chrysallis

algorithmic design / 3d print / 2021

A digital environment is ruled by its own very strict principles. This numerical realm shapes a characteristic aesthetic that may be explicitly exposed by emphasizing features of an object’s digital anatomy. I’m extracting the original wireframe of the virtual construction which mirrors the algorithm that makes it up. Its distinct traces are preserved on the model’s surface and reveal the internal process responsible for assembling thousands of points, edges, and cross-sections into a digital organism inscribed in the form of a loop. Even though the geometric structures stem directly from mechanisms generated by a digital code, the forms evoke biological analogies. The video included in the project enhances those analogies in the context of transforming a logical operation into a material object. The recorded process of parts of the printed prototype dissolving implicitly refers to the last stage of some insects’ metamorphosis – a process where an organism’s mature shape emerges from its chrysalis stage.