Contents 1.
8.
Résumé 3
Bonanza Fall 2011, theverymany 28
2.
Creature Feature Spring 2010, Peter Waldman
9.
4
3.
Baumhaus Spring 2012, Charlie Menefee
10.
Ricard Renovation Summer 2011
11.
In the Margin Fall 2011, Maurice Cox
12.
Bad Water Institute Fall 2012, Robin Dripps
Data Trails Spring 2011, Robin Dripps 38
Monsterland Spring 2011, Ed Ford
13.
18
7.
Fall 2012, Lucia Phinney
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14
6.
Soft Surfaces 32
12
5.
Fall 2011, theverymany 30
6
4.
Coracae
The Information Fall 2012, Seth McDowell 40
Now That We’re Alone, Together Spring 2012, Nana Last 22
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14.
Paperspace 42
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Molly Baum meb6qd@virginia.edu www.mollybaum.com 231 N 3rd St., Apt 311, Philadelphia, PA +1 609 202 5016
Education University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
School of Architecture Master of Architecture
University of Virginia Vicenza, Italy
Study Abroad Architectural field drawing and diagramming in the Veneto
Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain
Awards and Publications Boston College Presidential Scholarship, 4-year full tuition and stipend University of Virginia 3-year graduate fellowship and Vicenza fellowship Winning design, Portland/PSU Atrium, with Marc Fornes and Jeff Quantz (theverymany) “Now That We’re Alone, Together.” Yearbook. University of Virginia, 2012. “Soft Surfaces.” Catalyst. ACTAR, 2013.
Skills Software
Craft
Language
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Rhinoceros 3D, Grasshopper, Maya, AutoCAD, Revit, Ecotect, Tas, SketchUp, Vectorworks, Vray, Maxwell CNC laser cutting and milling, 3D printing, drafting, field drawing, illustrating, printmaking, woodworking, microcontroller tinkering, sewing Conversational Spanish, Python, Processing, Arduino, C, HTML/CSS
References Robin Dripps, dripps@virginia.edu Nana Last, ndl5g@virginia.edu Karen Gibson, karen@grassphilly.com Marc Fornes, fornesmarc@gmail.com
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Minor in Studio Art, Honors Program GPA 3.80/4.00, Magna Cum Laude Study Abroad
Dec 2012 Summer 2010 May 2008 Spring 2007
Experience Prepared new West Philadelphia space for public opening; determined targets and methods of fundraising; taught soft circuit classes for children and adults
March 2013Present
Assistant to professor Nana Last; assembled materials for junior undergraduate course “Theory and Ethics” and graduate seminar “Conceptual Art and Architecture”; led a section of 20 students
Fall 2012, Spring 2011, Fall 2010
GRASS / Jig | Assistant Project Manager Philadelphia, PA
Reviewed contracts, insurance, specifications, memos, and plans; generated cost estimations and researched construction materials; coordinated exchanges between vendors, contractors, consultants, and clients
Summer 2012
theverymany | Design Intern Brooklyn, NY
Developed computational protocols for the design and production of gallerysized installations; produced construction drawings; oversaw the installation of the Irene Neuwirth pop-up store
Sept 2011January 2012
The Hacktory | Volunteer Philadelphia, PA UVa | Head Teaching Assistant Charlottesville, VA
Ricard Home Renovation | Designer Boston, MA UVa | Research Assistant Charlottesville, VA Herman Coliver Locus | Intern San Francisco, CA J.Crew | Personal Shopper Ardmore, PA BC Theatre Dept | Workshop Set Designer Chestnut Hill, MA Square Peg Design | Intern Singapore BC Theatre Dept | Shop Assistant Chestnut Hill, MA Winner Arts Lab | Research Assistant Chestnut Hill, MA :: 3 ::
Designed and produced measure drawings of a new master suit for the previously unfinished attic of a Boston townhouse
Summer 2011Fall 2011
Assistant to professor Earl Mark; generated prototypes for a fabric wall system and explored uses for recent acquisitions in CNC technology
Summer 2011
Generated presentation graphics, red-lined AutoCAD drawings
January 2010
Managed client accounts and developed, like, amazing wardrobes Collaborated with the director and a team of light, costume, and sound designers to produce the set; revised design on multiple occasions to accommodate budget constraints Facilitated the creation of identity and wayfinding design schemes through research, illustration and dialogue with clients and fabricators Built and struck sets for main stage and black box productions Worked with a team to devise experimental tasks that could provide meaningful results; collected responses and systematized data
Summer 2008Summer 2009 Fall 2007Spring 2008 Summer 2007 Fall 2006Spring 2008 Fall 2006
2.
