Sensitive Ceramics_Pattern #1-#5

Exhibition as a part of the All Makers Now? conference, 10-11 July 2014. A two-day conference exploring craft values in 21st century production.

General description of the contribution:
The exhibit is showing examples from an experiment about an interactive digital design tool for designing ceramics. The experiment is working on two levels. One which has to do with designing compositions and patterns in a virtual 3d universe based on a digital dynamic system that responds on the movement of the hands. The user’s hands appear on a monitor screen as a pattern of circles, the size and 3d inner pattern of which are reflecting the position and speed of the hands. In that way the user is able to interact and model a responding pattern. The second level has to do with realizing the modules in ceramics by 3d printing directly in porcelain with a RapMan printer that coils up the 3d shape in layers.

Description of making:
To capture the movement of the hands a “Kinect” developed for the video game console X-box is used. The Kinect records the movement which is input to an interactive 3d parametric system developed in Rhino with the plugin Grasshopper. The movement is transformed into circles with a 3d pattern in a composition that reflect the position and speed of the hands on a screen. Subsequently each of the 3d modular patterns is translated into a code. The code informs a RapMan 3d printer to print directly in porcelain layer by layer. After printing the porcelain is glazed and fired to 1280 degrees.
The drawings are showing systematic examples of what can be done within a specific parametric setup.