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CONTE NTS RISD Degree Project Prosthesis Jason Wood Spring 2013
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RISD Advanced Studio Cabinet of Curiosity Pari Riahi Spring 2012
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RISD Advanced Studio The Avant-Garde Doesn’t Give Up Mikolaj Szoska Fall 2012
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Internship monome Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain Summer 2011
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RISD Advanced Studio Urban Eden Anne Tate, Josh Safdie Wintersession 2012
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RISD Core Studio Urban Design Almin Pršić Fall 2011
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Résumé
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RISD Degree Project Prosthesis Jason Wood Spring 2013
THES IS bvoshell@risd.edu
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PROST HE S I S
I’m searching for a more visceral link between myself and our collective prosthesis - the tools that shroud the frail body in unrivaled ability. These augmentations confer a certain power. The capacity to reveal or obscure, to change scales, mediate complexity, or to collapse space. These drawings embody this collective anatomy of machine and bone. They belong equally to the human and the apparatus, but are foreign to both. I’m searching for a way to draw, outward and inward.
Every construction is our every faculty
Stills from video illustrating this drawing process. A dark wooden hood affixed to the wall by an armature translates the movement of the blind operator inside by two methods. A direct mechanical connection through a series of pulleys moves one side of a pen gondola on the page. Accelerometer data from the hood is programmed to control a servo motor, which moves the other side of the pen.
These are a selection of two drawings produced by this machine.
next page Reverse marionette drawing machine. Facing up and suspended, all movement is reduced to the x and y. Writhe. 3
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next page The range and extents of the eye’s movement and the ellipses that the pupil makes at those limits. This is the process by which the location of the eye’s gaze can be determined.
The eye tracking equipment and the image showing pupil recognition.
The convergence of the lines to the left register the locations of my gaze on the image below over a total of twelve hours.
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previous page Many sections measured and drafted to create the surface geometry of the shoulder, which determines its movement and range.
Video stills. complete shoulder rotation, incised into aluminum: abduction, flexion, extension, and circumduction.
A device to record the movement of the shoulder. It measures and inscribes the movement onto a sphere, true to shape.
Unrolling the line from the sphere onto a plane through intaglio. bvoshell@risd.edu
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Simultaneously drawing with many processes in one event: gaze, shoulder scribe, isolated full scale arm drawing. The head clamp fixes the eye’s position to the camera and the body’s position to the wall.
Left to right The arm’s outward and inward limits, it’s range and extents. Gaze drawing. Shoulder joint print. Spherical projection of the line on the surface of the shoulder joint drawing mechanism.
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Arm extension drawing apparatus. Maximum reach of just over twelve feet. Its elbow joint allows for more varied and controlled movement. A pen is placed at the hand and at the outer limit of the structure. The duplication is not exact due to inherent distortion resulting from the device’s geometry and the amplification of imprecision at the farthest extent.
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previous page Drawing for Prosthesis N o 05.
Three dimensional full body movement is condensed into a single line. Eight vectors project and pivot through the plane behind. Their points in space all relative to each other constantly varies with movement. This change is harnessed with a cord which terminates at a pen.
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From the full body drawing machine, created and controlled with newly learned relationships between the body and the picture plane. Another datum is found.
next page In a radar tower languishing since World War II, new projections unfold. The body is perched high above, seated in the vacancy of the dome. Arms and legs are connected via cables and pulleys to the top of a 75 foot long steel rod. Its fulcrum sits just below. Two drawings are made, one at the top of the rod and one at the bottom. The top drawing is effectively a point. The bottom is the amplification and distortion revealing the hidden complexity of the point. 15
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RISD Advanced Studio Cabinet of Curiosity Pari Riahi Spring 2012
O B S ER VATO R Y bvoshell@risd.edu
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OBS E RV A T OR Y
From research into a phenomena of choice -- general relativity’s gravitational time dilation -- I created a series of two dimensional computational drawings using Processing. The innate logic of the phenomena is expressed in a rational code, a sequence and system from which to devise another. Translated and escalated, two dimensions become three, object becomes enclosure, and enclosure becomes a programmed building. It’s a home, observatory, and museum of astronomy, born of the investigation. It is a complete spectacle.
