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Master's Thesis (abbreviated)
Richard Nelipovich
Cranbrook Academy of Art
5 May 2005
full text of thesis
adapting craft, adopting technology, expressing nature
Evolution in thinking, technology, and culture happens in incremental stages, connecting tradition to change,
moving to the new by melding it with the known. In this work, the mix of design and craft, of digital and analog
tools, is about cross-fertilization, exploring the interconnections of different fields, media, materials, and
processes. It is sexual reproduction rather than cloning, where two related fields have a dynamic cross-
pollinating effect and new possibilities emerge. This project is an investigation within the space between
craft and design, co-inhabited by digital and analog processes for visualization and making.
machine forms
Much of modernism worked to develop characteristic forms for the technology of the time. But for most of the
20th Century machines followed Euclidean geometry, isolating movement and form development into arcs
and lines. Most books available on the geometry of design reflect the same Euclidean perspective. Today,
however, computer-aided design and manufacturing allow us to generate objects composed of complex
curves and surfaces. And beyond the processes of material removal and deformation (via machining and
forming), additive processes have been included in our – rapid prototyping processes give us the capacity to
generate extremely complex forms, detailed to a thousandth of an inch, with interior surfaces never possible
before. Considering this expanded palette, what are the characteristic forms that The Machine should now be
used to evolve?
growth structures in nature
Consider that the Machine and our 'man-made' reality are not outside of nature, but a continuation of its
evolution, subject to the same physical and mathematical laws. Owen Jones and Gottfried Semper believed,
"…that the designer should follow nature not by imitating appearances but by applying its inherent laws."
Historically, the applied arts have looked to nature for inspiration in structure and aesthetics; and today we
can look more deeply. By mapping the human genome, we engender an understanding of the world as the
developmental expression of underlying encoded structure. Through chaos theory and other complex
mathematics, it is believed that the world is an expression of emergent systems. The study of Fractals,
Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation has changed our understanding of the development of the form
world. What were mathematical monsters, the 'pathological' exceptions to Platonic and Euclidean ideal
forms, have become natural expressions of universal systems; clouds and coastlines are not what they used
to be. Fractal geometry provides a means of deconstructing the forms of nature into primitive elements for
more complex compositions based on self-similar, repeating patterns. As our understanding of nature
changes, so does our interpretive expression of it.
organic variance
Organic systems that may start from an identical position, inevitably diverge into unique outcomes. This is the
biophilic explanation for variance. Nothing in our biological surroundings is a direct duplication – nature is
very efficient that way. Reproduction in nature, whether the splitting of an amoeba or the replication of DNA,
inevitably results in slight mutations, which over time, translate into significant changes. In evolutionary
terms, nature creates variety to ensure survival – multiple mutations are generated, and only some will thrive
and survive. There is no one answer to continuously changing environmental conditions, no way of predicting
the future. So the best answer at any given moment is the greatest number of answers possible, some of
which will succeed and propagate. What if designers mimicked nature, and designed greater and greater
varieties of things, letting individual choice decide what goes forward? What if the options generated are an
offshoot of the individual himself? Why not design for variety, for distinction, for individual nuance, as nature
does?
This is a significant part of nature typically overlooked by mass production. David Pye wrote that, "In every
natural organism we see a dichotomy between idiosyncrasy and conformity to the pattern of the species. No
two leaves of the same tree are precisely alike, each is individual: yet every one of them conforms to a
recognizable pattern characteristic of the species." As a part of this natural order, our perceptual skills are
tuned to change, and we are drawn to such variation. Pleasure in perception exists somewhere between
monotony and confusion, where there is a level of order that keeps the eye moving without overwhelming the
mind. Identical elements are quickly rendered into pattern as the mind searches for peculiarities and
differences. Gombrich explains that, "The perception of regularity, of repetition and redundancy, presents a
great economy. Faced with an array of identical objects, whether they are the beads of a necklace, the paving
stones of a street, or the columns of a building, we rapidly form the preliminary hypothesis that we are
confronted with a lawful assembly, and we need only sample the elements for redundancies by sweeping our
eye along the whole series and just taking in one repeating component."(151) If, however, one perceives
complexity through variety, self-similar rather than self-replicating elements, then the eye will continue
searching for relationships.
