“…It is also quite easy to observe the full repertoire of behavior of these machines–even if it goes beyond what we had originally planned, as it often does. But it is much more difficult to start from the outside and try to guess internal structure just from observation of behavior. It is actually impossible in theory to determine exactly what the hidden mechanism is without opening the box, since there are always many different mechanisms with identical behavior…A psychological consequence of this is the following: when we analyze a mechanism we tend to over estimate its complexity.”

Valentino Braitenberg, 1984, Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology.

Learning from our natural environment

A strange animal like character is often the unintentional by-product of objects with the ability to sense, make decisions and act on the world. We will celebrate this as a potentially powerful aesthetic and functional opportunity, exploring the design of interactive architecture. From the simplest bacteria, crustaceans, arachnids, plants and insects, right up to fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals; from individual creatures to whole social communities, we will begin by investigating how the natural world uses its ability to sense, think and act on the world. Consider the following examples: Birds of paradise mating rituals, firefly’s synchronous light pulse dances, inter-continental whale songs, pheromone releasing ants, bioluminescent Angler fish… There’s a lot of inspiration out there to extend our understanding of how intelligence, even very simple intelligence can be both beautiful, functional and inspirational. We will explore how our understanding of behaviour can inspire new design and research opportunities and the creation of ecologies of intelligent environments that communicate and interact with each other and the world around them. Think about how nature moves, Interacts, Attracts, Repels, Feeds, Fights, Hides, Adapts, Thinks, Mates, Cares, Shows Emotion, and Plays.

Some insects demonstrate a simple type of learning that has been dubbed “learning by instinct”.It is hypothesized that honey bees for example are pre-wired to learn how to. distinguish certain classes of flowers, and to learn routes to and from a home hive and sources of nectar. Other insects, butterflies, have been shown to be able to learn to distinguish flowers, but in an information limited way [8]. If they are forced to learn about a second sort of flower, they forget what they already knew about the first, in a manner that suggests the total amount of information which they know, remains constant.

Rodney Brooks, 1987, Intelligence without representation

Our Focus

While there’s a growing body of architectural research exploring formal biomimetic logics, little research has been given to the complex and intriguing adaptive behaviours the natural environment displays. Greater understanding could provide critical knowledge to the design of ecologically responsive and sustainable systems within the built environment as well as suggest new forms of engaging and personalised human-architecture interaction. We will explore these ideas though a Cybernetic framework and look at the sciences that came out of Cybernetics including Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Computer Vision. In parallel we will look at the leading architects, artists and designers who are engaging with these technologies forming new hybrid art & science practices.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

STUDENT WORKS

Aata Muszynska, Jesper Thøger Christensen, Hideaki Takenaga

facade presentation

Final exercise of the week was to design a new facade for the HPI building on campus.In the group we decided to create a second skin for the existing building.Mapping the functions inside the building and using Processing to inform the pattern generated by the different functions through a morphing pattern on the facade.The height of the opening was related to the functions requirement for a physical opening as a window or a doorThe width was related to requirement for a view out from the roomsWhereas the distance threshold was related to the functions requirement for sunlightAfter a range of iterations a pattern was exported as a pdf and opened in Rhino to prepare it for the final production of a 1:100 physical model on the replabs lasercutter.

openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=15853

Magda Osinska, Mihye An

domino facade

The task was to design the parametric facade for HPI building at ETH campus.The facade was to include both: the building’s surrounding and interior space functions.We decided to make the „domino facade“. We realised that there is „no welcome“ to the ETH campus, so firstly we create the separate panel befeore the main HPI building . The facade was build from separate, vertical, thin panels. We started from one game of „domino“ but after create the „domino effect“ we realized that it is boring and we complicated the rules by adding additional domino games, so in the same time few people could play together.The „domino effect“ can start and finish in the different levels. In the project we were interested in the information system which was transfere to the next elements and possibility which single elemet could have abut entire system. Each single element transfer information to other elements, so in this easy way each element know everything about others.

openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17219

openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17220

Nikola Marincic

Since this particular assigment was beeing done individually, the idea was not to make a whole facade project program, but to conduct an experiment with a single facade plane. Few different approaches were tried out with random openings based mostly on room light requirements, but the final solution was based on a light map. Light map is an image of mapped light requirements for a room/part which the facade element encloses in a form of grayscale image with normalized mean value which is expected. Then, the openings were made as a horizontal cutouts in the facade plane representing light sections, where the height of an cut is correspodenting to the light-map value in a given section.

09:00 –  12:00  | Lecture on ImageArray, Loading Fonts, Class and Objects (example with ‘Human’ Class)

13:40 – 18:00  | Using and Looking at Libraries, Particle based modelling processes, Catenary Mesh

http://learn.postspectacular.com/hg/ETHZDay2/ (download ‘zip’)

http://media.postspectacular.com/2010/toxiclibs/toxiclibs-complete-0020.zip (toxiclib library)

14:00 – 16:00 | An exercise on making 3D Shapes: some highschool math(pytagorian theorem etc.), drawing shpaes with vertex, memorizing previous array data, color coordinate systems.

http://learn.postspectacular.com/hg/ETHZDay1/ (download ‘zip’)

Karsten Schmidt aka Toxi, Postspectacular, London

postspectacular.com

< Code as the primary design tool >

There was a presentation of various works done by processing and a positive discussion on open source based creation.

Some ideas and citations from the presentation:

“Technology as Landscape of Possibilities..”

