David Kaufman
I am an explorer. In 2017, a visit to the Smithsonian inspired me to
explore symmetry and tessellations. I created an application called
Polygonia.design, a collection of vector-based graphic design tools.
The vision was to create physical versions of the designs made in
Polygonia, something to manipulate and interact with, something to
pick up and look at from different angles, something to set in the
window or to wear. Every material and every medium becomes an area to
explore. What could be done with wood? Paper? Acrylic? Fabric? 3D
printing? How could designs be layered? How will the shapes within the
designs interact with each other? Should the focus be on the negative
space or the positive? The possibilities are endless.
“Asterisk” was created by replacing each face of a cube with a
cube, yielding a shape with a pleasant balance between volume and
open space and a combination of concave and convex dihedral
angles. The concave and convex angles allow for more interactions
between the faces than possible with a fully convex shape. The
thirty faces are identical and were designed in Polygonia.design.
“Dichroic Crystal" was inspired by the ever-changing color of
dichroic acrylic, where the color and shadow vary by the viewing
angle of the acrylic. I wanted a shape that would present the
acrylic in a multitude of directions. The shape was created by
replacing each edge of a icosahedron with a rhombus where the
short dimension length is the length of the icosahedron edge and
the long dimension length is twice the radius of the midsphere.
The rhombus was designed in Polygonia.design. Interestingly, the
aspect ratio of the rhombus is the golden ratio.