ABSTRACT
The Self-Assembly Line, completed for TED Long Beach 2012, is a project undertaken in collaboration with the molecular biologist Arthur Olson at the Scripps Research Institute and Seed's Phyllotaxis Lab. This installation was a large-scale version of a self-assembly virus capsid, demonstrated as an interactive and performative structure. The self-assembly process was activated by the tumbling of a large chamber in order to create enough energy for interaction and bonding. The full assembly of a dodecahedron structure was observed to be much longer, requiring minutes to hours. The name, the Self-Assembly Line, suggests a flipped model where the assembly line happens autonomously and humans provide energy and the components contain the blueprints and decision-making for construction. The Self-Assembly Line demonstrates a scalable approach to the fabrication of large-scale furniture objects. The phenomenon of self-assembly traditionally has been thought of as limited to small-scale domains.
