Press Release: 21st March 2012
The Big Egg Hunt – RoboFolded
High up in the air hangs a 3ft egg with a seamless flock of folded aluminium birds surrounding it. The art piece – looming over Foubert's Place, just off Carnaby Street – is made by a London artist and designer Gregory Epps – the inventor of the pioneering RoboFold technology.
Gregory's creation 'Embryonic Manufacture' is one of the 200 eggs waiting to be found in the biggest Easter egg hunt the world has ever known.
His eggciting design for the auction raising funds to the Elephant Family and Action for Children charities plays with contrasts of the round egg and the sharp objects around it.
The small aluminium surface patterns were produced through computer controlled cutting and then folded by hand. Manufacturing at a larger scale is done with giant robot hands that are programmed to follow a simulation of people folding paper with their hands.
The RoboFold system is the result of 15 years of experimentation in to the design of artefacts through the curved folding of developable surfaces.
Gregory and his company create works of design and art, and develop software to control the machines for this purpose. The unique technology is easily manipulated to produce a design with variable folds and curves, completely differing from standard robots doing a single function repetitively and alone.
Gregory Epps is an empirical engineer, maker, architect, designer, artist and entrepreneur. Through a strong sense of material characteristics and a broad understanding of how things get made, both industrially and by hand, Gregory has come to be a maker of machines that make things.
“I program machine instructions using advanced software, just as genetic information organises cell growth in living organisms. “
“'Embryonic Manufacture' brings together the extremes of artificially created structures to cradle and protect the egg, a symbol of maximum biological structural efficiency itself - thus commenting on man's attempts to appropriate the roles of the biological world.”
“My inner 5-year-old is living a dream, having robots helping me to turn paper aeroplanes into steel birds. “
Gregory Epps is exhibiting amongst the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Professor Gordon Murray, Sir Ridley Scott, Tommy Hilfiger, Mark Quinn, Sir Peter Blake, Chapman Brothers, MIA and many more.
Each egg is a unique art piece individually designed by leading artists, designers, architects and jewellers hidden throughout central London.
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NOTES TO EDITORS:
1. The Embryonic Manufacture is one of the 30 stunning eggs that are currently being auctioned online until the 9th April 2012 at the The Big Egg Hunt website: http://auction.thebigegghunt.co.uk/lots/embryonic-manufacture-by-gregory-epps-robofold .
2. Fulham born and Wandsworth raised RCA and Imperial college MA designer Graduate, founder and inventor of the RoboFold technology, Gregory Epps is a pioneering Londoner worth following.
3. RoboFold, an up and coming company funded by Design London, is the company behind the robot hands. Based in Brixton, RoboFold factory holds workshops and conferences regarding the new technology, as well as producing and manufacturing their designs. Many professionals and non-professionals in the arts, design and architecture industries have already shown an interest in collaborating with RoboFold. More information can be found at: http://www.robofold.com .
4. When folding metal, RoboFold uses curved lines to fold along instead of straight ones - this is unconventional, but this approach in turn allows materials to flow over surfaces. This can be done without stretching the material, so paper, plastic and metal and can used, without deforming the material – which often requires formers, heating or other high levels of force. RoboFold can do this by hand or by robot.
5. Accompanying pictures can be found at: https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/16231831/1/RoboFold%20Pictures?h=609df5 .
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For further information please contact:
VILMA LINDELL RoboFold public relations on +44(0)7871 588 601 or vilma.lindell@robofold.com .
WIRED UK Magazine: February 2012
Nice big spread showing off the robots in their best light.
Blueprint Magazine: February 2012
Review by Gian Luca Amadei of the Shape To Fabrication 4 workshops organised by RoboFold and the Design Products MA workshops at the Royal College of Art run in association with Sebastien Wrong of Established and Sons. See Blueprint online here. Previous article on STF4 here.
Blueprint Magazine was the official media partner for Shape To Fabrication 4, held Novemebr 2011.
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Mark Magazine: Issue 34
6 page article by Terri Peters in the October/November 2011 issue of Mark Magazine.
