Alexandre Law Min

Student number: 544028

Semester 1/2012

Group 19

VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

My inspiration comes from the reading, ‘The Man Who Loved Fluids – Leonardo’s legacy’ by Philip Ball.

‘It seems that Leonardo did not become fascinated by water because of his engineering activities;

rather, according to art historian Arthur Popham, the latter were a symptom of the former: ‘ Something in the movement of water, its swirls and eddies, corresponded to some deep-seated twist in his nature.’

This was my starting point and I started thinking about the movement of water and the shapes associated to it. I got interested in Leonardo’s sketch of flowing water and the mechanism behind it that creates movement in a simple 2-dimensional drawing. So, my main idea is to analyse how curves can move through space and time in order to inspire my lantern design, and I picked up a few natural processes to demonstrate that.

CONCEPT 1 | WATER WAVES

Any types of wave can be represented by lines. What I am interested in, is to know how these lines change and move through time and space. In this case, I’m interested in the physical form of the wave, that is how curves are arranged on the surface to produce different types of motions and moods.

The image to the left gives a sense of serenity whereas the image to the right reflects anger and violence. How is this effect achieved? How do curves contribute to these different feelings? The terms order/chaos are important. Curves that seemingly have a consistent pattern reflects order, and chaos is reflected by randomly arranged curves. However, this concept is subjective.

Preliminary ideas Transition between a calm and an agitated wave

My idea here is to represent the intensity of the wave in relation to the intensity of the light. Since the bulb is placed on top, the light intensity will gradually diminish the further away it is from its source, thus representing the diminishing amplitude and energy of the waves.

PRECEDENTS

A famous print, ‘The Great Wave of Kanagawa’ by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai painted in the 1830s. It is interesting how the painter depicts the waves. It looks almost as if it was moving and you can feel its violence. The top of the wave looks as if it is going to destroy everything on its way, just like a hungry animal. Perhaps this effect is created by the multitude of edges at the top of the wave, which demonstrates confusion and chaos, and the fact that they resembles hooks.

The Taipei Performing Arts Center is an innovative design by B+H Architects. The building was inspired by sound waves transposed into three dimensional form, and is composed of a structure and a skin. I find the form of the structure very interesting. The way the surfaces curve and tend to fold onto itself reflects not only modernity in design, but also a sense of movement. It is a dynamic and captivating design that seems to change constantly depending on your perspective of view.

SKETCH MODELS

Sketch models showing the transition from calm to agitated waves. I’ve been trying to reproduce the ‘hook’ shape on my model to convey violence. I believe I have been successful, but it would have been better if there was more.

The diagram to left shows a time lapse of a snake performing the concertina motion. After some reflection, I realised that this particular locomotion involves the snake’s head and tail being on the same horizontal axis during the motion. Thus, a more restricted motion as compared to the waves.

I was inspired by a documentary on National Geographic on snakes, and I observed that their bodies made curves and had a continuous movement. It gave me an idea, as their motion is closely that of waves. After some brief web-search, I found that snakes can adopt different locomotion depending on their situations. Snake locomotion is basically, how a snake moves. The image below shows the concertina motion, which involves alternatively constricting and pushing its body.

PRECEDENTS

The Nanhe River Landscape Bridge is a bridge for the city of Xinjin designed by the WXY Architecture and Weidlinger Associates Consulting Engineers. It consists of two intertwining paths that meet at both ends. It is interesting how the design looks like an overlapping ribbon. Maybe what the architects are trying to achieve is to symbolise the very function of the bridge, that is, to connect to things. I can relate this to my design as it resemble a snake locomotion. The loops and curves contribute to creating a movement along the length of the bridge. The viewer’s attention is directed to both tracks at the same time, and since they intertwine, the viewer gets a sense that the bridge is dynamic.

I have decided, from my background research to attempt overlapping a few time-lapse sketches and the results were pretty satisfying. The sketches above shows different types of snake locomotion in a time lapse. Although they are rough and inaccurate drawings, they clearly show the intensity and amplitude of each motion. I chose the concertina motion for further development as it is the most interesting and complex one. I observed that it changes physical properties (amplitude, wavelength, form..) through time, as compared to other types of locomotion.

Serpentine

Lateral undulation

Concertina

EXPLORATIVE SKETCHES

DIGITAL MODELLING

Experimenting with Rhino. I illustrated the concertina locomotion by drawing overlapping curves, and then revolved the overall pattern around its central axis using the ‘revolve’ tool.