Creature Feature
“One Good Room”
The UVa arts campus is home to the university’s architecture, fine arts, and performing arts schools1. This addition to the theater building provides both a gateway to the campus and a space for the separate schools to display their work together in one place. Formally, addition is taken to mean appendage; the result is a somewhat abnormal
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growth on the side of an existing building. Meanwhile, the arc of the parasite’s spindly legs refer to a classical threshold4. Programmed as a gallery and screening room to engage a larger public, the building’s demure northern elevation invites speculation while its eastern facade, designed for projections on either side, offers total spectacle3.
fig. 1 Site plan; the intervention (upper left) is situated such that it engages both pedestrian and vehicular traffic; it sits directly across from the art building’s front terrace (right).
fig. 2 Gallery first and second floor plans; viewers in the seating area on the second floor can watch the projections before them or any spectators gathered outside of the gallery.
fig. 3 The gallery clings to the theater and puts both the art and viewers on display. facing page
fig. 4 Elevations; north, east, and south respectively. The southern elevation counters the secrecy of the northern facade by offering campus dwellers a view of the gallery’s delicate circulation.
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3.
Baumhaus
Charlottesville Horticultural Center
Composed primarily of steel and high performance plastics, the classroom is intended for the study of horticulture throughout the morning and early afternoon. The northern room houses such tasks as are normally associated with the classroom-- reading, lecturing, computing-- and was the focus of an assessment of the building’s daylight performance using Ecotect and Radiance simulations. The southern room is an elevated greenhouse where young plants are cultivated until they can be transplanted to the garden, also on the south side of the building. Materials, construction, and site strategy for the classroom were considered as much for thermal performance as visual qualities. :: 6 ::
fig. 1 Section perspective. One part of the building is rooted in the ground, the other held aloft. facing page
fig. 2 Northern elevation.
fig. 3 View from the approaching road.
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fig. 5
fig. 4 Axon representing the different construction assemblies used along the building’s North-South Axis
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Northern wall details PET laminated with thin-film photovoltaics galvanized steel gutter tapered steel angle steel channel steel I-column fixed pane steel window steel cable steel I-beam operable steel casement window polypropylene panel with translucent aerogel insulation corrugated transparent polycarbonate sheathing galvanized steel bearers steel handrail
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fig. 6 Construction sequence
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fig. 7 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Greenhouse details stainless-steel edge clamping strip galvanized steel hollow section with baseplate etfe membrane glass-fiber-reinforced plastic pultrusion with colorless polyurethane coating stainless-steel tubular distance piece with stainless-steel bolt steel cable waterproof membrane corrugated steel steel I-beam glass-fiber-reinforced plastic panel with colorless polyurethane coating glass-wool thermal insulation remotely operable steel casement window
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fig. 9
East-west section.
View from the greenhouse porch.
fig. 10 Daylight performance simulation of the building interior done through Radiance in Ecotect; the sky condition under consideration is an overcast sky on the morning of March 22nd.
fig. 11 Radiance false color rendering showing luminance levels in the greenhouse on an overcast spring morning.
fig. 12 Radiance false color rendering showing luminance levels in the classroom on an overcast spring morning.
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fig. 13 Material objective; classroom space view from mezzanine.
fig. 14 Material objective; classroom space looking east.
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fig. 15
North-south section, indicating intended light infiltration on a summer day
Material objective; greenhouse looking east.
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fig. 1 Renovation Drawings Above: North-South Section Below: East-West Section Right: Plan
4.
Ricard Renovation
fig. 2 Original attic space
The client approached me to convert the attic of their 1907 Boston residence into a master suite (including an office). As it was originally conceived, the suite’s plan defined a series of thresholds between the public, private, and semi-private spaces of the house without having to entirely close off rooms or yield space to corridors, given the restricted volume of the attic1. A further challenge lay in finding space for stairs that met code requirements, as the original stairs were too steep and had too little clearance3,7.
fig. 3 Old attic stairs
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fig. 4 Finished bedroom
fig. 5 Finished bathroom
fig. 6 New stairs to master suite
fig. 7 Finished office
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5.
In the Margin
School for the Roots of Music
bell hooks insists on “understanding marginality as a position and place of resistance.” The term “marginalized” suggests the spatiality inherent to systems of oppression. The spatial structure of power in New Orleans, one not unlike that of other cities, was represented with frightening clarity in the days following Katrina. Satellite images of the city revealed the low-lying, poor regions of New Orleans as they lay under as much as fourteen feet of water1. This sort of visibility is powerful, but rare (and in this case, the result of a great tragedy). The temptation is to increase instances of visibility— “awareness” campaigns, for example— and centralize the margin, but an alternate approach is conceivable. What power can we find in invisibility? What about the margin as “a space of radical openness”? This project confronts the I-106, a highway originally slated to run through the French Quarter but ultimately built through Tremé, the city’s first free black neighborhood. It considers ways of occupying an emphatic architectural edge4 and finding opportunity in occlusion.
