geometries, leaving behind the human dimension, such as the subjective, the subconscious, the corporeal, the creative. More importantly, the digital process of making and, ultimately, of creating utilizes different means and methods than those historically associated with human creativity. Traditionally, the phenomenon and culture of creativity has been intrinsically tied to discovery and experiment through making, through engaging our bodies in the process, through working with physical matter. No doubt digital technologies will eventually remedy that—in the postsustainable world. Already there is an emergence of sensor-based technologies that allow for informal, intuitive interaction between the human (body) and the machine (think the recent installation at MoMA by Random International, the Rain Room). In the post-sustainable world, further fusion and ultimately the erasure of the boundary between the digital and the physical seems inevitable—yet so far the advance seems to be largely one-way.
dialogue with “naturally” occurring processes and directed them. The creative method was based on the exploration of the possibilities of material selforganization, in this case the self-organization of liquid matter, using mechanical forces and through the interaction with foreign shapes and textures to produce unique organic forms. The resulting forms invite associations with structures and formations created by natural processes such as growth, decomposition, erosion, turbulence; others recall the activity of biological species such as anthills, beehives, or corals. Overall the production can be described as an articulated synthesis of physical laws, such as gravity or tension, with algorithmic processes and base geometries. 1 Other materials are used along with plaster, such as wax, rubber, clay, bronze, and even certain unexpected ones, such as chocolate, meringue, jelly… It is important to note that the objects can be experienced individually or as spatial modules, as fragments that compose a bigger whole.
The Utrabionic Project anticipates that shift. It utilizes simple algorithms and basic physical laws to produce relatively complex geometries—geometries that tend to resemble natural forms, both in their distinctiveness and (handmade) imperfection. Yet it is not only the formal quality of the work that is important; rather, it is its focus on making, i.e. creating, as an organic process that links the work with nature in a fundamental way that is both proto- and postsustainable. Diversity of organic forms, structures, and textures (the result of countless natural processes—physical, chemical, geological, biological) provided a continuous source of inspiration and served as a reference for the project, defining the selection of typologies and templates. Made from easily available materials, such as plaster1, Bioforms (as they are called) are the result of series of experiments that fuse the programmed, the accidental, and the intentional. The form generating process took advantage of the methodical creative intervention as it entered in
Partial model of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.
Special thanks to Margaux Wheelock-Shew.