Nervous Ether: Soft Aggregates, Interactive Skins

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThis paper describes the authors' exploration and experimentation with cellular pneumatic aggregates for kinetic, environmentally responsive envelope systems. The work is situated within the history and technology of pneumatic structures, biological paradigms, the agency and aesthetics of material, information translation, and the tension between performance and affect within responsive environments. The paper elaborates on the physical and computational development of novel pneumatic systems, experimentation with their interactive capabilities, and a recently completed installation, Nervous Ether, a pneumatic spatial envelope that operates as an instrument to register and communicate remote environmental information while also developing affective interaction with inhabitants.

Data to Physicalization: A Survey of the Physical Rendering Process

“…In a digital design process, digital simulations of the fabrication process or the final object can facilitate faster iterations on a physicalization design. This includes active physicalizations, where Kangaroo ® Plug‐in for Rhino ® Grasshopper ® can be used to simulate movements of active structures (e.g., [VTOS14, Awe13, TVR∗12]).…”

“…One of the most popular cutting methods is laser cutting (used by 20 works in our corpus), mostly due to its speed, efficiency, and its ability to cut a wide range of materials [SSJ∗14]. Laser cutting have been used by the physicalization community to make 3D bar charts (e.g., [JDF13]), stacked scatter plots (e.g., [Stu13a, Gü11, Dwy05]), data sculptures (e.g., [GD17, Mad95, Per14]), and active physicalization and spatialization (e.g., [VTOS14, HGG∗16]. In order to support the making of active physicalizations solely by using laser cutters, Polysurface [EA17] has introduced a novel fabrication method.…”

“…Grasshopper ® , a visual programming plug‐in designed for Rhino ® , is one of those mediums that has a visual interface and its components can provide, manipulate, and modify data, as well as draw and modify objects (see Figure 8). Grasshopper ® has been extensively used to produce physicalization techniques [Awe13, VTOS14, HDA∗19, Mar14, HC17]. This type of design is called parametric design in our taxonomy (see Tables 4 and 5).…”

“…Data from Physikit was visualized through movement (PhysiMove), vibrations (Physi‐Buzz), air (PhysiAir), and light cubes (PhysiLight). Physicalization designers have also leveraged the biological properties of plants that respond to environmental conditions to create human‐readable structures [YOC∗15, VTOS14]. Weather Report [SJK∗17, KJA∗18] visualized weather data by building a steel tube frame supporting an array of white balloons, on which weather data is projected as a color‐coded animation.…”