{"id":2589,"date":"2019-01-27T16:49:23","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T16:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simonings.com\/?p=2589"},"modified":"2019-10-29T20:34:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T20:34:24","slug":"making-abstract-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=2589","title":{"rendered":"Making abstract life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Talking to the design engineer Yamanaka Shunji for New Scientist, 23 January 2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Five years ago, desktop 3D printers were poised to change the world. A couple of things got in the way. The print resolution wasn\u2019t very good. Who wants to drink from a tessellated cup?<\/p>\n

More important, it turned out that none of us could design our way out of a wet paper bag.<\/p>\n

Japanese designer\u00a0Yamanaka Shunji<\/a>\u00a0calls forth one-piece walking machines from vinyl-powder printers the way the virtuoso Phyllis Chen\u00a0conjures concert programmes from toy pianos<\/a>. There\u2019s so much evident genius at work, you marvel that either has time for such silliness.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s method here, of course: Yamanaka\u2019s\u00a0X-Design programme<\/a>\u00a0at Keio University turns out objects bigger than the drums in which they\u2019re sintered, by printing them in folded form. It\u2019s a technique lifted from space-station design, though starry-eyed Western journalists, obsessed with Japanese design, tend to reach for origami metaphors.<\/p>\n

Yamanaka\u2019s international touring show,\u00a0which is stopping off at Japan House in London until mid-Marc<\/a>h, knows which cultural buttons to press. The tables on which his machine prototypes are displayed are steel sheets, rolled to a curve and strung under tension between floor and ceiling, so visitors find themselves walking among what appear to be unfolded paper scrolls. If anything can seduce you into buying a \u00a3100 sake cup when you exit the gift shop, it\u2019s this elegant, transfixing show.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe often make robots for their own sake,\u201d says Yamanaka, blithely, \u201cbut usefulness is also important for me. I\u2019m always switching between these two ways of thinking as I work on a design.\u201d
\nThe beauty of his work is evident from the first. Its purpose, and its significance, take a little unpacking.<\/p>\n

Rami<\/em>, for example: it\u2019s a below-the-knee running prosthesis developed for the athlete Takakura Saki, who represented Japan during the 2012 Paralympics. Working from right to left, one observes how a rather clunky running blade mutated into a generative, organic dream of a limb, before being reined back into a new and practical form. The engineering is rigorous, but the inspiration was aesthetic: \u201cWe hoped the harmony between human and object could be improved by re-designing the thing to be more physically attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think about that a second. It\u2019s an odd thing to say. It suggests that an artistic judgement can spur on and inform an engineering advance. And so, it does, in Yamanaka\u2019s practice, again, and again.<\/p>\n

Yamanaka, is an engineer who spent much of his time at university drawing manga, and cut his teeth on car design at Nissan. He wants to make something clear, though: \u201cEngineering and art don\u2019t flow into each other. The methodologies of art and science are very different, as different as objectivity and subjectivity. They are fundamental attitudes. The trick, in design, is to change your attitude, from moment to moment.\u201d Under Yamanaka\u2019s tutelage, you learn to switch gears, not grind them.<\/p>\n

Eventually Yamanaka lost interest in giving structure and design to existing technology. \u201cI felt if one could directly nurture technological seeds, more imaginative products could be created.\u201d It was the first step on a path toward designing for robot-human interaction.<\/p>\n

\"2nd_Prototyping_in_Tokyo_exhibition_at_Japan_House_London_16Jan-17Mar2019_showing_work_by_Professor_Yamanaka_Shunji_Image\u00a9Jeremie_Souteyrat-(2)\"<\/p>\n
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Yamanaka \u2013 so punctilious, so polite \u2013 begins to relax, as he contemplates the work of his peers: Engineers are always developing robots that are realistic, in a linear way that associates life with things, he says, adding that they are obsessed with being more and more \u201creal\u201d. Consequently, he adds, a lot of their work is \u201chorrible. They\u2019re making zombies!\u201d<\/p>\n

