Nervous System, a.k.a. Rosenkrantz and Louis-Rosenberg, use organic forms and patterns as blueprints for digitally printed objects. Their 4D-printing system, which creates flexible, responsive objects, is named for kinematics, the branch of classical mechanics known as the geometry of motion. This dress consists of more than three thousand unique parts combined into a single complex assemblage. The garment’s surface is digitally tessellated into triangular shapes, the tessellation is folded and compressed, and the dress is formed from nylon powder fused into a solid material; the tiles emerge from the printer already hinged together to fit a scan of the client’s body.
Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design, 2023
Gallery label from This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good , February 14, 2015–January 31, 2016.
Working at the intersection of math, science, and technology, designers Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg study patterns inherent to organic forms, using them as blueprints for man-made printed materials. Kinematics is a branch of classical mechanics that investigates the motion of points and objects, a term adopted by the designers for their 4-D printing system. The dress consists of over three thousand unique parts that have been combined into one complete, complex assemblage in a 3-D printer.
To produce the dress, the client’s body is imaged through a 3-D scan, onto which the garment surface is then digitally tessellated into triangular shapes that hinge together (the smaller the triangles, the more flexible and likely to drape the fabric will be). The tessellation is compressed to fit the volume of (the 3-D printer and the form is generated using a selective laser sinter process that binds nylon powder into concrete forms. This method allows garments to be customized based on clients’ individual body shapes and aesthetic desires.
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