Thus, I obtained the following forms. However, the results were not very satisfying and as we can see, the pattern loses itself completely in the 3D shapes. The notion of it being derived from overlapping curves and snake locomotion is completely gone. The new result focuses on only one direction instead of it being flowing, like the previous sketches. Next, I tried and change the angle of the rotating axis, but the results were more or less the same , except that the ends became larger.

The idea of hair motion came to me after my first few sketches for the snake concept, I observed that they had certain similarity with hairs and their associated motion, especially the overlapping time lapses. The only difference being that hairs have only one fixed point (the scalp of the head). They can move freely, but are attached to the head, thus limited motion as well.

Observation of hairs - Even when the hairs are stationary, it looks like it is moving. The curves communicates movement and flow.

A few observational sketches of the movement of hairs - I observed that the hairs move randomly without following any specific form (curves), but the overall direction is the same.

The series of images below shows a time lapse of a girl bouncing and the subsequent motion of her hair. We can observe that the motion is cyclical, that is it repeats itself continuously. I believe individual hairs changes motion every time with no consistency, but the overall pattern is more or less the same. This is mainly due to a few variables, such as air resistance from the falling hairs and wind, which contributes largely to the hairs’ randomness.

Diagrams to the left showing a few sketches and an abstraction of the hair cycle, as shown in the time lapse captures above. In my abstraction,

SKETCH MODEL

The model was meant to represent the stages of the girl’s bouncing hair, however I am not quite satisfied with the outcome. I decided to represent individual strands of hair in order to better communicate the different stages of motion in the model, but it still lacks a sense of movement.

I was equally appealed by my 3 design concepts, but I have decided to choose the concept of hair motion for further development, because in the context of the design objective, that is to create a lantern, I believe that this idea is more relevant. Let me explain myself. As I have observed from the 3 concepts explored, they can be summarised as followed: - Curves in freeform motion. - Curves bounded by 2 fixed points. - Curves bounded by 1 fixed point. My decision for the hair motion is that it is a single fixed point. For example, if we consider an individual hair, it has one fixed point, that is the scalp of the head. Therefore, since I am concerned with formation of curves, the fixed point could represent the light source and the lantern would grow around that source. I am curious to know how my design would subsequently change if I apply this criteria…

IDEA DEVELOPMENT | HAIR MOTION

PRECEDENTS

The top image shows David Lynch’s hair compared to famous paintings. It is interesting how his hair imitates the curves and brushstrokes. This shows us how curves can be communicated differently and thus, give various effect. For example the bottom left image mimics the violent and chaotic aspect of the Great Wave of Kanagawa.

Bottom image showing a man performing poi dance. Poi dance involves rotating a poi (which, in this case is a piece of neon lights) with a string, and thus creating various patterns. In a similar context as the hair movement, the poi can be considered as a single fixed point in its motion. Patterns are created with a simple string and a time lapse notion. I believe a strand of hair acts in the same way as the poi.

HAIR STRUCTURE

People who do not care after their hair tend to have split ends, as shown below. I find this image very interesting as it relates closely to the hair motion. There is chaos and disorder, similar to the bouncing girl’s hair, but the chaos is more linear.

The image below shows the 3 different basic hair structure that exists.

The above diagram shows a human hair. Fragments can be seen along the surface of the hair. If we observe carefully, the pattern is composed of curves. Below shows the hair of a dog.

SKETCHES

A few sketches of my analysis of hair motion, more specifically related to the bouncing girl.

SKETCHES Sketches showing abstraction of hair motion.

MODELLING

REFLECTION

Module 1 is already over and the main part is yet to come. During these 3 weeks, I learnt a lot of things, most of which I didn’t expect from a subject such as Virtual Environments. Overall, I am quite satisfied with what I have achieved these past few days, and how my design developed during the process. Each stage of the process was new for me as I have not been exposed to such a design process before. However, it proved to be rewarding in the end as I gained extensive knowledge and improved my thinking and designing skills. I came across a few challenges, especially in the development of my concept. During the first 2 weeks, I was unable to grasp the idea of deriving an idea out of a natural process. Then, I began to slowly understand but it was still slightly unclear. During the development process, I was unable to make my model due to modelling clay being irrelevant for such a complex shape. Therefore, I had to slightly modify my design. The development of my final idea is not really what I was expecting from the concept of hair motion. I feel that there is a lack of motion conveyed in the model. Despite the outcome, I am very satisfied with my process and I hope that module 2 will bring some new experiences.