The instrument, the operator, and the artifact.
Time dilation occurs because the speed of light is a constant. The components of speed, distance and time, must then deform under certain circumstances.
Cheat death for an additional microsecond; live on the ground floor!
Through an interpretation of connections, proximity, and influence of the field, the image is translated from two dimensions to three.
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A regular three dimensional field of points, representing space-time, are set to be proportionately attracted to two orbiting masses. The movement of these particles register the gravitational warping of time and space.
The enclosure is organized to create steadiness and constriction at the deepest part of the mass and swift expanse above.
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RISD Advanced Studio The Avant-Garde Doesn’t Give Up Mikolaj Szoska Fall 2012
INS ID ES bvoshell@risd.edu
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INS ID E S
There is great temptation to jump/sit/climb on INSIDES. Ant Farm used anchored ropes and webbing straps to fix their inflatables in place, simultaneously making climbing hand-holds. Given proper seam maintenance on INSIDES, there is no question that its air pressure can support human weight. This system might be conceived as a net with weighted edges so as to avoid the relative permanence of Ant Farm’s augured anchors. Cedric Price’s great concern was the stagnation of inflatable related research and development. He challenged architects to further push temporary pneumatic structures in order to “enable air structures to contribute to a higher degree of sensitivity in society’s continuous control of the physical environment.” In his paper given at the First International Colloquium on Pneumatic Structures in Stuttgart, he urged architects to pursue hybridization of pressure systems, self-packing membranes, and productive dialog with public/authorities in order to advance his vision of architecture finely tuned to human patterns of living.
Indoors! Or outdoors! INSIDES!
Turn on the fan, make a space! Pull it down! Flip it over! Flip it again! A new space! With INSIDES you’ve got a spectacular popup at a moment’s notice! Renovate your old rectangular rooms and halls! Warm up a vacant lot on a chilly afternoon! Invite your friends or go it alone! However you choose to deploy it, INSIDES gives you the soft edges and experimental qualities your spatial self needs! Find out what you can do in space! Come on INSIDES! INSIDES feels good. It’s fun to set up, to play in, to manipulate, to test. Even after multiple deployments, the novelty has yet to wear off; the possibility of further experimental sites (The Mall! The Airport! Kennedy Plaza! RIPTA!) is tantalizing, especially given the variables introduced by unauthorized deployment.
In honor of his exhortations, we submit INSIDES as our first response to his call.
We began by designing objects and environments that re-imagined the space of the cinema and the relation of the body to image. Our early sketches and prototypes experimented with fields of soft objects enhanced by projection of moiré patterns. The goal was a spatial condition that reoriented audience/ passerby/users in an existing space and produced an interior-scape of imagery inhabitation. This image space/field would itself be a spectacle in which the individual interacted with projections and objects as spatial events.
We persisted in designing a form that was at once simple, manageable to construct, and that offered a variety of spatial options. We could count on certain deformation of space given our choice of deployment site, but how could we design inherent variability? We wanted to be above, below, within, without, around, surrounded. We wanted INSIDES. Finally: Parallelogram. A triangular void cut into it as a wall/space/interruption. Material procurement ensued.
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Assembly instructions.
Prototypes, proofs of concept, and material exploration.
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Field tests in Fleet Library, the stairwell, the hallway, the RISD Museum, through the front door, and under the freeway.
Stills from the INSIDES video of construction, deployments, and mischief.
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Internship monome Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain Summer 2011
m o n om e bvoshell@risd.edu
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mon o me
I spent a delightful six weeks living with the inventors of monome on their farm in the Catskills. I assisted in the design of a studio space, the labor and drawings for barn restoration, hand-hewn timber frame construction, goat house design and construction, the assembly of a deck in the forest, the design and drawings for a grant proposal, scything, felling, chicken herding, berry foraging, cooking, and making friendly.