Part of the beauty of nature is constant flux. If it's true that our cultural cravings and perceptual systems
evolved in-tandem with nature, then it is no wonder that we find pleasure in variety! How can we re-establish
that sense of variety in the products we surround ourselves with in our man-made world?
organic programming
Utilizing natural simulations in programming, we can create generative systems for the design and
manufacture of objects of use. By integrating simulations of the mathematical structures of nature
responsible for variance, along with the continuous changeability of computer-controlled manufacturing
systems, each object produced has the potential to be an original, sharing characteristics and evolutionary
history with its sibling (same genetic code, different expression). What if objects are generated like trees; if
the object is the expression of the entelechy, or intention, not in an absolute way, but more through methods
of suggestion rather than command, evolutionary rather than deterministic. In writing code to generate
objects, such elements of organic growth can be included.
Negotiating the space between control and chaos, allowing the affordances of unpredictability to be a
significant part of the process of form generation is akin to the 'happy accident' of craft. One cannot know the
outcome until the process is complete. Describing similarities in software development, Steven Johnson
writes, "The first few decades of software were essentially creationist in philosophy – an almighty power wills
the program into being. But the next generation is profoundly Darwinian."
Designer as Programmer
By creating objects via programs, rule structures are the basis of form evolution. The specific outcome is an
emergent result of the execution of the program – the idea is scripted, the result is experienced. What is the
designer responsible for – what is the designer's product? In this case, the designer is a programmer. The
designer determines the parameters, establishing the structure and the basis of form generation. Instead of
a catalog of options, there is an emergent catalog of variants, the trajectory of which is unknown. John Frazer
of the Architectural Association in London, has been working with similar processes in architecture. "'What
we are evolving', Frazer explains, 'are the rules for generating form rather than the forms themselves. We are
describing processes, not components, ours is a packet-of-seeds as opposed to the bag-of-bricks
approach.' In this process, the architect becomes a 'catalyser' rather than a designer, and the architecture 'a
form of artificial life, subject, like the natural world, to principles of morphogenesis, genetic coding, replication
and selection.'"
How much control does the designer/programmer maintain and how much is left to the process? Any tool
(including software) affords a limited range of possibilities to the user. So, what about customizing the
tools? As Mike Cooley explains in an essay titled From Brunelleschi to CAD-CAM, "The computer excels in
analysis and numerical computation, the human mind in pattern recognition, the assessment of complicated
situations and the intuitive leap to new solutions. If these different abilities can be combined, they amount to
something much more powerful and effective than anything we have had before." Hybridizing the human-
computer skillsets, the designer/programmer can maximize the potential of digital tools by climbing behind
the GUI (graphical user interface) and making changes. By including flexibility and interactive development in
the digital environment, the tools can grow and change, departing from, but still a product of, the original
structure.
One of the departures here is that the designer is making the tools he uses. This is similar to the tradition of
the blacksmith – for whom, if a project warrants a tool that is not at-hand, such as a chisel, then the smith
makes it [interestingly from the same material (or medium) that he will then be affecting with the tool]. The
designer/programmer creates his own tools, toolbars, and buttons tailored to the job at hand – fulfilling the
evolutionary role as homo-faber, or tool maker, using the medium to affect the medium. By customizing tools,
and getting behind the scenes of the virtual stage of digital design, a new level of control and exploration are
exposed.
conclusion
If the atelier includes desktop manufacturing (rapid prototyping and CAD/CAM processes), what are the
characteristic forms that The Machine should now be used to evolve? What is the expression of our
understanding of the world of which we are a part, including developments in fractals, chaos theory and
emergent systems? This understanding of technology is an evolutionary growth ring on the accumulated
knowledge of mankind, and that ring will have an expression determined by its unique environmental
conditions. My goal is to be part of the evolutionary process as we find new ways of expressing our
understanding through objects. I am a designer and maker of functional decorative objects and intend to
participate optimistically in the current context of design and manufacturing. The question for me is, “What is
the expression of this worldview in the overlapping area of metalsmithing and product design, what is the next
piece of hollowware or tableware?”
My interest is in utilizing natural growth references while being careful not to duplicate earlier interpretations (i.
e. neoclassical acanthus leaves, vine scrolls, etc). Instead, I am working to find an expression of those ideas
fitting to the processes involved, to an integration of new digital tools. What is Fractal Rococo? Somewhere
between the acanthus leaf and the fractal Julia set is an aesthetic that is both natural and digital. I am
working with familiar typologies and developing their forms through application of self-similar, repeating, and
continuously varying elements, attempting to develop an impossibly organic overall appearance.
