TANGLED POLYHEDRA is a series of sculptures commissioned by Camp V
As part of an artist residency at Camp V in Naturita, Colorado, I conceptualized and prototyped a sculptural installation with Kirk Drogsvold, fabricated the pieces with Jeremy Womack in the Deep Creek Mine near Telluride, and installed it on-site with Chris Dickson. It was truely a community effort to deliver and wonderful to have something of this sort come to life. Big thanks to the Camp V team—Natalie, Jody, and Howard—for making it all happen, and to everyone else who supported the project. Also, big shout out to Abby G for the photos
Specifically I was inspired by coral reefs, and the constraints offered by their environment. The coral needs to maximize its surface area to gather nutrients and allow their algae to photosynthesize, but they are constrained to a small space by other coral growing nearby.
I used Rhino and Grasshopper to model this process. The program continuously attempts to maximize the length of a curve while minimizing its overall area footprint. Each iteration of the curve is then stacked on the previous one to make the 3D form. Each time the program is run, the algorithm finds a new solution to the problem, creating a unique shape for each lamp.
Because the design is created from a smoothly expanding loop, the design can be 3D printed with a single layer spiraling upwards, allowing for very fast and efficient printing. After experimenting with many different 3D printing filaments, I settled on a white PLA with a nice translucent effect that shows the folds of the lamp when light shines through from the center.
Abiogenesis is a term that refers to the process by which life arises from nonliving matter
