Phase 1 Complete!

my first foray into Maya!

...for the class Special Effects of Form. Assignment #1 asked that we (my other 2 team members and myself) create a surface using 3 curves and 3 animation tools in Maya, and submit a 60-second animation and a 500 word essay. In phase one we created a cell structure/surface (John), phase two applied a soft-modifier to twist it (Kai), and phase three used clustering and spring constraints to generated the morphing form (me).
First thoughts after working with the software: Maya is designed to create form as surface and object as artificial constructs with the final rendering as the ultimate goal. Can Maya be used to create form from volume? Maya only reads solids as thin surfaces - everything is hollow (a solid cube is really a box with 6 surfaces). Can we use voxels or volumetric materials instead? Maybe play around with particles systems, fluid dynamics, fog/volume lights/radiosity/reflection/radiation....or are these only post-production effects? Might be interesting to explore voxels in medical imaging. Are they used in architectural simulations? How does the urban radar/xray at Halcro work?

special effects of form

Pretty excited about this class I am taking at Columbia called "Special Effects of Form", with Hernan Diaz Alonso instructing. It is an exploratory laboratory for producing form using Maya as a tool - two weeks in, and it really seems aligned with my thesis direction. I am teamed up with 2 AAD students, and today we pitched the ultrasound/whiteread/indirect mapping/volume idea as a starting point to the instructor. Hernan's comments:
- translate a logic from other mediums into Maya, instead of finding a logic within the software and trying to use it for something it wasn't designed to do
- do more research - what other mediums does this occur?
- start thinking about how this can translate to fabrication - cnc mill, laser cutter, 3d printing
- focus on translation, not replication

recipe for a project

Post-Humanism: decentering the subject (Animal Farm)
CTheory.net Cyborgs: Katherine Hayles, Donna Haroway ("The Cyborg Manifesto")
UN Studio (Ben Van Berkel), El Croquis
Paul Virilio, "The Over-Exposed City"
Deleuze & Guattari
Other readings: theory of the Other, theory of automata.
Digital practices as a move away from nostalgia, human-centered hierarchy or sacredness (humanism); very loose distinction between object and shadow in digital world - they are perceived as equal. Process-based explorations, do not focus on the object or product> build the machine, the tools to touch the unknown/the imagined. Think in abstracts. How to make presence digitally? Map the presence of our being?
Start here: map 100 diff. ways of digital mappings presently used (ultrasound, infra-red, etc). Process will focus on: 1. Primary>Maya or other, 2. Secondary>X-ray/Ultrasound, 3. a translator/mediator between the two (can I import 2. into 1. to generate architectural form?)
Most importantly, follow my hunches!!

ultrasound of a city?

my personal starting point

Solitude: what does it mean to be alone?
---emptiness, nothingness, absence, silence, negative space?
>>(urban life>public: Tehching Hsieh, http://www.one-year-performance.com/ )
>>>Empty urban spaces: Gordan Matta-Clark & Anarchitecture


>Void>unfamiliar>uncanny>hidden.
Rachel Whiteread

Giacometti

>>>Precedent spaces: dark room at Libeskind's Jewish Holocaust Museum in Berlin (http://www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de/site/EN/04-Architecture/02-Libeskind-Building/06-Holocaust-Tower/holocaust-tower.php)

Zumthor's Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland

here goes nothing...

Starting with a blank page is the hardest thing to do...the beginning of a very long journey. Hope I look back at this and say, what were you so worried about Darcie? See, that wasn't so bad!
The proposal passed, why don't I feel relieved or happy? After seeing the other thesis students working away today in studio, the thought of doing this alone in New York doesn't appeal to me right now. I hope my plan of throwing myself 100% into Columbia courses this summer will work - either I'll get totally off track or I'll create a valuable body of work and learn a lot too. No one said this would be simple! Please please let it all work out in the end...