2. Digital bodies¶

Research & Ideation¶

After the class and tutorials of these week, I spent some time researching for inspiration on things I like such as control, movement, music and artistic expression and how fashion has always been interested in capturing the body in these disciplines as we can see in some of the editorials.

FKA Twigs, one of my favorite artists. She’s a singer, dancer, performer and overall multitalented woman who is always pushing the boundaries has also included pole dance, sword training and other disciplines to her skill set.

FKA Twigs - Eusexua

I included some sports I have done throughout the years such as archery, swimming, dancing, Taichi and pilates where control and strength are important. Zendaya representing my actor friends and how they use their body to express feelings onstage and the discipline they have to take care of their main instrument by exercising, expanding to other disciplines such as dance that make them well rounded professionals.

References & Inspiration¶

In more anatomical/medical view, I wanted to think on what is not usually visible or represented. We know about bones, muscles and organs but what about other systems that exist? I included the Vionnet dress that has cuts and stitches following the muscles lines of the body, the body meridians according to traditional Chinese medicine and fascia system of the body.

I’m taking the body and all the references of self expression above to the oppsite side of the spectrum. When we feel so affected by life circumstances, damaged by past experiences and how we stop the self expression, the flow and movement of life. In his book, The Body Keeps the score, Bessel Van Der Kork, presents how trauma affects the brain and body and how movement can help restore these connections. Stephen Porges author of the Polyvagal theory touches this concept as well.

Here's the final piece after assembling all weekend:

Added a stylized version using wool from the Thones and Marthod sheep from the Alps region trying to evoke the feeling of restriction.

Tools¶

Open source tools used for the project

Process and workflow¶

3D modelling¶

My initial idea was to have a torso with crossed arms, so I started with MakeHuman to get a 3D model. I quickly realized that the poses there were not going to work for what I needed so I decided to download poses from the community.

This one was close enough but not really what I needed. I thought I could export it to blender and adjust the pose (spoiler, it didn't work)

I exported from MakeHuman as fbx making sure I added the skelleton as Game Engine in settings. In Blender I tried changing the pose by moving the skelleton, and it didn't work completely. I think I was close to figure it out but I decided to go with the existing pose from the community to have enough time to go through the next part of the process

Slicing¶

Sitting down pose in Blender using slicer add-on: I did this on Blender but since I had over 200 slices, it would take forever to number them and get a layout for cutting.

So, I decided to move to Fusion 360 since it's a more complete program for laser cutting. It's better because

it allows you to set up the boaard size according to the bed of the laser cutting machine and size of the model.
gives you the numbered pieces and layout of pages.
shows you the step-by-step assembly process.
allows different design configurations of slice direction

Preparing for cutting¶

Before cutting, our instructor Capucine helped us with simplifying the files so that we had less points in the .svg file and we could reduce the cutting time. In the meantime, I got to cutting the cardboards to fit the cutting machine since they are a bit bigger.

Then, it was a matter of opening the files on Inkscape to change them to landscape position, add the dimensions of the boards.

Laser cutting¶

Capucine had taught us how to use the machine. In simple steps:

Turn on in specific order
Setup the cardboard, add tape on the edges so it won't move.
Check the level of the bed by using the adjustment tool. Bring the bed up and when the tool drops (by touching the cardboard), it's the right height
On Inkscape go to file>print and it would open on the software from the cutting machine.
Review the settings of power and velocity before printing and press START.
Monitor your work in progress.
Wait for the chiller to stop before opening the machine.

Assembly¶

I started by sorting the pieces according to the numbers engraved.
Using the Slicer360 plans I started assembling the big parts, skipping the supper small parts (we lost some while simplifying the path for printing)
Lots of glue and patience to do 261 parts

Fabrication files¶

3D Models¶

Human-sitting-floor by dianavee

We used kinect to capture a model too, but I decided to go wuth one from MakeHuman. I scanned a torso from a mannequin we had at the lab using the Skanect software.

kinectscan by dianavee