Emergent GUI

Inspiration

What began as an exploration in rule based form development ended up becoming a tool for idea discovery. I was inspired by the way nature creates objects, using simple rules and interactions to create wondrous landscapes and wanted to use the same techniques to make 3D forms.

I came across HeMesh,  a fantastic library for Processing by Frederik Vanhoutte. HeMesh is based on half-edge data structures for meshes, which records the connection between points along with the faces and vertices. Once a mesh is created, it can be changed and distorted using modifiers such as twisting along an axis, scaling, extruding, smoothing, etc. Here is a torus being transformed via HeMesh modifiers

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While playing around with HeMesh, I realized that even when I applied the same three modifiers over and over, the resulting forms would be very different. This reminded me of Emergent Doodles and I decided to use the same idea to create forms with HeMesh

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Opportunity

It became obvious that what was missing was a platform where even non-developers could design forms with emergence. I added a user interface to the Emergent HeMesh creator, allowing anyone to select a pattern of rules and apply them to a variety of forms. The premise of the program is still the same. You start with the a shape, create a list of modifiers that are applied to the form repeatedly, and then run through that list over and over until you discover something that inspires you.

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To test my theory, a few designers used Emergent GUI to design their own spaceships. Initially, everyone approached the problem by trying to recreate what they had in their head. When this didn’t work, I suggested that they use Emergent GUI as a way of exploring and discovering new forms rather than fighting the program. The designers began to enjoy seeing the unexpected spaceships that they would not have thought of on their own.

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Emergent GUI poses a new way of solving the age old problem of form development. It not only embraces designs serendipitous nature but puts it front and center by forcing designers to discover shapes outside of their heads.

Full Process

– Natural Creation
– HeMesh
– Emergent HeMesh
– Emergent GUI
– Spaceships