Can I invent rules for how changes in 2D plans affect the 3D sculptures that rely on them for construction information?

A key aspect of the generative sculpture series that will be presented in Rome in December 2014 will focus on how a ceramic mechanism can be presented not only as a fully working mechanism, but also as a *specific* kind of not-working mechanism. I can design and sculpt many different kinds of mechanisms on a continuous range between not-working and working. My point is that the working mechanism is not the end result, but rather simply an instance along a continuum that includes non-working versions of itself and also working versions of similar mechanisms.

Some of these notes happened before coffee, this morning.


Showing how slide distance might be chosen based on diameter of circles in the drawing

In these notes I'm fleshing out specifics of what happens when rule sets mingle and produce interesting not-working mechanisms. Hinge design was too complicated pre-coffee, so I started with a simple circular or rectangular tube.

My premises:
1. 2D drawings of plans can change in certain ways. For example, the pattern for a rectangular box can be slid without changing, rotated on the plane, skewed up from the plane, and if distortions are allowed, elongated or even freely distorted along both axes. Only some of these changes still produce a box at all. Some of the more dramatic changes to the pattern might not even look like a box at all.

2. My manufacture methods in 3D can change in certain ways. For example, how literally should the pattern be followed? If the pattern is for metal folding pieces intended to be filled with plaster, how much plaster is used? And many other questions that a set of rules can be made to address.

I'm interested to show over several sculptures the ways in which the changes that are noticeable and rather simple in 2D plans affect the 3D forms that take essential information from those drawings for their manufacture.


One main constraint on the 3D sculptures that involve metal plates and plaster is the notion that the amount of plaster available for pouring has been conserved, or constrained. When I do this, the forms accepting plaster will either be too small or too large to contain the plaster evenly with its fill level. My challenge is to allow for this.

Three examples from a bit of graphic manipulation:


original geometry pattern with floor phased away from form, colored white


second phase of parts selected from drawing, colored dull rose



tracing of various outlines and connecting lines, phased away from drawing, colored faint white

More to come.

FIRST POTTERY VIDEO EVAR

I'm excited to present a very humble little video about making a bowl.

The process was fairly straightforward, but I can easily imagine getting very wrapped up in sound, editing, and adding other features to the video itself.

But it's a start!

Here are some screen captures:

of mechanics and broken things in art

This post is a round-up of recent notes and sketches and models based on mechanics in art.

I'm trying to get a grip on using mechanical concepts in art, either directly as actual working mechanisms, or indirectly as.... well, indirectly as all those other things that don't actually work. I'm including some mechanical elements in a series of sculptures I'm presenting at the Generative Art Conference in Rome in December 2014. Earlier on this blog I posted the abstract for the paper.

Here's a review of works so far:


older work in clay



double spinning mechanism, clay



drawing of organic and mechanical qualities together



perhaps a little menacing?



pantograph mechanism entirely of clay



illustration of abstracted hinge design


Using actual mechanical parts
This aspect is straightforward, even though it is somewhat difficult to execute. For clay mechanisms, the parts must be loose enough around each other that they do not bind. A lidded jar is a mechanism; a stopper in a bottle neck is a mechanism. When uncoated (unglazed) clay touches uncoated clay, it does not stick. The more mechanically elaborate things I build use a small post in a hole for a pivot point. The white hinged boxes are nothing more than several pivoting points arranged vertically. The double ring example above is a little sleeve of clay fitted into a larger sleeve.

The mechanisms might fail because that loose fit between pieces of clay is spoiled by the warping tendency of clay. The mechanisms may also fail because it actually breaks, but only if I drop it!

The types of mechanism I'm planning to use in the upcoming sculptures are pivoting point, a hinge, and maybe some sliding parts.


Transforming mechanical illustrations
I am very motivated to include not only working mechanisms in the sculptures, but also mechanical concepts. This needs to be explained. The simplest way to use a mechanical concept is to feature an illustration of a mechanism. Already there is so much variety in the kinds of illustration that might be performed on ceramics! A further opportunity I have to elaborate on illustrations is whether the mechanism actually works. Depending on how savvy the viewer might be, she might realize that the depicted mechanism cannot possibly work as drawn. I plan to make such "impossible mechanisms" easy to spot.

As an extension of the 2D impossible drawings, I plan to build 3D mechanisms that are "impossible." Or simply do not work. The point I'm challenging myself with is to make it clear to the viewer that they are looking at a correct depiction of a mechanism that does not work: not an improperly made mechanism that ought to work. I can do this. I am certain of it.

