The swiffer handle CW fixed. Yaki-onigiri with K class. Green puffy, green tape, dispenser testing. A super beat up loved SSW. Lunch from another dimension. Line up learning to 3d model. Sketching.

FAD.

This week was jam packed. We made yaki-onigiri with Tree's Kindergarten class. CW was in Boston building some space architecture with Aurelia. We started some new projects + have too many projects in the works. Things got a bit thrown off with our older one getting sick. Tree came up with his most recent catch phrase, "From Another Dimension" which can be inserted in any setting sung to a tune for humorous or dramatic effect. Probably not funny to anyone outside our family.

We spotted a balance board at a friend's house last week, so we decided to make one. We used a skateboard deck from Arthur's Nosh Bar, my childhood friend's delicious brunch spot in Montreal. (If you're in that part of the world go!) Our homemade balance board is made with some PVC, rubber bands, and 3D printed stoppers attached to the truck mounts. Lots of spills and fun. If you come over to try it CW will hold your pinky so you don't fall.

It's been a minute since we've done some anodizing, so expect a new Batchdrop next week. We're also going to drop a batch of Solid State Watches on Wednesday. So look out for those too.

Bajillion.

CW made this point tracking software. It's like a little calculator where he keeps track of helpful things our kids do around the house. Once they get to a bajillion, something awesome is going to happen.

Play with Bajillion

Book mail.

Haresh Lalvani, architect, mathematician, morphologist, artist, designer, professor friend and mentor to Che-Wei since back when he was at Pratt sent us a copy of his new book - Coding Shaping Making: Experiments in Form and Form-Making.

Grab a copy.

The book features Haresh's comprehensive body of work. It might feel intimidating at first, but don't worry, there are so many rich + accessible ideas in it. Even if you don't fully understand it. It's a nice opportunity to push outside your comfort of how you see and understand things.

I've been waiting for a period of quiet to pick it up. To give it adequate attention + brain power. Below is an image from page 7 of some work Haresh did in the mid 1980s. At a quick glance it appears as random markings with regions of increased density and others of sparseness. Upon closer inspection (and after reading the accompanying text), you notice that the patterns are each formed with a single tile, each with the same shape and markings.

The crescent shaped tile profile, as described by Haresh - is a 2D projection from 5D euclidian space. And the markings, from what I can tell, emerge from the mid-point of each edge. And where those marks extend into the interior of the crescent inform the emergent non-periodic pattern.

This brings up so many curiosities and questions. My first one, which is answered on p.214 is what is being projected from 5-D space???

But what these non-periodic patterns immediately make me think, and this is likely an oversimplification, is how simple, singular, non-varying units, pieced together are able to produce the necessary, emergent conditions for what we consider life.

This got me thinking about Conway's game of life. Where a ruleset applied and executed throughout a space produces emergence; properties the single units do not have on their own. But what is interesting here, with Haresh's hypersurfaces, is the ruleset is inherent to the material on which it executes. You don't have the arbitrary dichotomy, and separation between software and hardware. I'm thinking about where that exists. And it feels a lot like the stuff we're all made of.

Check out Haresh's work, if not to just step outside the comfort of how you usually consider physics, nature, the universe, us all and everything.

With love and hugs,

Che-Wei + Taylor

Unresolved.

This week's newsletter is dropping late. That image is Thursday when I started this newsletter. Poor little dude is currently in same position warming my feet.