Most Accidents Happen At Home
2023, Jonas Lund - with Wildxyz
Most Accidents Happen at Home is a collection of 3D artworks that explores the dissonance between real and imagined physics across both tangible and virtual environments. Each artwork is composed of a series of teetering towers of common household objects arranged in seemingly impossible or maybe just highly improbable balancing configurations. Wading through the tension between perceived improbability, Most Accidents Happen at Home is concerned with finding the boundaries and limits of what we consider real vs. artificial in the world.
This project was a consultancy for Wildxyz under the direction of artist Jonas Lund. The prompt: take a repository of 3d models of household appliances; randomly select several and balance them in a tower, or an arch; and then knock them over. The output was specified as both still renderings and animated 3d models for an interactive augmented reality experience. I "balanced" the objects using an inverted chain technique, then animated them teetering precariously using Grasshopper's Kangaroo solver. I translated this animation to Blender by transfering the transformation matrices of each object, keyframe by keyframe, with a custom script. Then in Blender I created the toppling simulation with the built-in Bullet rigidbody physics solver, and finally prepared the scene for rendering. Though not quite minimalist, well-balanced pipelines like this showcase my love for the Unix philosophy of "small sharp tools." Here, to me, the magic is in the glue that bridges between different softwares and modeling paradigms, creating unique hybrids.
