the "tooling" guys. rev

"the basket is a conversation"
this is one image and quote of the lecture by ben aranda and kris larsch in the iit proseminar that took place on mid april. it was organized by eric ellingsen, the man behind talk 20 chicago. eric is new at iit and very active.
i have already listened to one of the two [i think it was ben] at NLSO at upenn couple of years ago, and flipped the very influential pamphlet tooling book [recommended by ben nicholson during the thesis years] many times. and still... i was very inspired by their work.
having the new york air and attitude, they showed some of their projects.

weaving:
they collaborated with terrol dew johnson, who makes baskets [and sketches before constructing them] and they created baskets/ sculptures through very interesting processes.



what ben and cris have to say about weaving:
weaving or weaving in computation is a binary process.
weaving for terrol is a social act or process.
""tooling" is not a simulation of nature, is not inventing new ways to put things together, but is a way to produce narratives. to tell stories".
to tell stories like the ones one can read on the baskets.
the fascinating process of "man in the maze" basket.
finally through the collaboration with terrol they could find out what their practice is about.


spiraling, blending, flocking, cracking, packing are other processes that were presented.
i am not so sure in which of the categories grotto falls though! probably the tiling:


grotto is an architectural scale project compare to the baskets one.
grotto description:
grotto is an artificial sculpture to resemble a cave, originally done for the ps1 competition in new york.
its structural unit is the boulder. there are 4 types of boulders that have been created through the tiling process together with the famous daniel bossia from the arup agu [advanced geometry unit] at upenn. the result of the cave is a 3d pattern that never repeats itself twice.
look at the model of the foam structure , taken from here:

for those interested in computation processes and not only, its worth buying the tooling book, if haven't done yet in order to read extensively what i only touched in this post.
new work:


to design a billboard [the biggest in usa?].
an investigation of color to create a dynamic environment for a neighborhood at night. somewhere in new york. result achieved through flocking techniques.