In the Department of Form, an object's truest identity is a spatial concept and thus resides only in the mind's eye.

In order to visualize and analyze these ideal forms, the members of this department use computer modeling software to distill pure geometries from objects found in the physical world and generate forms from mathematical relationships.

Objects are described first and foremost by their shape or configuration, with traits such as symmetries and different geometric volumes. Objects are also described through the processes used to generate them in virtual space. These traits are geometric manipulations of one form into another form. Examples of these traits include extrusions, booleans, and lofts.

By freeing an object from the fog of its material circumstance, the members of this department translate objects for the purpose of analysis, distribution, and reconstitution.

Theresa LAndrine

Theresa Landrine’s life and career has been guided by the desire to understand and create highly expressive form. From an early age, Landrine was fascinated the patterns and structures found in nature, amassing a sophisticated collection of scarab beetles and mollusk shells.

Following degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Virginia, her professional life began in naval architecture, working to develop the methodology and modeling software to improve stability analysis and the rapid hull design process.

Landrine’s interest in the formal qualities of sculpture and everyday objects was shaped in large part during a period when her brother began to loose his sight as a result of a rare genetic disorder. Witnessing how his world transformed from one experienced primarily through sight to one experienced through touch and sound, Landrine became devoted to translating the inspiring complexity of the physical world into information her brother could understand and appreciate. She began work on Koini Fantasia, an open source library of things that would amass both digital versions of real world objects as well as manifestations of geometric principles so they could be 3D printed and shared. The objects in Koini Fantasia could be infinitely reproduced, but they could also live eternally, archived in a purified digital space and offer limitless opportunities for recombination.

As her first initiative as the Chair of the Department of Form, Landrine launched a campaign in 2018, pairing artists and programmers with world-renowned artistic and historic institutions, 3D scanning selections of their collections for timeless archive and unparalleled democratic access through 3D printed facsimiles.

In 2020, Landrine also began an ongoing collaboration with Biologist Griffin R. Donaldson of the Rockefeller University, creating digitally altered and printed versions of objects commonly found in the habitats of bats, dolphins and shrews to understand how manipulations of form affects the animals’ comprehension of their environment through echolocation.