As one means of depicting mechanical concepts as 2D artwork, I'm designing the illustrations as layers that will be offset or shown out of phase with one another. Which brings me to this photo:


rendering of working and non-working mechanisms

The "impossible" or "non-working" mechanisms in the drawing (shown there in light tan) have had some distortion performed on them. The distortions are quite simple in concept with regard to a drawing and the usual interface we have. Elements of the drawing were shifted in a direction, or scaled up or down, or skewed wider.


Combining working mechanisms with their related transformed drawings
This really challenges me to work with the transition between 3D and 2D. I am hoping to find a good solution by November, 2014.

One solution is to have a working mechanism blend one end with a non-working sculptural part. This possibility is shown at the bottom of the photo. In an actual sculpture, it is unclear whether the working mechanism will be unfairly constrained by the non-working parts. (In this particular mechanism, the expansion joints would likely not work because the two ends from the working domain are connected to the non-working domain in just the certain way that locks the working domain in that compressed position.)

However, many mechanisms that work could be connected to their mutated counterparts and still function.

Combining mechanisms with their drawings takes on this really challenging and fun aspect for me. I can depict a working mechanism making a transition between its 2D rendering to its working 3D form. I can depict a non-working mechanism from 2D to 3D as well. And as the hybrid shows, I can make the shift between working and non-working as well.

I'm very excited.

Colored Pencil vacation

For many, adding color to drawings is so obvious and so habitual. But since my preference is to keep things black and white and machine-like, adding color is almost like a vacation.


Colored drawing

Design Sensibility
I'm noticing that two of my design moods could be considered opposites of each other. One mood shows up in extremely simplified, geometric, almost cold sculptures and drawings. Another design mood shows up in extremely elaborate abstract patterns.


geometric drawings as sketches for sculpture



exercise exploring how similar patterns organize the space



some organic forms



a few common styles I use


In each of the examples of drawings above that show abstracted or ornamented ideas, it will be obvious that I haven't colored any of them. Moreover, I never had any inclination to color them. When I do get into the mood for color, either I go monochromatic, limited palette, or lushly colored things.


if you're going to go monochromatic, make an impact!



nearly monochromatic, with two colors



several related colors not by design, but simply by intermixing


Color as content, not surface
As much as I like the works presented here, I do think I should do more to integrate color as a sensibility, rather than whatever has been going on. What if I wanted color in my work not as a vacation, but as something more regular? I don't have the answer to this distinction, but perhaps the colored drawing above is a step in the right direction. Maybe I photocopy the blank, black and white drawing several times and try different color combinations. I usually do everything by hand, and I think that's been making me hesitant to develop a color sense. In fact, if anything is going to push me to integrate digital techniques into my workflow, it will be the desire to explore color in a quicker, less motor-skill intensive way.

I know I enjoyed making watercolors on drawings I'd photocopied onto heavy paper.


watercolor on heavy cardstock


Even if I don't go into full-color, maybe the black and white lines can have multiple line weights. That said, I'm incredibly fond of the drawings I make with a single line weight. (Now 1000+!) I believe that using a single line weight captures the logic of the thing in the way an engineer might lay out a part. Or the way a fugue might appear in manuscript form without instrumentation. As uninflected as those forms are, I must admit thoroughly enjoyed using multiple line weights. Did I do more than a dozen or so? No.


Drawing with multiple line weights.
Why only make less than a dozen? Non lo so.


Put another way:
Color as intrinsic, not extrinsic
The next step for the drawings might be to use a few more ink colors than plain black. In this way the lines would already be colored.

The next step for the ceramic sculptures might be to make the technological leap to build out of clay something that was designed first as paper. I adore this paper thing: the angles and the colors both. Especially the colored tape. If this design is for ceramics, the clay itself could be colored maroon (or similar) and blue paint added afterwards. Then the separate, and seemingly arbitrary, decorating gesture is eliminated. A sculpture does not start as a white thing that is painted maroon, but is built from clay that already maroon-colored. This intrinsic color feature instead of applied color gesture strongly appeals to me.


Cardstock and blue painter's tape. Did I say that I adore this thing?


I can easily imagine some bland-looking structures that emerged from metal templates to be colored in the maroon-paper-blue-tape color scheme above.


