2020 New Year Resolution: Recovering Agency

On New Year's Day of 2019 I woke up in a casa particolare (B&B) of Centro Habana. I spent the day strolling through the Malecón to La Habana Vieja. The previous night was my first encounter with Cuban culture.  New Year's Eve was spent dancing at many sounds of Cuban music, from traditional to hip hop and new Latin music.Spending NYE and New Year day in Habana had a special meaning for me; it represent a symbol of change in my life, which had been challenged for over five years by corruption and major financial losses. I embraced the new year thinking that 2019 would have brought major changes.

Unfortunately 2019 turned quite differently from the anticipation. After a year of useless negations, my book Form Geometry Structure is still out of print. A backstabbing after the divorce settlement brought me to civil court three times. I was humiliated and intimidated by a former judge. I had further major financial losses, but most of all, my artwork at Sun Farm, which had already been damaged, is facing destruction. 2020 started with loss and a sense of hopelessness. Making a new year resolution seemed meaningless considering how my life seems to be run by other people—the divorce parasites.

But finally yesterday—an unseasonably warm day—I had a sense of relief and hope. I went to one of my favourite places in NYC, the Hudson river waterfront. I performed my movement practice "Finding the Axis Mundi" in front of the setting sun. The sunset seems to embrace my prayer and made me feel calmer. I realized why I felt so overwhelmed and helpless: the lack of agency over my life, caused by the brutal divorce. Moving at sunset was cathartic. the immersive light brought serenity and clarity. In order to sort the horrific mess I need to act clarity and most of all, agency.

Parameters, Nature, Human Body and Movement: from Numbers To Objects

While delving into a PhD program in a university the other side of the planet —studying the effect of human movement on mental processes— I spent a week of my academic leave as a "designer in residence" at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). The residency is part of the "Out of Hands" exhibition, which is devoted to man-made objects fabricated using digital technology and is introduced in the MAD website as "the first museum show to consider the impact of these new, revolutionary methods of computer-assisted manufacture on fine art, design, and architecture".
The work done as "designer in residency" represented an effort to reconnect the disconnect between academic research work and actual making. The agenda  was the creation of 3D digital models and 3D printings of bioforms. The geometric definition of forms were related to proportion, symmetry and other mathematical principle. The workflow included:

1. Selection of a "simple" form from the world of nature;
2. Mathematical definition of the geometric law behind the form;
3. Implementation of a C# script to develop the form in Bentley GenerativeComponents, a parametric associative software;
4. Definition of parameters to generate a 3D digital model of the selected form according to the printer specification
5. 3D printing of the form.

Parametric associative scripting and a starfish model

3D printed examples of bioforms

An helix shaped seashell

A starfish: pentagonal symmetry, loft surfaces and spline curves

A nautilus shell from the logarithmic spiral

A polyhedral flower

I mainly focused on shapes from the sea world, starfish and seashells. The starfish can be generated from radial symmetry of loft surfaces from spline curves (nurbs).  The nautilus shell geometry evolves from loft surfaces and extrusions of paths generated from logarithmic spirals.
I also started to explore "molecular" assemblies of tetrahedral tessellations.

Tetrahedral molecules

A truncated icosahedron (fullerene)

3D scanning selfies: multiples of the self

MAD Designer in Residence | Parameters, Nature, Human Body and Movement: from Numbers To Objects

What is the geometry behind leaves, starfish, flowers, clouds, waves, honeycombs, seashells or the human body and movement? 

This week's I will be "Designer in Residence" at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), and will explore the geometric laws behind natural forms to recreate them as parametric digital models, which will be fabricated using the formlabs 3D printers. Several of the digital models will be developed from the explorations of  my book Form Geometry Structure: from Nature to Design. Each day of the residency will be devoted to a different "bioform" developed from a parametric associated software and 3D printed. Several yoga postures performed by the designer will be 3D scanned and 3D printed, providing digital/printed models of frozen movements.

The "Designer in Residence" program is part of the exhibition Out of Hands: Materializing the Postdigital. at:

MAD Museum of Arts and Design, 

2 Columbus Circle

New York, NY 10019

212-299-7777

Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

Thursday and Friday from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm

Events | Book Presentation: Form Geometry Structure

La spirale del nautilus illustra la copertina di “Form, Geometry, Structure| from nature to design” il libro campeggia nell’espositore della Giordano Bruno, biblioteca del circuito di Roma Capitale; mentre sullo schermo della sala delle conferenze scorrono suggestive proiezioni; un pubblico selezionato segue attentamente Daniela Bertol che presenta il suo più recente lavoro.

