Continuous matter 2010 spring usc
From KokkugiaWiki
spring 2010 | usc | roland snooks | roland@kokkugia.com
Contents |
resources
usc: SI10 schedule + tutorials
kAgent repository of code and examples
kGeom
basic kAgent code flow diagram
swarm intelligence reading
swarm intelligence links
scripting links
meshing resources
processing useful stuff
student projects
usc: CM10 group page template
usc: Hayley Burns, Ashley Margo, Alex Shu
usc: Alan Dana, Jarman Montgomery, Heather Luna
usc: Jessica Sano, Deborah Kim, Daniel Dunham, Ming Ngar Lo
usc: Kelly Olson, Craig Schabel, Priyanka Karpe, Leila Mesbahi
usc: Eric Anderson, Sean Hohman, Nick Martinez
student initial research
usc: CM10 group page template
usc: Hayley Burns, Ashley Margo, Alex Shu
usc: Alan Dana, Jarman Montgomery, Heather Luna
usc: Jessica Sano, Deborah Kim, Daniel Dunham, Ming Ngar Lo
usc: Kelly Olson, Craig Schabel, Priyanka Karpe, Leila Mesbahi
usc: Eric Anderson, Sean Hohman, Nick Martinez
syllabus
This seminar will explore the dissolution of tectonic hierarchies through the development of behavioral design methodologies based on swarm or multi-agent techniques. The relationship between structure and ornament will be interrogated and rethought through non-linear design tools. The hierarchical relationship between ornament and structure will be challenged and the seminar will focus on the design and production of hybrid ornamental/structural tectonics, resulting in a physical prototype.
The re-conceptualization of the agency of matter through an understanding of swarm logic necessarily resituates design intent from operating at the global to the local level. The posited application of swarm systems within architectural design involves encoding simple architectural decisions within a distributed system of autonomous computational entities - agents. It is the interaction of these local decisions that self-organizes design intention, giving rise to a form of collective intelligence and emergent behavior at the global scale.
The repositioning of design intent and the complex order generated by the behavioral techniques of multi-agent systems has implications for the affects which are generated as well as the nature of hierarchy within architecture. The distributed non-linear operation of swarm systems intrinsically resists the discrete articulation of hierarchies within Modern architecture and contemporary parametric component assemblies. The bottom up nature of these systems refocuses tectonic concerns on the assemblage at the micro scale rather than the sequential subdivision of program or form.
The premise of the seminar rejects modernist tectonics (including mass standardization) and contemporary parametric component assemblies (mass customization). Instead we will look for an alternative organization of matter that draws from an understanding of micro-structures such as those found in butterfly wings; where color and pattern are determined through the organization of matter as a geometrical configuration rather than through chemical attributes such as pigmentation.
TECHNIQUES
The course will engage algorithmic techniques in the development of computational systems of swarm intelligence. This design experimentation will focus on an abstract design methodology, recasting simple decision making ability into agents capable of self-organizing into an emergent intelligence. Scripting will form the basis for algorithmic models that enable localized interaction of agents to generate emergent topologies in the design of proto-architectural and urban matter that operates across the scale of form, structure and ornament.
These multi-agent techniques will focus on the self-organization of matter, drawing from an understanding of stigmergic systems such as termite colonies as opposed to contemporary swarm techniques that are based on models of bird flocks and character animation. Consequently we will bypass prepackaged simulation tools and instead focus on using Processing and RhinoScript as a platform for the development of students own code in addition to working with the extensive kAgent library (kAgent is one outcome of Kokkugia’s ongoing academic and professional research into agent based design methodologies). While being broad in the conception of an agent, the seminar will rigorously develop the algorithmic tools of swarm intelligence.
Fabrication techniques will be explored that hybridize various rapid prototyping techniques to form integrated assemblages. This will attempt a shift away from the typical application of 3D printing that bias the creation of monolithic homogenous tectonics.
