CARTER FLEMMING

INDEPENDENT STUDY 2022 - SAMU

CONCLUSIONS

I ran into many issues with the physical execution of this project. Since I am still learning about Rhino and Grasshopper, I did not know all of the limitations to certain components and attempted functions that were precarious or not possible. Much of my work revolved around manipulating the plant meshes to be printable, which I did not have time to achieve because each mesh was so complex and ultimately too small. I was disappointed by this setback, but I was also able to see how intricate the details of my model were. I was so interested in my research, goals, and this projects' essential questions; I see it as a success because I learned so much about my topic and tried so hard to follow through with my vision. The final digital rendering looks a lot like what I imagined; I stuck with it even when certain commands seemed difficult or I had to work around challenges. I am excited to continue my study and see it through until the end.

STEP 10: TROUBLE, WRAPPING UP

Samu and I guessed that my first prototype did not print because the trees were too small for the printing tip to achieve. I went back to my file and stretched it vertically, which made it a bit less realistic but made the trees larger in proportion to the terrain, which was essential for printing. Unfortunately, the new file buffered for an entire school day and did not finish properly preparing to 3D print. I had no time left in the semester to troubleshoot and re-print, so my prototype and Rhino files will suffice until I can return to school and complete the physical rendering of my project.

STEP 9: FIRST MODEL

After spending quite a bit of time cleaning up the file– grouping plants together, trimming the size of the base, extracting mesh faces, and most tediously, deleting every single plant mesh that overlapped– I was ready to 3D-print my model. I exported the file as an STL and put it into Simplify3D, a pre-printing preparation app. Samu and I arranged the printing settings and sent the file to print. The terrain printed quite successfully, but I was disappointed to find that none of the trees, which I had worked so hard on, printed. I would need to figure out how to print the trees in order to be satisfied with my final product.

STEP 8: MANUAL EDITING

Finally, my render was ready to be manually edited in Rhino. I had the shape of the forest, but I wanted to use my findings about land management in the North Fork Mono Tribe to manipulate the way it looked. I selected large portions of meshes and deleted them to create the quintessential meadows the nation uses in the SIerra Nevada forest. The other main realistic feature is the distribution of the California Black Oaks, which are much rarer but essential to the ecosystem. Until very recently, only one California Black Oak could be found in a 50-100 mile radius, with half the acorn-bearing capacity it should have. Luckily, restoration of Indigenous sovereignty and forestry is helping to bring back the California Black Oak, pictured above. Lastly, I added a thick base to the terrain by making its mesh into a polysurface, tracing the edge, and extruding it.

Unfortunately, after converting the plants to meshes, they no longer worked with the "Populate Geometry" component in Grasshopper and could not be distributed over the terrain. "Populate Geometry" uses points to populate, and the "plant" Lands Design component comes from specific points. Since meshes are geometries and not points, the component did not function; after some trial and error, we realized that I needed to way to bake the plant components and then convert them all to meshes at once. I then offset all of the meshes simultaneously, which took over an hour for the computer to process. This step first demonstrated to me the size of the file and the issues it would cause further on in the project in terms of processing time.

MESH ISSUE

STEP 7: MESHES

The plant components from Lands Design are not physical objects; they can only be rendered on the computer. To convert them to be printable objects, I "baked" (transferred) them into Rhino from Grasshopper and converted them to meshes using the "Mesh" command. Once the plants were physical objects, complex meshes with many faces, I offset the meshes to give them thickness (and therefore the ability to be printed). Samu and I worked together to troubleshoot the complicated meshes until they were free of faulty pieces (like Naked Edges and Duplicate Faces) and ready to be populated onto the terrain.

The Rendered Model Before Manual Editing

One section of the Grasshopper code with: the terrain set as a scaled mesh, plugged into a Populate Geometry component to populate the terrain with points; number sliders to dictate the number of points; plant component to place plants on each of the points. The plant is connected to a Plant Options component with a selected species, height, and density.

In terms of plant distribution, I made sure to use the fewest California Black Oak trees because I learned from my research that they are relatively rare in nature, which is why they need much protection and cultivation. I placed two kinds of conifer and two kinds of forest floor shrubin many points around the terrain.

STEP 6: MODELING

After downloading all of my plugins and learning the basics of Lands Design, I was eager to start the bulk of my project: creating an authentic forest model. Before I could manually move and edit any trees in Rhino, I modeled them in Grasshopper. I experimented with the "populate geometry" component and populated the terrain with thousands of points. I could insert plant components with various different species to land on each point, filling the terrain with plant life. I selected six plant varieties out of the thousands of plants native to the Sierra Nevada region; I want my project to be accurate, but it is limited because it would not be possible with the time I have to create a perfectly detailed and accurate forest model. After creating these trees in Grasshopper, I needed to find a way to close the meshes they created in Rhino so they could be rendered in real life.

