The Fallen Angel

For this project I started with the idea of creating something that resembles scale or feather, then it sort of turned into a happy accident of exploring the shape combinations of two rather basic building blocks and creating something asthetic.

I started with a bunch of random sketches, in which I considered very simple geometric shapes like hexagon, and also centro-symmetric shapes, I even considered making something according to the molecular structure of certain chemicals as an act of desperation, then I got into thinking about how to make very simple shapes interesting like the circles in img2. Nothing really clicked until I stumbled upon the idea of creating "feathers and scales".

I started with making some cardboard prototypes of the feathers that I wanted to create. And then I suddenly ran into the problem of how to align the feathers aesthetically well. Then I decided to make a frame with slotted sides to insert the feathers. To get more spacial variation, I made all the piece of the frames in the shape of parallelograms, which ended up being the key aspect of how my project turned out in the end.

Then I quickly printed the frames out and tried how they would turn out assembled. They turned out to be very nuanced on how the pieces are aligned and had a lot of mirrored variants which I did not expect. Then I played around with how the frames alone could be assembled together to make a geometric shape, which I then decided needing another variation of the single piece which has the slots in both ends turned to the other side of the piece, as shown in p3.

p4 shows the two different variants of frames I used in building the piece, the difference lies in that the ends have slots that points to wither outwards or inwards.

With this alteration I was able to align them together to a frame that I could assemble into the shape in p5.

(I had a few extra pieces left for safety reasons, which ended up on the final sculpture as the center which holds the core together more strongly. (p6))

After settling down with the final frame shape, I was able to add the feathers to it. I tried to trace an image of a feather but decided that simple geometric shapes might fit the sculpture better otherwise the contrast might be too abrupt (between the hard shapes of the frames and the soft organic shape of the feathers), nevertheless it is a route worth exploring (highlighting the contrast between the cold, machine-processed frames and the soft texture of a feather).

And then there was the printing and the assembling.

Reflecting on this project I feel like yes it was a sculpture made of modular structures, but the patterns and infinitely repeatability shown in the examples is an aspect that I really would have wanted to explore if I were not to go with this route. However I was happy how the project turned out, both technically and aesthetically.

(Also I avoided any reinforcements with glues and strings which could be a plus to the fabrication process.)