We’re checking out Shapes In Play, a two-person creative studio that appears to be working on some very interesting 3D printed designs. Much of their work involves generative design, where the shapes are determined by forces outside of the designer.
One example of their work is the Soundplotter. It’s a vase formed from an interpretation of a digital sound clip. Thirty seconds of silence corresponds to a smooth, “normal” cup, while speech, sounds or music results in a wobbly shape based on the audio waveform.
Another example is the Cloudspeaker, which is intended as an enclosure for a speaker. The shape is again determined digitally, as your 33 favorite songs are analyzed. The songs’ genres tags in this way:
To evaluate the tags all common music styles are categorized within the following parameters: loud-silent; calm-vivid; and soft-hard. On a scale from 0-10 they parametrically build the speaker body. As an example of the possible shapes the speakers can take on three objects representing metal, pop and ambient oriented music profiles were generated.
Depending on your musical tastes, or at least what’s on your iPod, you’ll get a unique Cloudspeaker.
Via Shapes In Play