Metal flexible thing (on right) is both cutting template and posable sculpture for me to copy as "portrait" in clay (on left)


Toward a less clinical approach
I plan to make more colored drawings and sculptures. Even I admit they're a little more interesting than the versions of things that are only black and white or unadorned. Using color emotionally is a much more complicated undertaking, which is probably why I have to almost force myself to remember that color moves audiences so much more than plain design otherwise might.

Generative drawing: 7-drawing progression

This recent set of drawings uses time constraints and masks. The paper cutouts allowed me to "erase" earlier areas of the drawing and continue adding lines. This series of drawings represent about 95 minutes. The drawings were added to my flickr set: Generative Sketches

Here's a set of drawings from the middle of the series, showing the masks that erased information from the earlier drawing to make way for the later one.

Constraints:
I chose six different time durations from zero to thirty minutes, then sorted them shortest first. These times would be the allowable time limit to make a drawing.

I then chose blank paper and cut different simple shapes out of them, sometimes keeping the cutout, and sometimes keeping the window. These would be used to block out relatively random areas of the drawings. I say "relatively random" because in making some larger and smaller I had at least some idea of their effect. The new drawing would be continued from wherever the earlier one was still visible.

When the time duration would run out, I taped on the next mask, started the timer for the new limit, and drew until the next interval expired. (Not measured was my stopping every time to scan the starting point, the mask itself, the mask in place causing erasure.)

The process unfolded pretty much as I expected. Though I admit to one cheat: The last mask (for the seventh drawing) happened to be quite small and the anticipated time duration was a full 30 minutes. I simply could not pack that much drawing into the space. Or more specifically, I certainly might have tried, but the character of the drawing would have been very different from the earlier ones. And so I drew until it seemed really full but not painfully so, stopping at about 19 minutes.

Time durations:
I like the way the time duration and the mask size tend to control the density of the lines. I wasn't slavish about how much I filled the mask shape itself, and there was a fight between the way I usually spread out the lines and the way that the mask hemmed me in. But in the future I could easily make the rule that I must use the whole mask for new drawings.

Future efforts?
I want to not sort the time durations in that way; I think the drawings will be more interesting.

That's all for today.

Improvisational Abstract Drawings: Modular Baroque

Modular Baroque
Drawing, Folding, and Improvisation
August 13, 2014

I make lots of drawings freehand, sometimes under constraints. Maybe I’ll set a number of drawings per day. Maybe I’ll set a time limit. I’ve come up with a new constraint that has to do with folding paper before or after.

This is not a new game.

At the end of the process, three separate sheets emerged, presenting “whole” drawings.





The progression of division and redrawing, from start to finish was a little too complicated to remember, and it happened in just under a hour: 58 minutes. I folded the first blank piece of paper, and then drew across the fold (yielding A1 and A2). Then I unfolded the paper and connected the two separated parts (A3). For the second sheet, I folded a blank sheet and aligned it against one of the existing folds in the first sheet. (At this point I lose track of what I did.)

Of the eight results, a few are annotated below:





Results?
I like the results just fine. The accuracy needs lots of improvement and that can happen with good ol’ hand and eye coordination. Or, perhaps digital drawing techniques one day when I have the technology. Or better still: use these results to create cleaned-up versions through tracing paper. The versions will not match up after that point, but I think the spirit of the project will still be true.

Improvisation
I’ve done over 1000 drawings as single, one shot efforts. But this was something newer because I started to think of how the connections would affect other drawings. Whether a fold exists before the drawing happens or after a drawing happens is probably going to be pretty important.

If a fold exists and I draw over it, I know ahead-of-time. But what if the drawing is in an area that hasn’t got a fold, and then I fold it to get a new modular area to branch from? I think this second situation will divide up the drawing in a way I’d probably avoid otherwise. This leads to a little more challenge for me.

I’ll have to try it soon.

Scans of the drawings involved here are viewable over on flickr.com in my “Drawings 2014” set. (By the time you read this, they might not be the most recent ones there.)
There are eight variations!

Time to get back to work making more drawings. Thanks for reading.

a brief explanation of my generative art paper, due early November

Everyone wants to know what 'generative art' is. I didn't know, either. In general, generative art will look to you like much of the abstract art that's been happening for decades. Your first reaction to art calling itself generative art is that the artist must have used a computer in some way, and quite possibly for everything. My explanation is that the artist has come up with ways to "defer" some part of the deciding or inspiration process, or part of the manufacture process to a machine, or program, or to chance. There is usually some form of repetition or iteration, given that computers do this so exactly and so well.

