Form Through Negotiation

Prototypes investigates the emergence of form through constraint and negotiation. Initial conditions establish the framework from which geometric structures soften, adapt, and resolve into coherent image-objects. Each output exists as a complete work while simultaneously proposing a broader geometric system capable of extending across scales, materials, and future contexts.

SelSurfTen

At the core of the project is SelSurfTen (Selective Cellular Surface Tension), a self-originated geometric system developed through years of drawing, rule formation, and computational refinement. Hand-drawn explorations of simple geometric relationships gradually evolved into an executable framework, revealing behaviors that were discovered through implementation rather than prescribed in advance. Underlying these relationships is a harmonic framework through which spacing, proportion, and subdivision are derived from related intervals, some informed by musical structures.

SelSurfTen operates as a globally sequenced, locally negotiated relaxation system. A global sequence establishes which conditions are addressed first, while each individual transformation remains governed by local relationships between neighboring geometric elements. The system continually negotiates competing constraints, preserving evidence of the underlying rectilinear structure without converging on a single idealized state. Where neighboring forms exist, many of the work's most significant visual characteristics emerge through accommodation, resistance, and yielding.

The possibility space intentionally includes limiting cases in which little or no negotiation occurs. These boundary conditions reveal the underlying grammar in its simplest form, allowing the full landscape of possibilities, from solitary forms to densely negotiated structures, to remain present within the work.

Light and Form

The project intentionally excludes color as a primary expressive variable. This reduction is deliberate. By withholding color, the work asks form, light, and relationship to carry the expressive burden on their own. Working exclusively in monochrome foregrounds geometry, light, curvature, and relational structure. Depth is suggested through layered planar geometry and the perceptual behavior of light across boundaries, producing image-objects that oscillate between drawing, relief, and sculpture while remaining fundamentally computational in nature.

At times, these forms suggest architectural spaces—skateparks, playgrounds, and other structures shaped for movement and interaction. This spatial reading is informed in part by skateboarding, which taught me to see the built environment not only through its intended function, but as a field of alternate possibilities for use.

Image-Objects

The title reflects both the origin and ongoing condition of the project. These works are not prototypes because they are unfinished, nor because they await completion in another medium. Rather, each output occupies a dual role: a resolved work in its own right and a proposal for further realization. Physical fabrication, future extensions, and new contexts of execution are understood not as translations away from the work, but as continuations of the same underlying geometric grammar.

Coherence Through Interdependence

Prototypes explores how coherent structures emerge through interdependence. Individual forms remain distinct, yet become themselves through resistance, accommodation, and yielding. Within harmonically structured, carefully bounded conditions, coherence arises through continual negotiation, allowing complexity to develop without abandoning the simplicity from which it began.