Artists have already established a much better approach, he explains: quite simply, artists know how to sketch. They know how to reduce, and abstract. \u201cFrom ancient times, art has been about the right line, the right gesture. Abstraction gets at reality, not by mimicking it, but by purifying it. By spotting and exploring what\u2019s essential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yamanaka\u2019s robots don\u2019t copy particular animals or people, but emerge from close observation of how living things move and behave. He is fascinated by how even unliving objects sometimes seem to transmit the presence of life or intelligence. \u201cWe have a sensitivity for what\u2019s living and what\u2019s not,\u201d he observes. \u201cWe\u2019re always searching for an element of living behaviour. If it moves, and especially if it responds to touch, we immediately suspect it has some kind of intellect. As a designer I\u2019m interested in the elements of that assumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it is, inevitably, that the most unassuming machine turns out to hold the key to the whole exhibition.\u00a0Apostroph<\/em>\u00a0is the fruit of a collaboration with Manfred Hild, at Sony\u2019s Computer Science Laboratories in Paris. It\u2019s a hinged body made up of several curving frames, suggesting a gentle logarithmic spiral.<\/p>\n

Each joint contains a motor which is programmed to resist external force. Leave it alone, and it will respond to gravity. It will try to stand. Sometimes it expands into a broad, bridge-like arch; at other times it slides one part of itself through another, curls up and rolls away.<\/p>\n

As an engineer, you always follow a line of logic, says Yamanaka. You think in a linear way. It\u2019s a valuable way of proceeding, but unsuited to exploration. Armed with fragile, good-enough 3D-printed prototypes, Yamanaka has found a way to do without blueprints, responding to the models he makes as an artist would.<\/p>\n

In this, he\u2019s both playing to his strengths as a frustrated manga illustrator, and preparing his students for a future in which the old industrial procedures no longer apply. \u201cBlueprints are like messages which ensure the designer and manufacturer are on the same page,\u201d he explains. \u201cIf, however, the final material could be manipulated in real time, then there would be no need to translate ideas into blueprints.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rami---Additively-manufactured-running-specific-prosthetics_Image-\u00a9-KATO-Yasushi-\"<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a seductive spiel but I can\u2019t help but ask what all these elegant but mostly impractical forms are all, well,\u00a0for<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Yamanaka\u2019s answer is that they\u2019re to make the future bearable. \u201cI think the perception of subtle lifelike behaviour is key to communication in a future full of intelligent machines,\u201d he says. \u201cRight now we address robots directly, guiding their operations. But in the future, with so many intelligent objects in our life, we\u2019ll not have the time or the patience or even the ability to be so precise. Body language and unconscious communication will be far more important. So designing a lifelike element into our machines is far more important than just tinkering with their shape.\u201d<\/p>\n

By now we\u2019ve left the gallery and are standing before\u00a0Flagella<\/em>, a mechanical mobile made for Yamanaka\u2019s 2009 exhibition Bones, held in Tokyo Midtown.\u00a0Flagella<\/em>\u00a0is powered by a motor with three units that repeatedly rotate and counter-rotate, its movements supple and smooth like an anemone. It\u2019s hard to believe the entire machine is made from hard materials.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a child standing in front of it. His parents are presumably off somewhere agonising over sake cups, dinky tea pots, bowls that cost a month\u2019s rent. As we watch, the boy begins to dance, riffing off the automaton\u2019s moves, trying to find gestures to match the weavings of the machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one is of no practical purpose whatsoever,\u201d Yamanaka smiles. But he doesn\u2019t really think that. And now, neither do I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talking to the design engineer Yamanaka Shunji for New Scientist, 23 January 2019 Five years ago, desktop 3D printers were poised to change the world. A couple of things got in the way. The print resolution wasn\u2019t very good. Who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618],"tags":[402,164,315,197,232,77,284],"class_list":["post-2589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-art-science","tag-design","tag-exhibition","tag-interview","tag-new-scientist","tag-psychology","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2589"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2953,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions\/2953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}