Critical Analysis Final

‘MuscleBody’ by Kas Oosterhuis, implements real time computing through applications, which operate to an input-output latency of seconds, enabling response to stimuli within milli- or microseconds. The project also utilises programmable interactive architecture engaging in future-oriented research to interact between players and object. It responds to specific requests, reconfiguring itself in real-time based on the premise that, interaction can take place only between two active parts, where one active part is the user and the other one is the building. With this technology, MuscleBody is able to alter its shape, degrees of transparency and the sound that it emits in real time via a computer programs calculations which sends corresponding instructions to the structure. Ultimately, MuscleBody is a dynamic hypersurface.

For the project to be dynamic, it must rely on responsive technologies and programming. For the project to exhibit real time behaviour, various motion and sound sensors must be implemented, code programmed and human interactivity required to create the dynamics of this hypersurface. The project itself is literally a hypersurface; Oosterhuis was so heavily involved with hypersurfaces and real time behaviours he created and directs a research group called ‘Hyperbody’, who introduce interactivity in the process of design as well as during the use and maintenance of buildings. A similar project of Oosterhuis’ is the Saltwater Pavilion; it too has real time behaviours, responding to peoples movements via audio, lighting effects and dynamic movement. Not only does the project respond to people within the structure, it responds to outside weather conditions, with its colour and dimming sequences being controlled by data from a maritime board unit.

Real time behaviour implies an additional computational concept; motion kinematics and dynamics, which are motion-based modelling technqieus, such as forward and inverse kinematics and dynamics. Generating design in such environments offers the possibility to simulate the movement of people in order to develop architectural devices responding to this movement.