Prototypes

Image-objects emerging from rule and fit

Functioning as both finished works and proposals

Prototypes is an ongoing generative system that explores how rigid structures soften, adapt, and resolve when subjected to constraint, relaxation, and limited aleatoric variation. The work operates through rules rather than direct composition, allowing form to emerge through local negotiation between neighboring elements rather than top-down design.

The title reflects both the origin and ongoing role of the project. Individual outputs are not treated as provisional sketches awaiting completion, nor as fixed endpoints. Instead, each instance occupies a dual status: it stands as a resolved image-object in its own right while simultaneously pointing toward other forms, scales, and material conditions.

Stochastic processes are used to establish the system’s initial conditions, determining how discrete planar inputs are grouped and arranged. Once these conditions are set, the system behaves less like a generator and more like a solver. A relaxation process resolves the inputs through rounding, offsetting, and nestling operations that prioritize local fit, continuity, and mutual accommodation over novelty for its own sake. Because the relaxation logic is decoupled from how its inputs are produced, the system remains open to being driven by sources other than chance alone.

Many of the most salient visual qualities arise at boundaries. Individual shapes tend to lose their autonomy as the system progresses, becoming defined by how they meet, yield to, or press against their neighbors. In some instances the fit feels resolved and calm; in others it remains tense or slightly unstable. These variations are treated not as failures, but as indicators of how the system responds to competing local conditions.

The project began with hand sketches exploring how rectilinear forms might soften through simple geometric rules. As these ideas were translated into code, the focus gradually shifted away from image-making toward behavior, revealing a system that negotiates structure rather than enforcing it.

Although Prototypes is computational, it is guided by tactile intuition and perceptual bias. Depth and curvature are suggested through layered two-dimensional geometry rather than full volumetric simulation, producing image-objects that read convincingly as three-dimensional forms, while remaining sensitive to shifts in constraint that can introduce perceptual ambiguity. Outputs often resist a fixed sense of scale, reading alternately as interface elements, architectural fragments, or sculptural reliefs.

Physical realization is treated as an extension of the same relaxation logic rather than a secondary translation. In current work, bas-relief sculptures produced through CNC milling introduce material resistance, tool paths, and tolerances as additional constraints. These conditions function as another relaxation layer, requiring the system’s internal logic to reconcile with matter through guided interpretation rather than direct transcription.

This 2.5D relief phase is not intended as an endpoint. Ongoing research explores how the same underlying grammar might operate over volumetric inputs, allowing the relational logic developed in two dimensions to persist as dimensional freedom increases.

When existing constraints are loosened, the system produces qualitatively different behaviors. These variations indicate that the work spans multiple aesthetic regimes. The project nonetheless emphasizes configurations where structural coherence is preserved, allowing divergence to be read as extension rather than rupture.

Distribution has likewise been approached experimentally. Digital outputs function both as autonomous image-objects and as prototypes, while a much smaller number of works are intended to be materialized through direct fabrication. In this way, images operate simultaneously as finished works and as proposals for subsequent physical execution.

Across all manifestations, Prototypes remains less concerned with producing definitive forms than with observing how structure, chance, and constraint interact over time.