read 02: digital design and manufacturing

This week's reading examines digital design environments and their coincidence with physical processes of manufacturing. The agency of design is called into question when a flattening between digital and real occurs. However, many of the logics embedded in digital design tools are founded in physical production and manufacturing flows. As we move between the digital and the physical, a self-reinforcing knowledge emerges (feedback loop.).

These physical logics ultimately inform how the software is used. Is the fabrication process going to be additive? Subtractive? Unrolled? Cast? These categories are embedded in the decisions we make as designers.

Take, for instance, the principle of Surface Curvature. This concept includes a rigid theoretical / mathematical framework upon which numerous objective evaluations can be made. The digital surface, a precise thing existing in a precise space, can be asked a series of questions: What is your principal curvature at U,V? What is your mean Gaussian curvature? If you're made from aluminum, will you deflect under the load of 231 cubic feet of snow? Steel? Concrete? What sort of colorful artifact will emerge when you're submerged in a computational-fluid-dynamic simulation? Inquiries into the pre-material are self-perpetuating. We ask the surface something, and the answer it provides is pre-existing within the structure of the question. This is perhaps obvious, but worth noting. Can we leverage these digital tools toward new ends?

It is clear that digital tools provide a means for understanding both geometric possibility and constraint-based assembly logic. In order to build things, they must be understood in terms of their thickness, their ductility, their deflection. Logics are applied during the digital design process that anticipate the geometry's arrival into a material situation. Catia and Digital Project help us do this "accurately".

What new material logics / fabrication procedures are we unaware of? Can we anticipate new material realities with these tools?

Richard Serra, logic of subdivision:

img source: http://jeanettejoyharris.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/larger-serra.jpg