Ne segue un dibattito che approfondisce i contenuti dell’opera e coinvolge molti ambiti: dall’architettura del Rinascimento, alla biologia del mondo animale e vegetale; dal software grafico evoluto, ai mezzi di comunicazione innovativi. Si confrontano punti di vista, si esaminano possibilità di impiego del lavoro della Bertol per orientare le più giovani generazioni. Nascono ipotesi di collaborazione.

Dobbiamo tutti ringraziare l’architetto Bertol per gli spunti di interesse che ci offre e per l’esempio di operosità che rappresenta.

Paolo Martegani

Roma 13 Aprile 2012

Events NYC | Geometry, Nature and Environmental Awareness

Last night at Eyebeam a series of multimedia presentations accompanied the launch of Book of Ice by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky. Book of Ice is one facet of DJ Spooky ongoing multimedia and multidisciplinary project on Antarctica —the only uninhabited continent, belonging to no single country and with no government. Miller’s book merges a fictional manifesto with scientific concepts and historical facts, using photographs and film stills, original artworks and re-appropriated archival materials: the theme is how Antarctica can liberate itself from the rest of the world.

The author started his presentation introducing concepts which immediately captured my attention: "ice is a geometric form" and "network effect". The accompanying images were also familiar: fractals configurations (Koch snowflake) and Wilson Bentley photographs of snowflakes —themes of one chapter of my upcoming book Form Geometry Structure | from Nature to Design. Miller emphasized the importance of system thinking and the elegance of symmetry in nature, quoting the “elegant universe” from Brian Greene’s string theory. Miller spoke of sonification as a sonic metaphor embodying geometry in transverse and longitudinal waves, and showed the Terra Nova trailer: an interpretation of how sound and the planet interact. Mentions of recursions and concepts from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid the book by Douglas Hofstadter —described by the author as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll".

The video imagery was presented with a live string quartet, Telos Ensemble, playing Miller’s compositions. Miller's presentation was also accompanied by interactions with Green Patriot Poster project curator Edward Morris.

An important evening, emphasizing the relationship between nature and geometry, and how their harmonic synergy we can have a better relationship with our planet.

camminando | NYC: Sol LeWitt "Structures, 1965-2006" at City Hall Park

A great encounter while I was walking uptown on Broadway, emerging from the belly of New Amsterdam: Sol LeWitt "Structures, 1965-2006" at City Hall Park.

Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007) is one of the prophets of minimalism and art based on geometry, therefore, one of my favorite artists. His work spans from two-dimensional drawings and prints to three-dimensional artwork such as wall installations, sculptures (defined structures). Almost all his oeuvre is based on the repetition of a vocabulary of simple (primitive) shapes: triangles, circles, squares, cubes and prisms. Almost all of the above, on view at the City Hall Park exhibition, organized by the Public Art Fund.




Quite in contrast with typical Sol LeWitt's work is one his latest workd "Splotch" (2005). The description instead remarks that the work, in spite of its visual appearance is generated by a rigorous process based on laws of projections, combining extrusions of two-dimensional shapes with color. The work was also fabricated from a three-dimensional digital model —quite a déjà vu...

Public art, geometry and minimalism in a green space: what can I ask more?

Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006
City Hall Park
between Broadway, Park Row and Chambers Streets
May 24 - Dec 2, 2011
Mon – Sun: 6 am – 9 pm

Commentary | An Author Publishing Nightmare

I look at my weekly calendar and I see Tuesday May 24 marked as “book signing”.
The place is the “BE Together”conference in Philadelphia, organized by Bentley Systems.
The book is “Form, Geometry, Structure | from Nature to Design” and the publisher is Bentley Institute Press.

But there will be no book signing, since there is no printed book. A few numbers —an excerpt from hundreds of related communications— to summarize the agony of the book author:

• A completed manuscript with images was submitted on May 10, 2010.
• According to an email dated June 2 2010 the book “should go to print no later than August”
• In a September 2010 conversation the book publication has been postponed to the October 2010 Acadia conference.
• In an email dated January 6, the book publication is announced for the Smart Geometry conference (March 2011).
• In an email dated March 25 I am invited to do a book signing on May 24, at the opening reception of the BE Together Conference.
• In an email dated April 5, after noticing once again lack of progress in production, I inquiry about a firm publication date. The same day I receive a reply “We will have the book finished for the author signing in May.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BOOK PUBLICATION?

Any insight to solve the mystery of this book not being published would be greatly appreciated.