Melanie Estes: Week 10 Leonardo Wall Wash

I wanted to use the skills I have learned in digital fabrication to make a physical object that could be projected on. Because the event was going to be a celebration of Leonardo's 50th Anniversary, I used their logo as the basis for my design. The logo is a 2D image, so I needed to re imagine it to become a 3D object.

I took the image of the logo into Rhino with a Picture Frame and traced curves along the triangular shapes to where they met in the center of the dots. I then turned on points for these curves and, grabbing all of the end points that converged in one place, moved them up along the Z axis. Each convergence of points was moved to a unique height. I also moved some of the points along the outer edges of the total shape. After turning the points off, I used the curves and the planar curves tool to create surfaces. I then used a tapered extrusion along the outside edge of the model to give it some more height. Because not all of the outlying edges ended at the same height, I trimmed the bottom edge off straight with a curve an the trim tool from the front view port. I used extrude straight to make another set of surfaces around the outer edge. Using curves of a 10 sided circle, I trimmed out the holes corresponding to the logo. The entire model was finally scaled so that the holes had a diameter of 8 inches. I then exported the model into Pepakura and cut it along the most of the triangular surfaces. I also edited the flaps with assembly in mind. I exported the cutting blueprints and took them to Adobe Illustrator to save as PNGs.

To make the actual sculpture, Pablo and I set up sheets of cardboard against the wall and projected the blueprints onto them. We traced and marked the edges, then laid the cardboard down and cut out all of the pieces and their flaps. We used Loctite super glue and hot glue to hold the pieces together. After all of the cardboard was together, we used tape along the seams. We hung it up with four canvas straps with slits along the top of the sculpture. After seeing it up, we decided it would be better to paint it. So we took it back down and used two coats of white house paint.

 

I helped when we set up the room wash, and later worked with Abby to calibrate the .obj in MadMapper. I had taken the .obj into Maya and UV unwrapped it to use as an .obj import in MadMapper. We then used the wireframe to create the lines along the surface of the brain. Abby and I cleaned up the lines and made sure they sat properly on the object. I also created quads and masks to use on the vertical pillars and horizontal pipes along the ceiling, as well as on one of the projectors mounted to the ceiling.

I loved the composition Abby had that placed a neuron over the brain. It was set up so that the color pulsed with the sound and music in the room. But I also appreciated the compositions that included the elements from Leonardo, such as the covers and art found in the magazines. Given more time, I would have liked to have created something more in dedication to the founder, Frank Malina.