John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

mainly used in the animation industry for recording the movements of an actor
and then you would use that for special effects in a film.
It works on the basis of fibre optics and records the curvature of how the fibre
optics bend and translates that into the movement on the screen so you can
really record the dynamic movement of your hand. You can really use this to
describe shapes by your hand in space and record that data as linear paths just
like the MicroScribe®. You can have much more dynamic paths using all the
digits. Whenever we discuss shape nearly all designers and makers always use
our hands to gesture and explain things by our hands. So this research is an
attempt to create using our hands and using that tool.
The splines are recorded and from the splines again you can create surfaces
between the splines. Once you have surfaces you can process it again – you can
RP or in this case we used milling. We milled out the representation of the
movement of the hand. Initially, we used ceramics as pots – the interesting part
is that you are going from digital into physical objects. The digital part is really
quite easy. Once you get to the physical part it gets difficult. Creating moulds
for such complicated, random shapes is very difficult. I did a few pieces that
weren’t very successful. They were very difficult to produce. At the moment I’m
trying to find different applications for using the glove and the hand to produce
shapes. What you will see in the exhibition is some stools that I think are much
more successful in the way it has been used. The surfaces have been milled
from the forms created and there is no subsequent mould making. It is also
quite interesting to experience something not always through your hand but
through other parts of your body. They are still flat enough to sit on and be
comfortable but it is interesting to find a place to sit. The movement of the hand
is a long movement across the three chairs.
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