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Writer's pictureShelby McAuliffe

Moiré Movement


A study of:

move·ment

/ˈmo͞ovmənt/

noun

1. an act of changing physical location or position or of having this changed.

As camouflage.

We cannot see,

The wind.

The sky.

The air.

It move the leaves back and forth. They fall to the ground at first winter freeze.

A kinetic object is comprehensible, is frozen, only by the mind.

The camera can freeze motion. It freezes movement of the natural world and locks an object in space and time. This project explores these invisible forces seemingly visualized through the use of a camera.

After opening Rhino, I found the photo I wanted to follow and dropped the image into the top c plane. This allowed me to select if I wanted the image to be a BitMap or a photograph. I selected photograph instead of background BitMap which allows me to move, copy, select and paste the image. Background BitMap embeds the images within the layer and can only be altered by turning the visibility on or off.

Once I had the image on the correct layer, I began to use Poly Curve lines to trace the leaf forms. I traced the images natural vertical lines to create the sense of falling. I wasn't as thrilled about how these lines interacted with the leaf shapes so I used the tool to make circles and began placing these over the vertical lines to create different patterns. I trimmed the circles which fell outside of my bounding box of the image. This also didn't seem to work visually.

I changed my direction of lines and decided to make the image a vertical image.

I selected the leaf forms and copied them over to a new bounded box created using the closed curve option. I referenced my materials to know the size restraints for my project.

Once I had everything in place I began to draw lines that followed the pattern of the leafs.

This design is inspired by the phenomenon of Moiré patterns.

"In mathematics, physics, and art, a moiré pattern (English: /mwɑːˈreɪ/; French: [mwaʁe]) or moiré fringes[1] are large-scale interference patterns that can be produced when an opaque ruled pattern with transparent gaps is overlaid on another similar pattern."(WIkipedia)

I began thinking about throughout the semester I have been cutting forms out of acrylic to make another form. Positive shapes used, and the negative either being thrown away or utilized in conjunction with the positive.

What would happen if I didn't cut anything OUT of the acrylic, but rather, cut into the acrylic? Leaving only the marks of the laser as the tool to create my drawing.

I deleted interesting lines using trim so there wouldn't be a possibility of loss of material.

While cutting with the laser cutter I used different settings to see how each thickness would respond to the laser. (These settings will be different for different lasers.)

To cut all the way through Power and Frequency must be at 100% and speed abut 3%

When cutting the large 1/4" acrylic, I used a fast speed (6) dropped the power and frequency to 96% each. This made the cuts only go through partially allowing for no loss in the acrylic. With the power and frequency lowered, the cuts weren't as clean and it created a lot of residue on the acrylic after cutting. This was cleaned off by using microfiber clothes and isopropyl alcohol.


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