Material Obfuscation. Obfuscation is the process in software development of making the source code hard to interpret for a human reader, while remaining executable for a computer. This experiment11 looked into the allographic qualities introduced by photogrammetry and 3D scanning on the one hand and a d.i.y. filament printer on the other. Through various iterations of modelling, printing, scanning and repeating that process, the accumulative particular qualities or errors of both these technologies become amplified. The feedback loop accelerates the question of authorship, allowing the algorithms, the machinic fabrication processes and the material to actively contribute to the resulting fabricated artefact. The final iteration shows traces of the code, the triangulation introduced by photogrammetry, the layered and linear qualities of the slicing algorithm that controls the motion of the 3D printer, as well as material properties and limits.

Since the algorithms are highly attuned to the fabrication and material nature of the 3D printed artefacts, their 2D counterparts can be seen as representational: they represent a material reality outside themselves, but the way they refer to this materiality is not symbolic, but rather an enactment of the same movements that can be made by a different machine to produce material artefacts. When drawing an architectural section, line-weights and hatches are used as a symbolic notation of materiality: the thicker the line, the denser the material. The hatches in the Hatching with Matter drawings might be reminiscent of hatches in architectural drawings, but they operate in a non-symbolic manner. As such, these drawings also acquire an experiential quality, and become non-representational. The nature of the drawing is altered through digital fabrication: The drawing loses its projective connotations and becomes an unfolded trace for the fabrication process of cutting or adding material.

Thanks to my instructor Corneel Cannaerts.