Dynamic Cellular Forms

Manuel Baez
Carleton University

Nature’s fundamental processes inherently generate regulatory systems and patterns that correlate with the rich realm of natural phenomena. These fertile processes inherently involve elemental relationships that dynamically evolve into integrative systems with startling form and structure generating capabilities. Modern computer visualization and analyzing techniques are providing us with deeper insights into the ways the “operations of energy” interweave into dynamic cellular systems and structures that often recall the patterns and motifs found in nature, art, architecture, mathematics, biology, physics and music. When the generative potential and interrelated cellular patterns of these systems are analyzed, they can yield more comprehensive insights into emergent complex morphology. The intrinsic nature of these process-patterns reveals highly coordinated cellular relationships that are simultaneously stable and highly dynamic. Through systematic analysis of the dynamic potential of basic geometric relationships, a series of cellular units and hands-on experiential procedures have been developed that inherently allow for the intuitive discovery of the interrelationships between form, structure, and generative process. The form generating potential of these cellular units is explored by joining (or weaving) them together into membranes. The flexibility of the joints and their three-dimensional relationships, both within an individual cell and throughout the cellular membrane, generates a wealth of forms and structures through the emergent transformative and organizing properties of the integrated assembly. How the membrane is explored and segmented, will determine the forms and structures that can be discovered and developed. The work exhibited and presented in this conference is produced through this process. They are evolving works that explore the dynamics and generative properties of cellular units and their assemblies. The work seeks to explore how complex structures and forms are generated from initially random processes that evolve into morphologically rich integrated relationships. The morphological diversity revealed by this working and teaching method offers new insights into the complexity lurking within nature’s processes as revealed through modern scientific theories of Chaos, Complexity Fractal Geometry and Cellular Automata. The implications of these developments are relevant to the study of morphology, architecture and other diverse disciplines at a time when the ideas emerging out of our deeper understanding of complex phenomena are being embraced for conceptual inspiration.

Created by Mathematica  (April 20, 2004)