Richard Nelipovich
Cranbrook Academy of Art
5 May 2005
full text of thesis
adapting craft, adopting technology, expressing nature
Evolution in thinking, technology, and culture happens in incremental stages, connecting tradition to change,
moving to the new by melding it with the known. In this work, the mix of design and craft, of digital and analog
tools, is about cross-fertilization, exploring the interconnections of different fields, media, materials, and
processes. It is sexual reproduction rather than cloning, where two related fields have a dynamic cross-
pollinating effect and new possibilities emerge. This project is an investigation within the space between
craft and design, co-inhabited by digital and analog processes for visualization and making.
machine forms
Much of modernism worked to develop characteristic forms for the technology of the time. But for most of the
20th Century machines followed Euclidean geometry, isolating movement and form development into arcs
and lines. Most books available on the geometry of design reflect the same Euclidean perspective. Today,
however, computer-aided design and manufacturing allow us to generate objects composed of complex
curves and surfaces. And beyond the processes of material removal and deformation (via machining and
forming), additive processes have been included in our – rapid prototyping processes give us the capacity to
generate extremely complex forms, detailed to a thousandth of an inch, with interior surfaces never possible
before. Considering this expanded palette, what are the characteristic forms that The Machine should now be
used to evolve?
growth structures in nature
Consider that the Machine and our 'man-made' reality are not outside of nature, but a continuation of its
evolution, subject to the same physical and mathematical laws. Owen Jones and Gottfried Semper believed,
"…that the designer should follow nature not by imitating appearances but by applying its inherent laws."
Historically, the applied arts have looked to nature for inspiration in structure and aesthetics; and today we
can look more deeply. By mapping the human genome, we engender an understanding of the world as the
developmental expression of underlying encoded structure. Through chaos theory and other complex
mathematics, it is believed that the world is an expression of emergent systems. The study of Fractals,
Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation has changed our understanding of the development of the form
world. What were mathematical monsters, the 'pathological' exceptions to Platonic and Euclidean ideal
forms, have become natural expressions of universal systems; clouds and coastlines are not what they used
to be. Fractal geometry provides a means of deconstructing the forms of nature into primitive elements for
more complex compositions based on self-similar, repeating patterns. As our understanding of nature
changes, so does our interpretive expression of it.
organic variance
Organic systems that may start from an identical position, inevitably diverge into unique outcomes. This is the
biophilic explanation for variance. Nothing in our biological surroundings is a direct duplication – nature is
very efficient that way. Reproduction in nature, whether the splitting of an amoeba or the replication of DNA,
inevitably results in slight mutations, which over time, translate into significant changes. In evolutionary
terms, nature creates variety to ensure survival – multiple mutations are generated, and only some will thrive
and survive. There is no one answer to continuously changing environmental conditions, no way of predicting
the future. So the best answer at any given moment is the greatest number of answers possible, some of
which will succeed and propagate. What if designers mimicked nature, and designed greater and greater
varieties of things, letting individual choice decide what goes forward? What if the options generated are an
offshoot of the individual himself? Why not design for variety, for distinction, for individual nuance, as nature
does?
This is a significant part of nature typically overlooked by mass production. David Pye wrote that, "In every
natural organism we see a dichotomy between idiosyncrasy and conformity to the pattern of the species. No
two leaves of the same tree are precisely alike, each is individual: yet every one of them conforms to a
recognizable pattern characteristic of the species." As a part of this natural order, our perceptual skills are
tuned to change, and we are drawn to such variation. Pleasure in perception exists somewhere between
monotony and confusion, where there is a level of order that keeps the eye moving without overwhelming the
mind. Identical elements are quickly rendered into pattern as the mind searches for peculiarities and
differences. Gombrich explains that, "The perception of regularity, of repetition and redundancy, presents a
great economy. Faced with an array of identical objects, whether they are the beads of a necklace, the paving
stones of a street, or the columns of a building, we rapidly form the preliminary hypothesis that we are
confronted with a lawful assembly, and we need only sample the elements for redundancies by sweeping our
eye along the whole series and just taking in one repeating component."(151) If, however, one perceives
complexity through variety, self-similar rather than self-replicating elements, then the eye will continue
searching for relationships.
