Glyphs

2015
Exhibited at "Expanding Dimensions" at Tecoah Bruce Gallery / Oliver Arts Center
Oakland CA, August-October, 2015

This set of drawings explores the overlap between procedural design processes and conventional techniques of architectural representation. Inspired by the work of early digital art pioneers such as Manfred Mohr and Vera Polnar, as well as the work of conceptual artists like Sol Lewitt and Ellsworth Kelly, the drawings occupy an uncertain space somewhere between the intuitive and the automatic, between object and field, and between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional.

The experiment begins with a primitive rectangular volume. A simple algorithm performs a set of iterative additive and subtractive modeling processes, drawing from a catalog of nine additive volumes and two subtractive volumes. The procedure calculates every possible combination of adding and subtracting these respective masses, generating 256 three-dimensional forms, each of which is unique. The variations are output in a series of two-dimensional and flattened three-dimensional axonometric drawings. These representational processes of projection, casting shadows, and coloration yield a new, strange language of figural shapes.

The project foregrounds the question of agency in the design process. The forms are generated by an initial rule set determined by the designer, and yet the process relies on the computer to calculate all possible iterations. It suggests a hybrid mode of designing, one which synthesizes intuitive and automatic processes. 

Project Credits: 
Design / Production: Adam Marcus