Internship with Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain
Grant proposal drawings for a mobile wood fired bread oven.
Goat house drawings.
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top to bottom Design for studio space to be sited next to an existing barn. Process from hand-hewn timber frame construction. Goat house images.
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RISD Advanced Studio Urban Eden Anne Tate, Josh Safdie Wintersession 2012
R EPLACING NO WHER E bvoshell@risd.edu
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R EPL A C I N G NOW HE R E
Excised in fits of new vision, the old Route 195 corridor rests, a no-man’s-land in a war that became too expensive to fight by conventional means. In the city, in the perceptions of the city, it is not merely a gap, a void; it is an invisible void, difficult to see, barely worth remembering, immune to pauses other than those of machines for moving (to) other places. There is little cause to go to this emptiness; at best it can hope to be transgressed via streets cut through its thinnest points, places where, like a paper cut-out in profile, it narrows to oblivion before its borders are once again crossed, unmarked. Not that the void lacks for new plans, projected reappropriations, renewals, redevelopment; models and drawings accumulate like scrip in the wishful coffers of academics, developers, planners and city officials. But these costly imaginations have little traction on the terrain vague where the great road used to course, and their contemporary irrelevance is compounded by the inaction of the citizens of Providence, made blind to the fields of potential at their disposal. At the end of 195’s last history, traffic was choked off, and infrastructure gradually weeded out of the landscape. Rather than
Intrigue and so too, a life of anticipation are born of spontaneity.
Site model showing the various interventions and their relationship to the grain of the city.
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creating a vacuum into which life rushed, however, the careful excision of the highway simply erased the signs of the system which had originally restricted the space. The (re)moval of Route 195 was the procedure by which the city would be restored to health, but the interstate is the phantom limb that yet plagues the urban corpus. It is persistent not in its ache, but in its anesthesis. Relentlessly unavailable for fifty years, the land remains so in the cognition of the populous. In this moment, it needs to be reintroduced to its city. The conflict is thus reframed: not a high-stakes siege for hotly contested ground, but a series of asymmetrical sorties into the urban conscious. The familiar, vividly re-presented. The numbed senses reactivated, the memories re-minded. Nowhere re-placed and made available for re-imagination at the scale of the citizen. Oriented perpendicular to the primary east-west axis of the site, they borrow from the found assortment of existing streets, view-alleys, parking lots and vacant fields. It is possible to traverse the park along or through just one of these bands, interrupting the brick and mortar urban experience with a moment of wind perfumed by pine sap, with a glimpse of
saturated colors and with the sounds of those immersed in their own leisure. Alternately, there is the long trajectory across the bands, a journey of alternating speeds and densities, of colors contrasting, of whispers and resonating shouts. The terrain changes, and again, rises, then dips, gradually making its way to sea level. The view disappears into trees before opening onto rubber ground, onto street traffic, onto the audience of a film on the riverfront.
next page Site plan
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RISD Core Studio Urban Design Almin Pršić Fall 2011
S YNTHETIC UR B ANIS M bvoshell@risd.edu
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S Y N THE T I C URBAN IS M
Working within the underutilized Jewelry District of Providence, the aim was to design three distinct buildings on a block with the programs of hotel, elderly housing, and dormitories for the neighboring Brown Medical School. In an effort to pose a resistance to the increasing vacancy of people, purpose, and vitality surrounding the site, I offer a direct approach that encourages movement through and between. Maximum public. Minimum private. Pressing against the city, the buildings are narrowed and slender. I’ve pushed them to the block’s edge, increasing the area within. Earth from the void of 195 is transposed into the expanded block. It becomes a material. It’s modulation enhances program, circulation and sequence. Space is over and space is under. Within the ground, embedded volumes order light into a rhythmic progression while providing the weight and pressure of the earth to become a contemplative space. Above is expanse. It’s partitioned by topography according to the adjacencies within the block. Within the buildings, units function as minimal enclosures. Contrasting the block’s vast and encroaching interior, they are simple, uniform and modest.
