A Molten Gesture:
Expanding 'Hand-Craft' Through Body Tracking and Robotic Arms

XR, Motion Capture, Digital Fabrication

Instructor: Riley Studebaker, Claire Moriarty
Role: Designed pouring logics, motion capture, generated the body motion routes and reprinted by robotic arms, studied the difference and optimized the patterns.
Toolkits: Rhino, Grasshopper, ABB 6-axis Robot, HTC Vive
Workshop: Acadia 2022
Year: 2022

This project utilizes advanced technologies such as body-tracking software, real-time robotic control, and neural networks to create a unique and innovative approach to painting and custom-cast metal sculptures. The system can analyze and reanalyze gesture paths in real-time by simulating, interpreting, optimizing, and co-creating human painting gestures. The result is a fascinating robotic simulation that allows users to control the creation of custom-cast metal sculptures in a previously impossible way.

Objects made by the human hand are inherently seductive. This workshop explores an augmentation of bodily agency in fabrication using computation and robotics to bring hazardous processes into this realm of hand-craft. Participants will use body-tracking software, real-time robotic control, and methods of neural network-based gestural redistribution to create a bespoke poured metal lighting element. Each lighting element will be specific to a site chosen by the participant, and create directly responsive light and shadow. Participants will make a series of gestural studies in dripped metal using real-time VR control of a robotic arm. A selection of these physical results will be mapped around the surface of the final pendant light using artificial neural networks for final robotic fabrication, redistributing the arrangement of dripped metal, porosity, and intrinsic and familiar qualities of the maker’s hand, for a responsive and bespoke lighting effect and an object that challenges the conception of hand-craft.