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fig. 1 Flood model of New Orleans. The levels shown are three feet below sea level, sea level, Katrina’s flood level, and the surface elevation of the Mississippi.
fig. 2 Censorship and New Orleans; what does the city prefer to hide? facing page
fig. 3 Concept model; the architecture has its own power dynamics in play between its two halves.
fig. 4 The section driving the design; the implied edge between the highway and the neighborhood is made explicit. The edge is multiplied and pulled apart to form a thick wall for occupation. Students may choose to look out over the highway, but their activities remain private.
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fig. 5 The school’s design considers New Orleans’ three primary typologies: the shotgun, the courtyard, and the porch. Here, the model’s canted wall is removed to show the interior porches overlooking the ramp and atrium. The atrium serves as a courtyard, while the extruded section of the school, together with the ramp’s traversal of its entirety, references the linearity of the shotgun style home.
fig. 6 Programming; building viewed from northeast. The highway can be seen running through the top right corner of the picture. facing page
fig. 7 Final drawings Top Left: Section through atrium showing processional ramp Bottom Left: First floor plan showing marching field Top Right: Model showing building as seen from the highway (northbound) Middle Right: Third floor plan Bottom Right: Second floor plan
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fig. 1 1944 picture of Minidoka’s uncanny suburbia.
fig. 2 A pivot irrigator at site in 2011. The irrigator leaves the same, stubborn circular footprint regardless of topography.
fig. 3 Satellite view of the site. The traces of ownership (crops) stand in sharp relief to the wilderness.
6.
Monsterland
Japanese American Internment Memorial
A survey of the site in Minidoka, Idaho, demands understanding the history of internment as being inextricably bound to the earth. During World War II Japanese Americans were transplanted from their own homes and incarcerated in a warped simulation of American domesticity1, executed on a grand scale in the inhospitable shrub steppes of Southern Idaho. When the government freed the interns, many with no homes to which to return, the land was immediately gifted to American war veterans. The industries of agriculture2 have obliterated any trace of the internees’ bunkers, built on cinder blocks as they were, having had no real connection to the land11. In their place, strange circles of lush vegetation emboss the otherwise desolate terrain, an index of pivot systems of irrigation2,3. The museum and memorial explore ideas of the hostile home, the active process of forgetting, and land as a medium for authority and violence.
fig. 4 Early conceptual site model
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fig. 5
fig. 6
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Site map overlaid with a model of the museum. The barracks were built to the north, downhill from the guardhouse and administrative area along the canal to the south. Power is mapped to topography.
The museum is embedded in berms that follow the logic of Minidoka’s agriculture.
The competing geometries of the agriculture and the barracks.
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fig. 8
fig. 9
Museum plans. Visitors arrive at the museum, a small set of galleries, before proceeding to the memorial.
Museum section model, through a gallery. Gabions along the south wall are filled with the basalt. Odd mounds of basalt are found throughout Southern Idaho as a result of glacial deposition-- a somewhat more ancient terrestrial marking
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fig. 11 The barracks are now embedded in the earth. The walls are concrete impressions of the original walls, a negative of the shabby pine and tar paper structures.
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The monument reproduces, in part, the fields of barracks. Once more, the land threatens to erase any trace of the camp, despite tis appearance of permanence.
Study of competing systems
Earthworks study
Study of barrack imprint
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7.
Now That We’re Alone, Together
Fermilab Neutrino Research Complex
Quantum mechanics at the turn of the twentieth century made a proposal that became a rallying cry throughout science and the humanities: the phenomenon observed cannot be described without including in our description the way we observed it. The classic double slit experiment demonstrates furthermore that what we observe- reality- is determined by our observation of it. Truly, the medium in the message. The study of physics prides itself in its objectivity, but particle physicists looking for the sign of the neutrino — a small, neutral elementary particle — play the part of augurs in a faith-based operation2. In visualizing the world through the lens of the Standard Model3, how much does one shape the other? Positive feedback loops are formed when these representations capture the imagination of the public, as with the media hype surrounding the shrewdly nicknamed “God particle.” With funding pouring in for research on the Higgs boson, perhaps it is now the public fueling science’s imagination. Before the last fifty years, we knew nothing of neutrinos, and they knew nothing of us; the difference between flying through the “solid” rock of the earth4 versus the vacuum of space is statistically insignificant for the particle. The world of the neutrino lies close at hand, but is inaccessible to our senses. The neutrino is evasive, reluctant to interact on any terms, or rather, in any field. The problem of isolation describes both the loneliness of the particle as well as the necessary terms for engagement with it. This project responds to the problem of the neutrino and the processes through which we have come to know it: attempts at isolation, and the resulting visualizations. Architecture is just another frame of reference.