Context and scale of the incorporeal and the concrete.
Diagrams of approach. Hold the corners and establish the block. Maximize the area within. Open points of access to the interior of the site.
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1. Restroom / showers 2. Common spaces
1. Student counseling / psychiatric services
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2. CafĂŠ 3. Common space 4. Public safety
Unit plans from top to bottom Elderly home, hotel, dormitory.
From left to right Site model, interior perspective of a subterranean bath, exterior perspective, and elderly home unit interior. 45
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Burgess Voshell
Rhode Island School of Design Department of Architecture Urban Design Principles/Fall 2011
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Section details highlighting the structural systems of the dormitory.
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BURGESS VOSHELL
tel 303.718.6459 email bvoshell@risd.edu url burgessvoshell.com
Education Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI — Master of Architecture, 2013 University of Colorado, Boulder, CO — Bachelor of Fine Arts, 2009 Awards Graduate Fellowship and Assistantship, Rhode Island School of Design 2010 - 2013 Honor Student, Rhode Island School of Design 2011 - 2013 Dean’s List, University of Colorado 2007 - 2009 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Grant 2009 James R. Hopes Scholarship 2007 Threadless Designer 2006 Experience Instructor RISD 2013 Experiments in Digital Fabrication develops an empirical understanding of digital fabrication processes, their implementation and implication through design challenges. Assistantship Program + Computing Drawing Apparatuses RISD 2012 - 2013 Assistantship with Carl Lostritto to utilize computation and the integration of contemporary and outmoded technology through Python to produce drawings. Testing and documentation of the process facilitates an advanced studio in spring 2013 and broadens the pedagogical capability of the department. Teaching Assistant RISD 2012 Assistant for the core drawing course, Architectural Projection. I provided conceptual and technical assistance to students on their drawings and analysis during and outside of class. monome Delhi, NY 2011 Fabrication, testing and inspection of grayscale series. Six week live-in internship. I assisted in the design of a studio space, the labor and drawings for barn restoration, hand-hewn timber frame construction, goat house design and construction, the assembly of a deck in the forest, the design and drawings for a grant proposal, scything, chicken herding, berry foraging, cooking, and making friendly. Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Boulder, CO 2010 Volunteer docent. Software Rhinoceros, AutoCAD, VRay, Grasshopper, SketchUp, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Processing, Arduino, Windows, Mac, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Final Cut Pro, Logic, HTML, Javascript, Python.
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Seat
Mildred
Self
Lamp
Nylon webbing seat and carbon
Hand-built parlor size acoustic
Graphite, charcoal.
Cedar shims, bent and woven.
fiber legs.
guitar. Redwood top; mahogany
K1000 Fuzz
Urban Periscope
A fuzz pedal built into a broken
A chance encounter for the
Pentax K1000. Each dial from
flâneur. Don’t get too close to the
the original camera controls a
man scooping pennies out of the
potentiometer for the pedal.
fountain. Likewise, impulsions
neck, back, and sides; birds-eye maple fretboard; and a bloodwood bridge. Gold mother of pearl inlay...
Listen Ever hearing, never listening. Nothing permeates, all heard will dribble right back out.
Eyes, Heavy Hands Screen print. Proportions hint at a
towards putting your face within...
reality the eyes struggle to perceive.
Portrait on a Frozen Lake Graphite.
Square Waves
Unistation Radio
Head
Simple on and off, so fast as to become music. An instrument that
Built to play just one station. For
Watercolor, ink.
gets nervous and plays out of tune
the steadfast. For the chronically
when it detects the presence of an
indecisive. One volume dial.
audience.
More can be found at www.burgessvoshell.com bvoshell@risd.edu
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