“You don’t need ideas, you need techniques.”

“From Objects to Operations”

“If you are not a programmer, you are the one who is programmed.”

http://toxiclibs.org

The lecture was very inspiring. Toxi encourages to focus on and to develop concepts one is interested in. He says “Technlogy is landscape of possibilities” and he shows a huge piece of it. During th discussion Toxi mentions “newspeak concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak) and tries to explain the role of “complexity” as a complex thing and how people nowadays understand “simplicity”. He names simplicity as a stage for creating a new thing. I think Toxi took our souls.

STUDENT WORKS

Agata Muszynska

Hideaki Takenaga

Jesper Thøger Christensen

As an assignment to design a game from scratch in one day I were inspired by the classic arcade game named Breakout.Breakout was one of the first truly, endlessly, maddeningly addictive games ever invented. A variation of Pong, but instead of the ball bouncing between little rectangular paddles of you and your opponent, in Breakout you were fighting against a bunch of rectangular blocks. The ball bounced off your paddle on the bottom of the screen, smashed blocks, which were in rows at the top of the screen, and bounced back down to your awaiting paddle.

http://openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=15852

Nikola Marincic

Very primitive “Shoot ‘Em Up” game written after two weeks of learning Processing with Hua Hao. Inspired by the classic Arcade machines and Amiga 500 games like Operation Wolf, Cabal, P.O.W. etc.

http://vimeo.com/18222561

Magda Osinska

This task consist in making game. This game called points fighting.

games rules:

You have 2 points(„a“ and „b“). The second one (b) follows the first one (a). The space in which those points(„a+b“) move contains the dots in 2 different colours: red- means the movemant (of the point b) to the right side when he is close to red dots. black- means that point b is stacking when he touche black dots. If point b touch the black point he stick and game is over! If not he is follow the point „a“, which trys to run away!

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17218

http://nmccoy.net/category/games/

A snake follows mouse: http://processing.org/learning/topics/follow3.html
A crazy version of Bouncing ball: http://ww5.freearcade.com/Pixie.jav/Pixie.html
The second ever computer game : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2E9iSQfGdg

The game book from our chair: http://wiki.caad.arch.ethz.ch/Research/SpaceTimePlay

(links from Hua Hao)

STUDENT WORKS

Agata Muszynska

Hideaki Takenaga

Jesper Thøger Christensen

After the second day of introduction to Processing the homework was to design a two-dimensional component whose attributes (geometry, dimension, color and so on) are interactive with mouse event. I choose to elaborate one of the sketches made in class by introducing breezier curves, coloring by mouse location and using the cosine function to control the geometry and behavior of element in a two dimensional grid based on proximity

http://openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17173

Nikola Marincic

This program tries to simulate classical 3D screensaver effects using just 2D graphics. It does that by utilizing motion of two lines whose points have different speeds, and multiplying those lines. Multiplication creates something that looks like grid changing because of the flying camera, and that makes the illusion. First set of lines is made by multiplying line locked on the upper and lower side of the screen, and second by set of lines locked on the left and right sides of the screen. Looks best in OPENGL.

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17152

http://vimeo.com/17114785

Magda Osinska

The task was to create the interactive components. The attributes of the components are interactive in consequence of the function called mouse Event. The idea was to create spiral curve and the points, which will follow after it and then multiply this element. The final product is a short movie.

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17216

One week of introduction to Processing- full day classes and a new exercise each day.During the first day, drawing and basic programming concepts (iterations and variables) were introduced. The day’s task was to choose a painting (by a favorite artist or by one of the artists proposed: Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Theo van Doesburg, Wassily Kandinsky and to recreate it with. The piece could be a variation of the artwork provided or a copy of it. For final codes and images, please see below.

STUDENT WORKS

Agata Muszynska

Hideaki Takenaga

Jesper Thøger Christensen

After the first day of introduction to Processing the homework was to redraw a selected artwork by programming in Processing. I choose the artwork named ďMonument in Fertile CountryĒ  by Paul Klee.Analyzing the artwork I choose to build the sketch from layers.1. A grid of lines with a height relating to each other by a whole number2. A layer of quads with only two parallel edges3. A grid of lines on top that dissolves the quad belowThis setup could be evolved further including more variation, quads and intelligenceh

http://openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17172

Jorge Orozco

Nikola Marincic

This work is a identical digital copy of “Theo van Doesburg, Composition IV”. Its value lies not in programming skill necessary to “paint” it, but in exactness of the copy of this very simple hard-coded program to the original artwork. Artist’s concept is transmitted into few lines of code, and still remains the same when translated into classical medium (printed in the same size as original painting). This experiment shows that process of thinking and creativity is not always dependent of the expression medium.

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17150

Magda Osinska

The task was to choose a painting by a favorite artist or by one of the artists proposed: Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Theo van Doesburg, Wassily Kandinsky and to recreate it with. The piece could be a variation of the artwork which was provided. I rethought about Wassily Kandinsky‘s – Several Circles painting. I used one geometrical rule: random intersecting ellipses and keyPressed function to draw freely the picture each time.

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=17214

http://www.generative-gestaltung.de/code

http://www.openprocessing.org/

http://www.processing.arch.ethz.ch/pmwiki/pmwiki.php

They are all concerned with much the same topics, and approach them from  slightly different angles. Most of the examples have extensive explanations and documentation. (from Michael Hansmeyer)