Penland Glass Squishing Font |
by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2014 |
Using glass blowing techniques, we prepare hot clear glass disks and colored glass cane, and arrange them on a pastorelli plate in such a way that compressing the glass horizontally with two metal bars produces a letter of the alphabet. The video font (top) shows the transition between the unsquished and squished states of each letter simultaneously. The puzzle font (bottom) is the initial arrangement of parts: it becomes a fun puzzle to figure out what letter will result from each arrangement. This font is motivated by the intriguing scientific problem of modeling hot glass deformation by physical manipulation, which arises in our software Virtual Glass. This font was developed during an artist residency at the Penland School of Crafts in January 2014.