Aircombing!

Sculpturally Mapping Airflow

Jingyi Jia
MLA I 2023
Owen Mellett
MArch I 2023
Magic Sun
MLA II 2023
Image
1 Post recording sculpture visualizing the hand’s disturbances to the air.

Inspired by Richard Wilson’s Scuplture, “Slipstream” at Heathrow Terminal 1, we wanted to translate Wilson’s intent to “transpose the thrill of the air‐show to the architectural environment of the international air terminal”, into a real-time visualization of air disturbances created by the motion of the hand.

In other words, enabling the creation of sculpture in real time by turning the air disturbed by movement into a medium.

Using Fologram for Rhino, we developed a program with two applications. One maps motion after the fact, while the other allows for sculpting in real time.

Project video
Image
2 Richard Wilson’s “Slipstream” (2014).
Image
3 The real-time tracking program in action.
Image
4 Variations created by hand motion.