ABSTRACT

The physical tools people keep close at hand are those that cut plastic, smash rock, bend aluminum, tape seams, and heat it all up. These are integral steps for casting Post Rock, a stone-like material people are fabricating from plastic, rock, sand, and other materials. Digital tools help people process the photographs and 3D scans of the casts, and they rely on them to model the geometry of a mold or to code a toolpath. The Albertian portrait of the architect, as one who works indirectly on building matter via the lineaments of design, is a model that values architecture as a collection of ideal forms. Post Rock started with a desire to reproduce an emerging type of stone that scientists recently designated 'plastiglomerate'. Ant Farm hijacked the rituals and messages of seventies car culture and popular media.