Intent of the Project

'Thermo' means heat and 'Dynamic' means a force that stimulates change or progress within a system or process. It is often characterized by constant change, activity or progress.  The interest of the project lies in the science of autonomy of the material, that has underwent application of a phenomenon or a force on it.

• Deflection / Modulation of Materials with Heat as a Phenomena through Time.

• Rethinking Modulation of materials through the context of Industrial and Domestic Processes.

• Using the Materials to create and test for Built Forms and Spaces.

Note and Questions for Research

In a broader sense, thermal effects are caused when there is a redistribution of energy inside a material in a system, which can be understood as those caused by a temperature variation forced from outside or inside. The 'Coefficient of Expansion/Contraction' plays a key role here which enables the two materials to deform differently and inform the other's form.

The 'Process of Making' becomes very important here because the experiments were all carried out in the setting of a domestic context of my house. So the tools and apparatuses become whatever is available readily. The material and phenomena work together in this experiment because these themselves have been generated through this domestic context. For the phenomena to enable this deformation, two series of experiments with different heating techniques were used. An OTG (oven, toaster griller) was used, that made use of uniform heating, and a heat gun was used, that made use of focused heating. 

This experiment remains as a small-scale domestic production which then, becomes practically impossible for multiple scales of production. The process of making then changes accordingly, which might or might not obtain the same results when up-scaled. The results that were obtained from this experiment had set parameters, but with unknown or unpredictable outcomes. When the same experiment is to be carried out on a much larger scale, then the heat gun or a similar tool becomes the means of application of heat, because it might be able to give predictable outcomes. The idea of precision in such an experiment is very crucial because the scale of the material enables it to deform in that manner. 

The phenomenal attributes of the material can be roughly understood as the qualities associated with a state of material that constitute 'what it's like' to be that in that state. The phenomena actually bring out the autonomous behavior of materials and enables them to generate a form that is almost impossible for any human hand to generate physically. The phenomenon is an important aspect here because the same set of parameters for the experiment are capable of producing infinite possibilities of spatial and formal conditions through a material. It is almost impossible to generate the same form twice with a phenomenon. The precision of tying, binding or adhering; the application of heat and its temperature; and time possibly cannot be maintained by the human hand during all the iterations. The same process when up-scaled reduces the margin of error and the experiment can be carried out in a much more controlled manner with different tools. The heat gun then, seems to be a viable tool which can be used for focused heating.

The intent of the research also focuses on the different ways materials are used in apparatuses nowadays where every process has come down to building a unit and multiplying it to achieve a form. These experiments led to the rethinking of the industrial and domestic processes of making, where every outcome is predetermined and made to fit in the context of today. The need for a predetermined form arises from the need of precision of the form; the process that one goes through by setting up parameters, generating a form is actually based on the precision of these parameters. The form has to be imaginable in order to obtain such sets of precise parameters. Which is why this process challenges the preconceived notions of form and the outcomes of the experiments, or the different formal and spatial conditions obtained, become the provocateur, and therefore also become the end results of an unimagined form and space. Therefore, the intent was to let the process inform the form so that there is no need for a predetermined design shape.

The focus will be laid more closely at the temperature variation on materials that have been identified under the two categories: (a) change in state and (b) change in form. In the former category, wax has been identified as a material that is easily available in the domestic context, whereas in the second category, plastic and foam sheet have been identified. In the second case, both these materials have to be used together, either bound, tied, or adhered to each other. There are two processes of making that are important here; (a) One is where heat is applied to melt a material and (b) the second is where it only deforms the same. The former undergoes expansion while the latter, contraction.