Design and The Elastic Mind Symposium

This symposium by SEED Magazine, the MOMA, and Parsons School was amazing and inspirational.  Saw presentations by people figuring out models of the universe, building robotic limbs, pioneering genetic engineering, and building computers modeled on the brain.

Below are some of the notes I took.

Official site:
http://mind08.com/

There’s a bunch of related material in this month’s SEED:
http://seedmagazine.com/

If you’re at all interested in emerging science or collaboration between science/design disciplines, I recommending checking some of this stuff out.

notes…

Ben Aranda / Chris Lasch
- Built structures by first designing a six-sided building block object with various polyhedral surfaces.  By using only this atomic object (in different sizes), was able to algorithmically construct larger structures.  By “algorithmically,” he means the atomic elements can be combined according to a small set of rules to produce a vast number of different, larger, stable structures.  He drew an analogy to the same atoms combining in different patters to form different molecules.

Chuck Hoberman
- Had a bunch of ideas about building canopies that responded to environmental stimuli (light, temperature) in order to control internal environment (more / less shade, etc.).
Paul Steinhart
- Presented alternative explanation to the Big Bang and expansion/inflation of the universe, involving parallel “brane-worlds” or dimensions of the universe we cannot experience colliding with the brane that we do experience.  Definitely need to read some more of this guy’s stuff.

Interesting: brane worlds each have matter and are attracted by gravity.  Some sort of potential energy exists between them, and as they get closer, PE increases (think of a spring being compressed or loaded).  When they get close enough, they collide, PE is released, and they push away from each other.   The collision is the big bang.

Second brane world has something to do with dark matter.

What is the PE force? He said it was related to gravity, but not gravity itself.

He gives the universe about 1 trillion years before it is a complete wasteland / vacuum.

Matthew Richie – Artist who collaborated on “The Morning Line” with the first presenter.  Trying to explain the current state of our perception of the universe visually and verbally is his task.

Neri Oxman – Six dimensional structural diagrams were amazing.  x, y, z, elasticity of surface, thickness of surface, and potential energy held by the surface in its shape are the 6 dimensions she diagrams.  Lots of people today interested in surfaces of objects and how forces in the surface define the shape of the resulting object.

Erik Demaine – MIT Prof who does all sorts of cool stuff.  Computation geometry uses curved folds that produce interesting 3D shapes.  Collaboration with other mathematicians and artists is a large part of what Demaine does.  – He’s interested in math as art.

Greg Lynn – making New City software that uses torus shapes as a view of the world.  Mentioned a room in some museum or palace called “mappamundo” by Vignola that sounds awesome–maps and drawings on all the walls and ceilings.

Janna Levin
- Travel around earth in a straight line and you will end up where you started.  Is the universe similarly finite?
- When we look into space, are we seeing our light from own own galaxy wrapping around? If so, it is light that we emitted billions of years ago.

Kevin Slavin
plundr.com
jane + katrina game
Shark runner – for discovery channel.  Sharks are tracked and are your opponents in this video game.
Deliberate distortion of reality.

Blue Brain
Can you discover something new about this world in a virtual world? Modeling brain 1 neuron at a time.
Analyze brain activity and reverse engineer it–when you see someone’s brain activity, you can also see what they’re seeing.

Drew Endy
parts.mit.edu
Programming bacteria, eg:
if growing
call wintergreen
else
call banana
Engineering e. coli to see light and make photos

Christophe Laudamiel – made    a “scent track” for a movie.

Hugh Herr, MIT
- titanium/silicon legs – biomechatronics.

Natalie Jeremijenko
Designs participation in environmental movement.  Runs an environmental health clinic at NYU.  Hot rod high heels give 40% more stride, eg. No Park / Green Zone–very interesting. Urban space station.

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