The World's Most Complex Architecture: Cardboard Columns With 16 Million Facets
Above is a link to an article my scholar friend posted on Facebook, and well, I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it, and here is why:Has anyone seen "Between the Folds: Exploring Origami" (Netflix Instant Play)? It addresses this idea of using complex math and computers to create intriguing and intricately complex shapes, and it asks the question of whether this method this creates greater beauty or not. I believe the question is applicable here.
Perhaps something of the simple elegance and easy strength, the integrity behind a Doric column is lost in Michael Hansmeyer's breakdown? How interesting that the essential idea of deceptively simple stoic support is here subdivided by another's algorithm and a computer program into something more akin to a wild Gothic revival? I appreciate the organic qualities of these shapes and the way facets resemble scales that seem to crawl, but I'm not sure I appreciate the impulse and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of 3D printers making art. I feel trapped in a cave when I try to see how the hand of the maker is present in a work like this. Is it in coming up with the algorithm? Or in writing the computer program and building the printer to carve it? Perhaps, in some way and thrice removed, it is a collaborative work. (I did not say, "of art.")
Yet, carve me a stone, two stones that fit together just so and stand the test of time, and I will see the careful hand of the maker and know his worth.
