Client: Blindspot Initiative
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Completion date: 2014
Project Team
Other
Prajakt Karmarkar
SCIArc
Architect
Satoru Sugihara
ATLV
Overview
A(g)ntense is a design installation for Blindspot Initiative Exhibition in 2014 made out of 30 horizontal layers of acrylic sheets hung by 150 strings of fishing wires in irregular self-organized directions. It explores computational design techniques to generate a form through swarm agents behaviors and physical simulation agents of tension and compression to self-optimize the form without deformation and torsion under gravity.
Goals
The artwork commission provided an opportunity to take a further step in computational design research with agent based design process by integrating structural aspect of material behaviors with virtual agent behaviors in the agent based design process. The aesthetic aspect of the project is pushed by emergent nature of swarm agent logic and the design process focused on consistent and honest engineering of complexity to make it happen in physical space.
Process
The production of this installation involved intense use of digital fabrication technology working with people in digital fabrication shops. The assembly process was designed to be systematic but still required large amount of manual hand assembly work and students who are interested in computational design process provided assistance for the assembly.