Part of the beauty of nature is constant flux. If it's true that our cultural cravings and perceptual systems
evolved in-tandem with nature, then it is no wonder that we find pleasure in variety! How can we re-establish
that sense of variety in the products we surround ourselves with in our man-made world?
organic programming
Utilizing natural simulations in programming, we can create generative systems for the design and
manufacture of objects of use. By integrating simulations of the mathematical structures of nature
responsible for variance, along with the continuous changeability of computer-controlled manufacturing
systems, each object produced has the potential to be an original, sharing characteristics and evolutionary
history with its sibling (same genetic code, different expression). What if objects are generated like trees; if
the object is the expression of the entelechy, or intention, not in an absolute way, but more through methods
of suggestion rather than command, evolutionary rather than deterministic. In writing code to generate
objects, such elements of organic growth can be included.
Negotiating the space between control and chaos, allowing the affordances of unpredictability to be a
significant part of the process of form generation is akin to the 'happy accident' of craft. One cannot know the
outcome until the process is complete. Describing similarities in software development, Steven Johnson
writes, "The first few decades of software were essentially creationist in philosophy – an almighty power wills
the program into being. But the next generation is profoundly Darwinian."
Designer as Programmer
By creating objects via programs, rule structures are the basis of form evolution. The specific outcome is an
emergent result of the execution of the program – the idea is scripted, the result is experienced. What is the
designer responsible for – what is the designer's product? In this case, the designer is a programmer. The
designer determines the parameters, establishing the structure and the basis of form generation. Instead of
a catalog of options, there is an emergent catalog of variants, the trajectory of which is unknown. John Frazer
of the Architectural Association in London, has been working with similar processes in architecture. "'What
we are evolving', Frazer explains, 'are the rules for generating form rather than the forms themselves. We are
describing processes, not components, ours is a packet-of-seeds as opposed to the bag-of-bricks
approach.' In this process, the architect becomes a 'catalyser' rather than a designer, and the architecture 'a
form of artificial life, subject, like the natural world, to principles of morphogenesis, genetic coding, replication
and selection.'"
How much control does the designer/programmer maintain and how much is left to the process? Any tool
(including software) affords a limited range of possibilities to the user. So, what about customizing the
tools? As Mike Cooley explains in an essay titled From Brunelleschi to CAD-CAM, "The computer excels in
analysis and numerical computation, the human mind in pattern recognition, the assessment of complicated
situations and the intuitive leap to new solutions. If these different abilities can be combined, they amount to
something much more powerful and effective than anything we have had before." Hybridizing the human-
computer skillsets, the designer/programmer can maximize the potential of digital tools by climbing behind
the GUI (graphical user interface) and making changes. By including flexibility and interactive development in
the digital environment, the tools can grow and change, departing from, but still a product of, the original
structure.
One of the departures here is that the designer is making the tools he uses. This is similar to the tradition of
the blacksmith – for whom, if a project warrants a tool that is not at-hand, such as a chisel, then the smith
makes it [interestingly from the same material (or medium) that he will then be affecting with the tool]. The
designer/programmer creates his own tools, toolbars, and buttons tailored to the job at hand – fulfilling the
evolutionary role as homo-faber, or tool maker, using the medium to affect the medium. By customizing tools,
and getting behind the scenes of the virtual stage of digital design, a new level of control and exploration are
exposed.
conclusion
If the atelier includes desktop manufacturing (rapid prototyping and CAD/CAM processes), what are the
characteristic forms that The Machine should now be used to evolve? What is the expression of our
understanding of the world of which we are a part, including developments in fractals, chaos theory and
emergent systems? This understanding of technology is an evolutionary growth ring on the accumulated
knowledge of mankind, and that ring will have an expression determined by its unique environmental
conditions. My goal is to be part of the evolutionary process as we find new ways of expressing our
understanding through objects. I am a designer and maker of functional decorative objects and intend to
participate optimistically in the current context of design and manufacturing. The question for me is, “What is
the expression of this worldview in the overlapping area of metalsmithing and product design, what is the next
piece of hollowware or tableware?”
My interest is in utilizing natural growth references while being careful not to duplicate earlier interpretations (i.
e. neoclassical acanthus leaves, vine scrolls, etc). Instead, I am working to find an expression of those ideas
fitting to the processes involved, to an integration of new digital tools. What is Fractal Rococo? Somewhere
between the acanthus leaf and the fractal Julia set is an aesthetic that is both natural and digital. I am
working with familiar typologies and developing their forms through application of self-similar, repeating, and
continuously varying elements, attempting to develop an impossibly organic overall appearance.