Grasshopper: Data/Path Management

(i - image sampling)

(ii - data management + facade panels)

(iii - data manipulation!)

Understanding the 'stream' of information within Grasshopper is critical. Without it, you're stuck in the realm of blobby forms that look cool, but are fairly random. Layering additional complexity is quite difficult... these are the limits that all my work until this point have been created with.

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend a workshop @ modeLab. Ronnie + Gil have a good thing going, run a great workshop and were more than helpful and informative. I walked away with a better understanding of data/path structure and manipulation.

Grasshopper: Now = Generative Components

I've been playing around with Grasshopper a bit more and while I don't 'understand' it in any significant way, I'm at least to the same level with it as a program/tool as I ever reached with Generative Components. It would be a dis-service to call my faculty with either as 'functional', but I'm fine with 'experimental'. I'll continue my early-morning / post-work studies...

Grasshopper: <3 the GUI.

I'm taking a little time to learn Grasshopper. I hear, see, and realize that it's what all the cool kids are up to. And I've always wanted to be one of the cool kids, despite never quite having pulled it off. Just the same, incomparison to Generative Components, I'm a huge fan of the interface. This isn't to say that Grasshopper is necessarily better (or worse!) than GC, just that it's much, much prettier. Pop culture seems to indicate that 'pretty' can carry something a good, long way.

100% spirals + sine waves for now.
Architecture later. Hopefully.

EVENT: Cut & Paste 2009

This past weekend (21.03.2009) I stopped in on "Cut & Paste 2009", an annual worldwide design competition. 4 designers are pre-selected, given a theme and 15 minutes to produce work.  2D, 3D and Video competitions were held.

Some great work was produced. As an audience member, the most interesting aspects where the individual workflows and directions taken by each artist. Some designs were very similar, begging the question of how a 'theme' also implies a given resolution... but in other cases the end results were wildly different. 

If nothing else, I can safely say that I am much, MUCH slower in CS4/Max than any of the contestants. Perhaps my office should start giving us restricted 'clock time' for our projects: "Design the vertical circulation in 15 minutes!" "Egress diagrams, go!"... every working day becomes a series of 32 15min design charrettes.