fig. 1
fig. 2
An environment for two different inhabitants, whose pattern of interaction with this landscape is simple but strict; one moves forever counterclockwise, while the other moves always clockwise. While they navigate the same terrain, and may occupy at some time the very same space, these bodies have an entirely difference experience of their environment— different ways of knowing this object.
Isolation and visualization in neutrino physics and religion, respectively.
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fig. 3 The world according to the Standard Model: particles and how they interact.
fig. 4 Fermilab site plan. The most obvious figures in the landscape are the rings of the particle accelerators (now obsolete for the fastest experiments). Initial measurements for the neutrino experiments are made by the near detectors in Illinois, but the far detector halls are hundreds of miles away.
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fig. 5 Top: Research complex, above ground; human space. Bottom: Research complex, below ground; particle space.
fig. 6 Mapping out the process of neutrino detection. facing page
fig. 7 Site section; through a religious understanding, the research center doubles as a megachurch; the detector hall, as a labyrinth for contemplation.
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fig. 8 Plans of the research/megachurch complex.
fig. 9 Early exploratory drawings of field disturbances.
fig. 10 Rough model of the megachurch with grotto-like development of individual spaces (offices, chapels) facing page
fig. 11 The labyrinth provides for physical isolation, but the shared experience of neutrino detection.
fig. 12 The projection screen in the center of the hall displays measurements from the detector below.
fig. 13 Ways of knowing.
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http://theverymany.com/work-in-progress/12-cora-international/
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http://theverymany.com/work-in-progress/12-cora-international/
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http://theverymany.com/constructs/12-moss-de-pury/
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http://theverymany.com/constructs/12-moss-de-pury/
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10.
Soft Surfaces
The barnacle field is an array of objects deployed across a terrain1. Activated by chemical and proximity sensors, they detect aerial and aqueous pollutants. Surfaces emerging9 from individual barnacles in response to these stimuli create awareness of environmental conditions as well as mitigating polluting effects. The physical response is accomplished with Miga Motor shape memory alloy technology6. The thin, powerful, and lightweight Miga creates a linear motion that is magnified through linkages3. The barnacle field is a prototype for potential applications ranging from multi-level building neighborhoods to teacup fleets to be activated during flood events.
with Lain Lai-Jiang
fig. 1 Continuous variation.
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facing page
fig. 2 Barnacle components are unique to each cell’s geometry.
fig. 3 Geometry originates from a set of points; forms are built based on proximity to each other as well as the field’s perimeter; each point has a power source, input-based switch, and motor; delaunay triangulation describes how these nodes and linked and how, therefore, influence spreads.
fig. 4 Conceptual sketches.
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fig. 5 Completed prototype.
fig. 6 Model detail of Miga motor, motor support, and spine support. Motor actuation drives a linear piston movement along the spine that forces the barnacle’s soft surface out of its shell.
fig. 7 Model detail of pulley and lever relationship; the levers are connected at one end to the piston and at the other to the edge of the emerging surface, pulling the edges to the outside as the piston moves up.
fig. 8 The bottom half of the model during assembly; the series shows how motor actuation drives motion in the machine.
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fig. 9 Illustrated sections. Top: Barnacle in open position Bottom: Barnacle in closed position
fig. 10 Illustrated plan.
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11.
Bad Water Institute
Barnacle Implementation Research
This project identifies an appropriate locality for the installation of the previous project’s creatures and considers water as that which collects, rather than simply that which is collected. Water’s power as a solvent is a double-edged sword — necessary for life, but frequently problematic. Culturally, water has become a vessel for social exchanges, carrying the idealized parts of self and society. Washington’s reflecting pool is a prominent example of this neurosis. Contaminated water is unsettling; often, this feeling arises more from violating ideals of purity than the prospect of physical danger. More subtly disquieting is the observation that many of the contaminants that water collects carry information about human activity. Water is full of our history. Washington, with its combined sewer system, is a city that pours quite a bit of human history into its rivers. The barnacle colony is established at a sewer outfall, filtering through the water that is shunted there from all parts of the city, and putting the information it has gathered on display.