CA BLACK OAK

ACORNS

LEAVES

Unfortunately, after downloading Elk and troubleshooting for several hours, it was not able to run on my computer. Luckily, I discovered that the Terrain component of Lands Design allowed me to select areas of the world map to import with a full topographical terrain, which created a mesh of the land I needed for my forest model.

STEP 4: LANDS DESIGN

An extensive search for landscaping plugins led me to Lands Design, a program for Rhino and Grasshopper Windows. Lands Design's features include thousands of plant varieties to render and features to plot forests across a plane of points.

After downloading Lands Design to Rhino and Grasshopper, I experimented with its functions. First, I added a plant component and chose a Coastal Live Oak, or Quercus Agrifolia. The California Black Oak that is cultivated by the North Fork Mono Tribe was not available to render, but the Coastal Live Oak was the closest variety. I practiced plotting a forest using geometries I placed directly into Rhino.

STEP 3: ELK

From my Digital Fabrication: Algorithm to Object class in 2021, I learned of a Grasshopper plugin called Elk. Elk allows me to download topographic SRTM files and render them in Rhino. I acquired a Windows computer to borrow for this project and downloaded Elk onto it.

I selected a portion of the Sierra Nevada forest to render my for project. I found its longitude and latitude, downloaded the corresponding Zip File, and added it to the "File Path" component on my Grasshopper file.

FINDINGS

It is impossible to sum all of it up into a concise paragraph, but I learned so much about the North Fork Mono Tribe's history of forest cultivation, the impacts of colonization, and their efforts to restore the forest to its former abundance. The North Fork Mono people have lived in their ancestral home in the Sierra Nevada Region for thousands of years. The tree they most valued and protected was the California Black Oak. The North Fork Mono people lit fires in the forests to keep the trees healthy. These "Cultural burnings", named because of their traditional knowledge and cultural significance, are essential to creating meadows. Meadows allow water preservation and distribution; California gets much of its water from snowpack that flows into lakes and rivers as it melts, and meadows act as sponges to trap the water and release it slowly so that water is available during dryer months.

After European colonization, however, Black Oaks were cut for fuel, invasive conifers were planted for lumber, and cultural burning was stopped. In 2014, the The North Fork Mono Tribe went into an agreement with the Sierra National Forest to restore Indigenous fire stewardship and restore meadows and oak trees. Forests have long since lost their resilience to fires, droughts, and invasive insects, but restoring Tribal traditional practices restores that resilience and benefits every part of the ecosystem.

STEP 2: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

A significant portion of this project incorporates historical research and coming to my own conclusions based on the qualitative information I learn. Exact numbers of trees, distribution of human-created meadows throughout a square mile of forest, or satellite imagery of the topography of that forest hundreds of years ago cannot be found. My research involved learning about Indigenous forest management, specifically that of the North Fork Mono Tribe in the Sierra Nevada region of California. I took notes on their methods, the wildlife in their homeland forests, and the process of restoring their habitation of that land. This information about culture, tradition, and stories of the past would help me speculate what a forest might have looked like before European colonization in order to create it; I am using my imagination to honor the past, even if I cannot recreate it perfectly.

Research

STEP 1: MOOD BOARD

To start off my project, I expanded on the various ideas I had brainstormed. I felt excited to this one and committed to it because it is an intersection between many disciplines and art forms: history, design, computer science and mathematics, forestry and ecology. I project that combines the skills I have learned and issues that are personal and meaningful to me. This mood board represents the visual brainstorming I did to imagine not just what my project would be about, but what it would look like.

TO START: MY VISION

My goals and vision have stayed strong throughout this project. This past summer, I read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book An Indigenous People's History of the United States in preparation for US History class. I wanted to find a way to explore what I learned from the book using tangible skills that interest me from Lick's tech arts program. I was stunned by Ortiz's descriptions of the land of the US before European colonization; a land that was not a wilderness, but a meticulously maintained network of landscapes that Indigenous peoples tailored to both fit their needs and to help the land thrive. My goal was to model one of these forests, using the real topography of place in California and highlighting the features of Indigenous land management. I would use Rhino 3D, Grasshopper, and any Rhino plugins needed to create my digital and then 3D printed (or, ultimately, CNC manufactured) render.

I have also been connecting with my own Muscogee (Creek) Indigenous heritage this year, so I was excited to honor it in a special independent project. I wanted to investigate a specific Native nation and their land cultivation techniques. One of my most important goals was to and make sure that my project involved critical thinking, creativity, humility, and qualitative research, not just computer science/STEM aspects. With the combination of these ideas and my many ambitious visions, I was ready to start my project.

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