For my paper, my specific take on generative art is that I've designed a basic set of instructions for building sculptures by hand, much in the way you "build" dinner using a recipe or "build" a vacation using a map. In all of these, variations are likely and, as a Doctor might say, "not deleterious." The sculptures I will present as slides will be variations on that basic set of instructions. The important part of my presentation is to explain ahead of time which sorts of variations I've "allowed," and which sorts are either too small or too big to matter to me.

Variations that are too small, if I were using stew recipes as my art medium, might be that across six stew recipe variations I only change the number of pearl onions between 8-14. It is just too simple a variation, because in all likelihood, at five gallons of stew it just doesn't matter. Variations that are too big would change the recipe from stew to lasagna, cheesecake, and jello. These are certainly valid recipes, maybe even excellent recipes, but cannot be called "stew" anymore.

The substance of my paper will be describing how I made the instructions and how I chose the range of variations that suit me, and to show that these sorts of sculptures I'm making by hand don't have to happen in a computer.

End of an era: Feet of Clay residency ends August 2014

[This artist's statement is prepared for the artist show on August 22-24, 2014.]

Artist’s Statement (mostly accurate)

It seems impossible that a year has passed while being the Feet of Clay Artist-in-Residence. As a result of the generosity and companionship of the community, I have explored sculptural ideas pertaining to the design of ceramics, refined techniques for teaching ceramics processes to others, and documented much of my progress in photos. This exhibition displays some of the highlights of that productive year.

Overall, my design process involves overabundance and austerity at the same time. In the fertile, decadent sense, planning and designing involves a great deal of imagination and overthinking, which results in objects that are somewhat “overloaded” in the sense that they could be simpler and still be effective. More subtly, the pieces are “overloaded” in the sense in that they operate on many levels for me. In the sparse, restricted sense, often the surfaces and forms have been cleaned smooth of construction details and other evidence that handbuilding took place. As with my searching for a balance between color and form, I’m searching for a balance between overabundance and abstraction.

MOLDMAKING: A large part of my time has been spent developing ways to cast abstract ceramic designs in clay based on unusual plaster pouring techniques. In one method, I join together many flat pieces of aluminum to make close-fitting water-tight spaces. When plaster is poured into those spaces and hardens, the resulting plaster pieces can be separated and used in any combination as the mold for ceramic castings. Because the resulting cast pieces come from the same overall set of plaster sections, the finished objects I’m showing have a nice relationship to them. I can’t make up my mind whether I want the cast forms to be brightly colored or a single neutral color. I’ve shown both.

HANDBUILDING: I have also explored the abstracted geometric forms by handbuilding directly with stiff clay slabs using templates. I’m showing work that uses unglazed clay laminates on the surfaces of slab forms. I’m particularly excited to be using the five claybodies in the studio as an active but somewhat neutral color scheme. The laminates are made by stacking clay pieces together into a loaf and then making slices through the stack at different angles to reveal patterns inside.

DECORATING: As people will have noticed, I do like bright colors as well as neutrals. I spent time developing my sense of color and decoration on smooth, expanded thrown forms. I’m trying to find the right balance of calmness form and activity of decoration.

It has been a deep and abiding pleasure to meet and work among the community members here at Feet of Clay. I look forward to more, and to nourishing all the little projects I have going.

Thank you!

Generative Art Conference 2014

I've been invited to present at the Generative Art Conference in Rome, December 16-19, 2014. Here is the abstract of the paper.

