2019
Art Installation
How can these algorithmic muqarnas be brought out of the computer into the real world? For their 2019-2020 Future and the Arts exhibition at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the curators commissioned a Muqarna Mutation: an algorithmically designed, robotically fabricated, 6-meter wide muqarna to be installed in a central exhibition room. The project explores how - in the context of the fourth industrial revolution - computation and robotic fabrication can bring the splendor of such a rule-based geometric art into the future. Muqarna Mutation uses the selective subdivision algorithm described above to produce a geometry that connects a massive pre-existing column at the center of an exhibition room to the room's ceiling. The algorithm generates hundreds of thousands of tiles set among sixteen tiers to create an extragavant ornamental transition from column to ceiling. A mass-produced industrial product, extruded aluminum profiles, is turned into an elaborate ornamental structure through a radical use of information technology: an algorithm successively defines an intricate form, and robots refine and ennoble simple tube elements into an ephemeral ensemble. The resulting structure transcends the historical typology into something new and unseen. Standing beneath the muqarna, visitors are struck by a mix of bewilderment and curiosity: a disorientating sensory overload partially obscures the underlying compositional logic. Patterns are readily discernible as one changes perspectives, only to disappear again amidst the endless reflections.
