07 Collaboration: Form finding

Manuel de Landa and Morphogeneisis and Partnerships
Manuel de Landa lectured an approach to making work which uses partnership and evolution rather than imposition of form on materials. He cites inspiring architect Frei Otto who coined the expression ‘form finding’.

Frei Otto was the father of ‘form finding’ in architecture: using natural morphogenesis techniques to inspire his own architecture creations. He was one the first people to realize the power of morphogenetic design.

As Frei Otto formed a partnership with bubbles for his design of the Munich Olympic stadium in Munich. I would like to form a partnership with bubbles as a means of interactivivity and partnership with a generative ecology installation.

The bubble machine

The Bubble Machine consists of a large metal hoop attached to a motor. That can rotate 90 Degrees. The Bubble Hoop sits in a pool of bubble solution that is placed onto the top of a trellis. The trellis is a lift that can go up and down. ( Must move at least 35 cm down).

The idea of locomotion is that the bubble solution moves down about 30-40 cm from out of the metal hoop. The metal hoop should now have a bubble film inside it. Next the bubble hoop rotates 90 to the vertical. A large fan and smoke machine switch on. The fan blows the smoke into the bubble with some force and pushes out the bubble film to make a large bubble with some inside.

The concept

The installation is a imaginative interactive educational ecology of biological
simulated processes.

See the sketches below. The main interaction is the pool of digital organisms that “live” within there own ecosystems. They live and die and reproduce within the pool. If an external element comes into the pool (either a bubble or a person) they feed the ecology and the ecology learns to “follow” the food source.

The food source can either be a person or a smoke filled bubble.