Chemical Morphogenesis, Kaustuv DeBiswas & Alex Tsamis

This project is a form generator using diffusion-reaction, inspired by Alan Turing’s 1952 paper on morphogenesis.

The following citation from Turing’s paper (cited by the designers) describes the dynamic system:

“A system of chemical substances, called morphogens, reacting together and diffusing through a tissue, is adequate to account for the main phenomena of morphogenesis. Such a system, although it may be originally quite homogeneous, may later develop a pattern or structure due to an instability of the homogeneous equilibrium, which is triggered off by random disturbances.” – Alan Turing, 1952

Biomimetic butterflies, The Barbarian Group, 2006

Project’s webpage:

http://mcleodbutterflies.com/

Using a series of generative algorithms for the structure and pattern of the wings, seven unique “species” of butterflies were designed. Some of the generative methods used were voronoi algorithms, a simulation that shows the direction of the fluid movement as curved lines, cracking and circle packing algorithms as well as intersection lines algorithms.

The produced designs were used to produce an interactive installation of mechanical butterflies that were responding to the observers by flapping their wings!! The mechanical butterflies were composed by a laser-cut model , stepper motors, rare earth magnets, circuitry and a Mac Mini driving the installation using input from a video camera.

Michael Hansmeyer, Subdivided Columns

This project involves the design of a new column series based on a process of subdivision on an abstracted doric column.