« Kinematic Curvature »

As an intern, Peter Eisenman freaked out on me at one point about a curve I drew not being an elegant.  The beauty of the situation was that he sat down for about an hour to explain the properties of a good curve to me.  It had something to do with a gradual increase in its degree of curvature, but really I think its one of those ineffible things that he felt he had to justify.  Regardless,  I’ve discovered a better way to make consistently elegant curves. 

Playing around with inverse kinematics and dynamics in Maya, I figured out that you can produce curves with a kinematic armature that have gradual parametric curvature.  This solves the inherent problem in splines and nurbs that there are no qualitative or performative restraints.  I did some research into this and it is a concept that apparently already exists.  

Kinematic curves are curves produced by machinery, or a combination of motions, as distinguished from mathematical curves.  The appeal of this should be quite clear, we can produce precise machined curvatures that are free of the constraints of mathematically defined curves.  I ‘m pretty sure I will be basing the rest of the semester on trying to maximize this potential in my project.