on the surface of the diaphragm. Secondly, the fold, as an interior mechanism which at once reflects the outside and represents the forces of the inside, is more of a mediating device, a spatial instrument, than an object acted upon from one side or the other" I started to make some sense out of this after reading Victor Hugo's description of the interior of a monumental element built of wood and plaster from the Napoleonic era. He describes the outside as a normal form of an elephant and the inside as a huge skeleton. It was his description of the space created within the elephant based on the interior forces of framing and the external forces of the plaster coating that got me really thinking about this concept of the animate fold. "A long beam overhead, to which massive side-members were attached at regular intervals, represented the back-bone and ribs, with plaster stalactites hanging from them like entrails; and everywhere there were great spiders' webs like dusty diaphragms. Here and there in the corners were patches of black that seemed to be alive and had changed their position with sudden, startled movements. The litter fallen from the back of the elephant on to its stomach had evened out the concavity of the latter, so that one could walk on it as though on a floor." BOO YAH KA SHA........ The space between that which is and that which is not.

Animation

In this animation, I attempt to explore the path of movement created by the dancer's form as well as inhabit the tensile space created between interior and exterior forces. The path of the animation attempts to explore the space created between these two seemingly disconnected forms. The inhabitation created between the exterior and interior forms creates an object that is dependent upon both object's simultaneous disconnect for its own existence. Note: I had problems with my model disappearing in electric image; hence the reason for the camera passing through the volumes at certain points.

Project.1.b

I attempted to render her body as three blobs interconnected and articulated by her movement at time based intervals. The reaching motion of her arms becomes a frame that creates a folded space between solid form and framed extension of the object.

In this version, I let the body of the dancer become the interior frame and let the exterior solid space be defined by the extension of her arms in her circular movement.

Animate Form

Although I find all of Greg Lynn's writings extremely insightful and exciting, what I would like to discuss in this entry is something that I struggled to justify in my most current analysis of modeling subjects and the implied forms created via movement with respect to time. I was conflicted when it came to the actual modeling of the movement analysis because of the limited methods by which I knew to tackle the problem. The idea of modeling time based on frame captures of a film on a given interval made me question the legitimacy of my analysis based purely on the fact that I was attempting to model fluid form based on multiple frames of static moments. I had no way to accurately represent the movement occurring between the static frames except via intuition and memory. "The dominant mode for discussing motion in architecture has been the cinematic model, where the multiplication and sequencing of static snap-shots simulates movement. The problem with the motion-picture analogy is that architecture occupies the role of the static frame through which motion progresses. Force and motion are eliminated from form only to be reintroduced, after the fact of design, through concepts and techniques of optical procession." - Greg Lynn

movement study

Point analysis via color coded base node movement


Static trace frame overlay to understand fluid form based on linear progression of time


A collection of individal gestures that together create a fluid object

"Gestures, such as these, are highly principled flexible connective networks. The gesture maintains openness through an attention to the particular characteristics of the disparate elements which constitute it and give the continious shape of its particular curvilinear form." - Greg Lynn "Folds, Bodies and Blobs"



The red in this image takes on the form of movement in the dancer's extremities, which are the defining flow that constitutes the external envelope. The internal forces become a translucent body built of interconnected splines and vertices that give definition to the balance between internal and external.