Mediating Public Space: Art and Technology That Goes Beyond the Frame Art Gallery

Abstract

Algotecton (from algorithm and tecton-carpentry, articulation) is a site-specific generative sculpture inspired by the Weaire-Phelan structure, a mathematical construct that approximates the geometry of foam. It comprises 16 interlocking polyhedra fabricated using advanced parametric modeling and computer numerical control (CNC) technologies. Evocative of different natural formations-a crystalline structure, a kelp forest, a molecular compound-the sculpture responds to Kendall Buster's Parabiosis II piece at the street level of the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Algotecton harnesses state-of-theart computational design and fabrication techniques to give material expression to mathematical concepts, invite discovery and playfully transform people's perception of space and form.Algotecton extends a tradition of mathematical and design research with roots in early studies in morphology, crystallography and molecular modeling. In D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's pioneering exploration of form in the natural world, for example, morphology is understood as the expression of dynamic processes involving multiple intertwined biophysical forces that can be represented mathematically. The modeling of such structures has been the subject of mathematical and geometric investigations for centuries, playing a role in scientific understandings of the world at the atomic, Algotecton, prefabricated CNC-cut wood laminates, 2019. Renderings show the proposed installation at the Washington Convention Center, in conversation with Kendall Buster's Parabiosis II.