SCI-Arc Spring 2015 Glitch and Twitch: Assignment

Description

Instructor: Ivan Bernal

ivan_bernal@sciarc.edu

TA: Alexander Petrakos

Glitch and Twitch

In the digital world, computational operations are full with small glitches that produce unexpected

behaviors, In Video games specifically, this glitches that occur due to the lack of information or processing power

deform and distort the created environment producing funny or even creepy results. This same behavior can be

observed in living organism as they experience muscle spasm or twitches. The goal of this course is to analyze

the possibilities of the glitch and twitch as a generative tool for new mass qualities, and to introduce them in two

stages in the course of the class.

At the beginning of the class, glitches would be used in the digital work, which would later be compared to

the result of twitches to the physical models.

This course examines the potential of advanced modeling, animation, and robotic techniques to produce

and represent complex geometries. Taking advantage of a single platform, students would be introduced to the

techniques to help them postulate, analyze, develop and present their design ideas.

Step 1: Rooted in animation tools, the class would add behaviors to their projects as a way to set their ideas in

time, and challenge the notion of a static design. Mutation, Postures, Deformations, Contortions, and Growth would

be injected into the geometries as a way to challenge the students to think of their design as fluctuating matter.

This step would provide feedback and yield aspects and opportunities not seen before in the project. The goal is

to produce a series of studies in which students are asked to evaluate geometry from the design point of view, with

the goal of critically understanding the variations produced using animation techniques. Representational

animation would be then introduced as a way for student to explain their ideas and the process of design in a

sequence of images and animations. Dealing with camera paths, film techniques, and render methods

Step 2: Robotics will be introduced to add another level of complexity to the initial design, and ground their

behaviors in a physical environment and constrains. Taking advantage of the flexibility of this system and its

tendency for disruption, students are expected to rearrange, reposition and contort their project to test the limits of

the systems they have created.

The Final output would not only rely on the visualization of the behavior achieved in the class, but would also

introduced dynamic skeletons to recreate and investigate such behavior in physical models. With a link between

Arduino and Maya, students could expand their design criteria in an investigation of the physicality and materiality

of their projects as the translation from the computer to their desk would take place, allowing them to compare and

overly the digital and the physical. This juxtaposition would generate a tension in which student would examine the

results, catalog them and insert them back to their digital models to inform and reiterate the process.