Vernissages | NYC, Soho, Chelsea & Upper East Side, January 11-15

January 11: "Between the Lines at Tanya Bonakdar

January 11, "Mandala: Locus of Thought" at Tibet House

 Thomas Struth at Marian Goodman Gallery

January 11, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts

 January 15: Josephsohn at Hauser & Wirth

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

camminando + vernissages | January 9, Manhattan Upper, Mid & Lower East Side

Strolling in a cold frozen Central Park, with memories of last week snowstorm 

Midtown skyline approached from Central Park

Time & Money on 57 Street

Harry Callahan "CITY" @ Pace MacGill

Stopping at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue,
on the way to the way to Richard Artschwager at Gagosian Uptown

A view of the Empire State Building, on the way to the Lower East Side

Emil Lukas at Sperone Westwater

Alex Prager "Face in the Crowd" @ Lehmann Maupin

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