Recursive Folding

This study is an attempt to capture the spatial aspirations embedded in an earlier physical construct/model by translanting the intrinsic rules of the physical model into grasshopper operations. Rather than attempting to build the digital model in a single grasshopper sequence, I decided to establish a recursive process in which every step was baked into rhino and used to determine the outcome of the next step. The operation started by randomly selecting 4 points from an square XY grid that has been jittered in the Z direction. These 4 points are then connected to form 2 (or 3) triangular surfaces adjoined along a single side. These surfaces are then rotated along the other surfaces' centroid by an angle equilivent to the original fold. (This probably sounds more complex than it really is - essentially each new surface is created based on the values of the original surface).

After this operation (Series_1 below) the surfaces began to add together through a recursive process. The recursive process involves step 'A' being baked into rhino and brought back into grasshopper as a rotation about the surfaces in step 'B'. This process continues through step 'E'. Since the series is not completely automated (which would have required a VBscript) it allowed an opportunity to control some of the parameters like surface selection and line of rotation. Any non-contiguous surfaces were eleminated in each step.

For a clear example of the recursive effect compare series_1 and series_3 (below).

click image for larger view.