making & moving | December 4, Installing a 'Movement Infrastructure' in Burwood

My fourth 'movement infrastructure' based on the icosahedron, has been installed in one of the Deakin University dance studios, in the Burwood campus. A few facts:

• The icosahedron is inscribed in a circumsphere with radius of 142 cm. 
• The 30 edges are grouped in three symmetric systems, each comprising 10 edges of the same material. 
• Three different materials are used for the edges to differentiate the anatomical planes: black PVC, chrome plated metal, oak. Each of the edges is a road with a diameter measuring 16mm.
• Each of the twelve connector is 3D printed by the Makerbot Replicator 2X, using ABS plastics of three different colors.
• The icosahedron assembling required about about 1.5 hours, not including the parts procurement and 3D printing.

After assembling the icosahedron I performed several movement explorations based on the octahedron whose edges coincide with the midpoint of the icosahedron defining the shorter edge of the golden rectangles. I also performed the yoga inspired sequence "Finding the Axis Mundi".

 

Creative Practice | Art Science Technology: Movement in Virtual Space

Framing movement in Cartesian Space

La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi a gli occhi (io dico l'universo), ma non si può intendere se prima non s'impara a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri, ne' quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi, ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezi è impossibile a intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro laberinto.

Galileo Galilei - Il Saggiatore (1623)

Movement is no exception to the mathematics of the universe described by Galileo. Geometric configurations are able not only to represent but also to inspire human voluntary movement sequences —and ultimately produce "positive" cognitive states. The correlation between voluntary human movement, space and mental activity comprise the topic of the creative practice of my doctoral research at Deakin University, titled "Form Mind Body Space Time".
As component of my research methodology, an original approach to the study of movement in the space of virtual environments began being tested on November 11 and 12. The physical facilities were located at   PERCRO, the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory founded by Massimo Bergamasco and part of the Institute of Communication, Information and Perception Technologies (TECIP) of the Scuola  Superiore Sant’Anna, right in Pisa, birthplace of Galileo.
The experiments involved the virtual environment of the XCAVE (based on the framework XVR developed at PERCRO and involved motion capture technologies and electroencephalography (EEG), using the 32 channel wireless G.Nautilus system from G.Tech. The PERCRO researchers involved include:

Michele Barsotti, PhD Student, EEG capture and Setup
Claudia Faita, PhD Student, Support
Alessandro Filippeschi, Postdoc, Motion Capture
Marcello Carrozzino, Ricercatore, Graphics
Emanuele Ruffaldi, Ricercatore, Graphics

Moving in a space based on combination of tori and cylinders

Movement improvisations inspired by the hypericosahedron

Testing motion sensors and wearing the EEG cap

Moving in a golden spiral from the Fibonacci series —Leonardo Fibonacci was also born in Pisa!

Finding a baseline: back to the Cartesian grid

A video clip from the "Torus Meditations" http://youtu.be/VkrOgXbFZ4c?list=UULBmuY0cLF_b0xgCXF92Ebw 

NYC, Maker Faire: the Joy of Making

Making and matter matter: in the past few years there has been a great concern about material, materialism, and the material world in general. It has been generating many -isms including "new materialism" or "radical materialism" from a philosophical emergency to ecological concerns. But perhaps the most interest aspect of this focus on matter and materials is from a more genuine perspective, the innate human need to transform matter and make things out of it.

Rockets from the New York Hall of Science grounds, home of the Maker Faire

The 2014 Maker Faire event just ended just a few hours ago at the New York Hall of Science in Queens and is a great demonstration of  how we enjoy making, in any shape, size, material and technology. The popular event started in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, organized by the Make magazine, encompassing almost any aspect of making from a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach, with a technological emphasis. It is a "show and tell" of creative endeavors shared by artists, designers, engineers, craftsman, education and hobbyists.
Assemblages including electronics and 3D printing were widespread among the myriads of exhibitions and demonstrations. The 3D printing zone presented 3D printing services for higher end fabrication but mainly open source kits for DIY printer which can be assembled for less than $1000 and as little as $350 (PrintrBot). Plastic (PLA filament) is the most common material, but there is a promising electroplating process (Go-plating), hopefully to be commercially released soon at affordable (for designer) cost. I found quite interesting also Will Ware "Home Made Stereolithography" and, of course, the proliferating "hackerspaces", which I am planning to visit quite soon.

Making generates educational activities, excitement and educational fun, a quite welcome activity in these troubled time. And, most of all, making seem to bring together in communities people of different backgrounds: can making save us? Perhaps not, but it definitely a welcome human activity in these troubled times.

Will Ware and "Homemade Stereolithography"

For the first time I presented some of my 3D printed work at the Maker Faire: the exhibition Making the Sublime was an overview of my explorations of the sublime in the analog work of 3D printed objects.  I have been exploring the sublime in several disciplines  —as embodiment of philosophy, geometry, mathematics, biology, physics— as well as different scales and media in the analog and digital world, using parametric and generative algorithms in the design of  “sublime” forms. My work encompasses land and performance art while my object production includes video, animation, stereolithography, 3D prints and laser cutting: at the Maker Faire I presented some small scale objects from laser cutting and 3D printing. I also presented some of the 3D printed connections for the icosahedron I am building for my PhD at Deakin University; some of the research is based on construction on a built infrastructure for analysis as well as inspiration of movement routines.

events | Creating Creativity

Art and "science" of phrenology: Erkenne Dich selbst (know yourself)

Creativity has always represented a survival means during the hardship times I experienced several times in my life. For me creativity develop in many modalities and be embodied by several physical media —some of which do not necessarily to aesthetics production. Solving an equation or writing computer programs are creative expressions and often an underlying aesthetics is present in many mathematical and logical cognitive processes.
I am also interested int the nature of creativity and how it relates to the brain morphology and physiology; this interest led me to pursue a PhD on the other hemisphere of the planet, namely Deakin University in Australia. My research "Form Mind Body Space Time" explores the relationship between the aesthetics of human movement and cognitive states; the methodology follows a methodological approach, weaving art and design practices to exercise science and neuroscientific investigations. My objective is to record and measure anedoctal evidence with rigorous experiments —acceptable in scientific terms. One of my research questions is if the mindfulness and aesthetics of human movement, as found in yoga postures to performance arts has influence on mental processes.
My personal research intersect the growing popularity of cognitive sciences in contemporary culture. In the last decades the scientific practices related to neuroscience have expanded from the scientific labs and experiments on mice brain to involve human participation at much greater extents. Probably there are two different developments which are responsible for the broadening of neuroscience among general population: the development of non invasive neuroimaging technology as well as the affordability of electroencephalography (EEG) —the recording of the brain electrical activity. Although the most sophisticated neuroimaging equipment, such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), remains in the domain of the scientific community, EEG has become widespread not only in the medical professionals offices but also in homes, mainly for its use in computer games. Neurofeedback and the effects of spiritual practices on the brain have also become the subject of articles and reportage in mainstream media, with photographs of meditation practitioners wearing a EEG headset.
So it is with great anticipation (and expectation) that I will be attending the symposium The Default Mode Network in Aesthetics and Creativity where "leading neuroscientists from top research institutes will gather in New York for a two-day symposium to discuss what the brain is doing when in a wakeful resting state. The DMN – a network of brain regions typically found to be suppressed when individuals focus on their external environment – has been hypothesized to generate spontaneous thoughts during daydreaming and may be crucial for self-referential mental processing, social interactions and the understanding of many neurological disorders."  Tonight keynote speaker Dr. Bill Kelley, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth University, will "present on the Default Mode Network, its history, and our emerging understanding of its function in creative thought."