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fig. 4 Data from GIS reveals the geography of stormwater management in Washington. Large areas of the city drain to a single point on the Anacostia River in a storm event. With a combined sewer system, these bad waters are both stormwaters and sanitary sewage.
fig. 5 The basin at the outfall. The project imagines a large puddle — the most pathetic of water bodies — in which the barnacles will grow. The creatures are concentrated at the edges of the basin to break up the flow of water. facing page
fig. 1
Combined Sewer Outfalls 009 Number of Overflows: 11 Overflow Volume: 2.16 million gal Total Duration of Overflow: 12.50 hr 010 Number of Overflows: 7 Overflow Volume: 34.24 million gal Total Duration of Overflow: 8.5 hr 012 Number of Overflows: 4 Overflow Volume: 27.96 million gal Total Duration of Overflow: 8 hr Total Sewershed Area: 85 million sqft Total Roof Area: 23 million sqft Average Annual Rainfall: 24.75 gal/sqft Total Sewershed Rainfall: 2.1 billion gal
Surface analysis of Washington topography to suggest drainage patterns.
fig. 2 A second drainage map using graph theory to optimize analysis and remember path hierarchies. This analysis reveals drainage basins: areas defined by all points draining to a single locality. The basin geometries were further manipulated to draw attention to unusual paths and relationships between basins.
fig. 3 Moving water is one of the primary sources of form in nature. Here, a form is generated in Grasshopper from a single basin’s drainage pattern.
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12.
Data Trails
with Maureen McGee
(th e
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send SMS to robot’s phone number
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the message is received by the associated google voice account
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incoming google voice messages are forwarded to an xml feed
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( your phone )
The robot (SASI) receives text messages from passersby and translates them into a code of blinking lights, which it executes as it moves laterally along a track. The message receipt triggers a camera to take a long exposure3,7 for the duration of SASI’s blinking. The resulting picture is projected on a nearby screen. SASI creates an immediate visualization of what we typically understand as ephemeral matter. Using Grasshopper to generate a framework that allows access to larger exchange systems, SASI translates SMS (short message service) data into physical signals4, thereby exposing the disturbances we inflict on our physical environment with a seemingly invisible and banal activity: texting.
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(my comput er)
fig. 1 A diagram of SASI’s circuit. LEDs blink in a pattern that, when distributed through space (using a servo) and time (using long exposure photography), forms letters. Relays isolate the circuitry of the camera from that of the robot.
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Grasshopper definition.
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fig. 3 An early test of SASI. Before automating its movement and the camera’s activation, I would move the robot by hand while Maureen took a picture. Two warning blinks would allow us to anticipate the message’s arrival.
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fig. 4 Diagram of how information from a text message is translated into the pixels of a photograph.
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within grasshopper, a gHowl component pulls the feed from the internet
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a script defines a program for the robot’s microcontroller and translates the text message into variables
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a firefly component compiles the program and sends it through the computer’s serial port to the microcontroller
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the microcontroller tells a camera trained on the robot to focus and open its shutter; at the same time, the robot’s four LEDs begin to blink out the message; a servo motor drives their movement along a track; the camera closes its shutter when the message is complete
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a long exposure of the robot’s action is sent from the camera to a large screen for viewing
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Final circuit configuration. Clarity was sacrificed for compactness.
A photograph taken by the SASI at our final presentation.
fig. 6 Due to the length of their exposures, the photographs were easily overexposed. To prevent this, SASI was housed in a black box with only small openings for the computer cables and camera lens.
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13.
The Information At a time when much of what occupies our attention and anxiety has a certain bodiless quality, it can be strange to be reminded of the physical limitations that serve as a foundation for life as we know it. In a series of infographics that consider the waterrelated difficulties the world faces (with increasing urgency), I focused on basic materiality: water at a geological scale, water at an atomic scale, and the very different implications these scales have for water and the built environment.
fig. 1 The growth of hydroelectric power generation in China. Left: Understanding these operations in terms of global power generation. Right: The Three Gorges Dam demonstrates our capacity to act at a geological scale. facing page
fig. 2 Visualizing the information contained in our cities’ water reports. Left: What water tells us about its history. Center: Water is a promiscuous substance; not all of its friends are our friends. Right: Every city has a unique brew.
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14.
Paperspace fig. 1 Portrait of Elizabeth Harker; charcoal on paper, 36” x 54”
fig. 2 Self-Portrait; charcoal on paper, 24” x 18”
fig. 3 In Print Series; charcoal and marker on paper, hand carved stamp, 24” x 18”
fig. 4 In Print Series; charcoal and marker on paper, hand carved stamp, 24” x 18”
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fig. 1
fig. 2
Basilica di Santa Maria di Monte Berico; elevation, section, and perspective.
Campo san giacomo dell’orio; perspective and plan.
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