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Altered Behaviour: The Performative Nature of Manufacture Chainsaw Choreographies + Bandsaw Manoeuvres

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Book cover Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2018 (ROBARCH 2018)

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Abstract

This paper explores the ventures of the Robotic Fabrications AA Visiting School. Cultivating and implementing radical and innovative modes of architectural fabrication, we borrow from neighbouring creative fields such as choreography, performance and martial arts - efficient code being infected with an exciting spatial complexity and positing an artistic engagement within the world of physical production.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Robotic Fabrications is run by director Emmanuel Vercruysse and tutor Zachary Mollica with the robotics team of Pradeep Devadass, Gary Edwards and recently, Michael Arnett. Authors Emmanuel and Zachary are respectively a co-director and studio tutor for the AA’s Design + Make programme. At the time of the work presented, author Pradeep Devadass was AA Hooke Park’s Robotics Developer as part of a collaboration between the AA, UWE and KTP.

  2. 2.

    The authors, as faculty for the AA’s Design + Make programme, gained significant expertise in working with complex inherent timber forms through the Wood Chip Barn project (2016). ‘Chainsaw Choreographies’ expanded on the extensive workflows established [2].

  3. 3.

    While the robotic arm operates with sub millimeter precision, through close observation, the chainsaw was found to resonate up to 4 mm due to the arm’s inflexibility and lack of damping.

  4. 4.

    The Chainsaw uses a bar of approximately 400 × 60 × 4 mm, while the bandsaw’s kerf is much thinner and restricted by the 400 mm cutting gate between its two wheels.

  5. 5.

    Chainsaws for example may be mounted with ripping (for cutting along grain) or crosscutting (for cutting across grain) chains – each possessing a different tooth profile. Impractical to switch between each operation, the arms feed rates are instead adjusted to compensate – simulating the human operator. With the bandsaw, a trade off is made between speed of cutting (requiring a large tooth pitch) and minimum turning radius (requiring a finer band/tooth).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Design + Make, Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, UK

    Emmanuel Vercruysse & Zachary Mollica

  2. Individualized Production, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Pradeep Devadass

Authors
  1. Emmanuel Vercruysse
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  2. Zachary Mollica
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  3. Pradeep Devadass
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emmanuel Vercruysse .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Weimar, Germany

    Jan Willmann

  2. Department of Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

    Philippe Block

  3. Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marco Hutter

  4. San Francisco, CA, USA

    Kendra Byrne

  5. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Tim Schork

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Vercruysse, E., Mollica, Z., Devadass, P. (2019). Altered Behaviour: The Performative Nature of Manufacture Chainsaw Choreographies + Bandsaw Manoeuvres. In: Willmann, J., Block, P., Hutter, M., Byrne, K., Schork, T. (eds) Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2018. ROBARCH 2018. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92294-2_24

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