GA2014 – XVII Generative Art Conference
Marc Mancuso	Mind Over Matter: Generative Concepts in Three Dimensional Sculpture (Paper, Artworks)
Topic: (Paper, Artworks)   Authors: Marc Mancuso   www.flickr.com/photos/marcmancuso   Contact: marc_mancuso@ hotmail.com	This paper discusses the effect of generative concepts on the planning, execution, documentation, and interpretation of my recent series of three-dimensional sculptures. My intent was to build systems that had both cyclic and open-ended processes from which there is no combination of fundamental design or surface evidence that traditionally identifies an objectas precursor or final product.   Metal, plaster, rubber, clay, and other commonplace sculptural materials are categorized as points on a set of continuums including rigid-flexible, absorbent-waterproof, opaque-transparent, buoyant-dense, and so on. Based on these intrinsic qualities, I build systems that manage constraints and define and implement rule-sets to regulate the order of interactions. Despite the limited use of virtual technologies, the results of these physical activities can be compared to computational and iterative processes including Boolean operations, graphical user interface tools such as fill and skew, programming structures such as loops, random number generators, and geometric identities.   Additionally, my intent was to allow any transformation to initiate or concludeanother process. Observable “links” to preceding or successive iterations may be perceptible, but traditional notions of completeness or progress towards a particular state are discarded. The physical constraints in these systems inform a discussion of successes and failures encountered during the buildingof processes that respond to these these requirements.   Of particular interest is the way in which plaster, metal, clay, and rubber are used over a series of transformations that demonstrate recursive structures, variations in high- and low-fidelity data compression, and distortion.       (1) flexible form generates unique design from sequence of metal strips  (2) liquid plaster fills all spaces for separable, closely-interlocking pieces (3) liquid clay copies one of many possible spaces among plaster pieces (4) drained, separated clay shell ready for baking, shrinking, and reusing   Documenting ongoing systems that have one or more real-time unfolding aspects and one or more physically durable artifacts raises philosophical issues as well as practical ones. The paper examines the implications of documentation through still images and time-dependent mediums.   The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how the classification systems and transformational rules could inform future work.
	Keywords: sculpture, iteration, algorithm, recursion, materials science, plaster, casting

 

Oh academic paper, where art thou?

This is an abstract written in advance of its paper. My intent is to interest Fancy Art Conference enough that it grants me a spot in its presentations in December. Comments welcome, bloodletting preferred. The length is just about at maximum; if it loses weight, I can fit a pretty picture into the one-page template. Also, since I hate jargon, I did try to keep it away. However, I'm not scared of *dense.* I'm hoping to give up on it toward the end of June and just send it.

Artworks similar to whatever the hell I'm talking about:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcmancuso/sets/72157645276988071/

Abstract version 3t:
This paper discusses the effect of generative concepts on the planning, execution, documentation, and interpretation of my series of recent three-dimensional sculptures. The preparation of metal, plaster, rubber, clay, plastic, and other commonplace materials falls easily within the sculptural traditions of any modestly-equipped studio, and require only a methodical sensibility toward measuring, cutting, fastening, noting elapsed time, and similar operations. Materials are then categorized as instances on a continuum between extremes including rigid-flexible, absorbent-waterproof, opaque-transparent, buoyant-dense, attractive-repulsive, durable-dissolvable, and so on. After the materials are prepared and conceptualized in this way, I build systems that allow me to specify the interaction of materials on an individual or categorical basis, to define and implement rule-sets, to regulate the order of interactions, and to manage constraints. Despite the choice to limit the use of virtual technologies, I show that it is the design and implementation of methodology that places the results of these activities within a generative context. In contrast to other physical systems in which familiar causal interactions and linear methods predominate, my challenge was to build systems that had both cyclic and open-ended processes from which there is no combination of form factor or surface evidence that traditionally identifies an object as precursor or final product. An additional challenge was that the systems should allow any transformation to be the initiating or concluding event of another process. Owing to the physical limitations involved that are not constraints in virtual systems, I discuss my successes and failures toward building systems that fill these requirements. A more concrete analysis discusses the extent to which these particular physical systems have analogs in virtual generative processes. I argue that these systems have close analogs to Boolean operations, graphical user interface tools such as fill and skew, programming structures such as loops, random number generators, and identities of geometry. Of particular interest is the way in which plaster, metal, clay, and rubber are used over a series of transformation to embody recursive structures, variations in high- and low-fidelity data compression, and distortion. A video and several still images illustrate the relationships among those transformations. The paper goes on to point out that documentation raises philosophical issues as well as practical ones. I discuss the implications of documenting systems that have been designed to make starting point and ending points of processes at least ambiguous, if not entirely irrelevant. Since these systems have one or more real-time unfolding aspects, and one or more physically durable artifacts, the documenting gesture provides a means of expression that might range from forensic to cinematic. Additionally I discuss whether concepts of vernacular, idiom, content, medium, and narrative are relevant to discussions of these works. Finally, I discuss my future plans in which I show how these early designs can be interpreted in terms of selection, that essential element in any context for which concepts of user, tool, and result are applicable. Situated in this way, these processes serve as the starting point for projects that are more ambitious in scope and more detailed in structure.

Tags (tentative): analog computing, sculpture, mathematics, hierarchy, programming.