3D printed Dune chess set
Leveraging the latest advances in quartz 3D printing, the Dune chess set seeks to provide players with an immersive tactile experience while capturing sand in its purest, elemental form.
Chess is a game that seems as old as time. When we play, we feel like we're drawing on an experience that people have shared for thousands of years. As an architect fascinated by intricate, tactile forms; The sculptural qualities of chess pieces and their archetypal silhouettes have held great fascination for some time.
As a dynamic, ever-changing natural resource, the elusive nature of sand seemed a fitting material for a game that evolves gradually and unpredictably over time. With every move, tactical implications ripple outwards, disrupting and changing an evolving playing field.
It seemed a fitting challenge to shape a material as shapeless and fluid as sand into something solid and robust while maintaining a sense of transformation and potential.
Dune chess set design process
As a designer, Rory Noble-Turner is interested in the tactile qualities such a granular material can offer and how this can subvert the traditional notion that luxury objects are seen rather than touched through flawless finishes and polished finishes that are meant to be to become, have to create attractiveness.
By using 3D sculpting tools typically reserved for the visual effects industry, he was given a tremendous amount of creative freedom and control in producing the final product. A major challenge was refining the digital scripts needed to create the wavy textures. What seemed like a relatively simple exercise became increasingly complicated as he tried to refine the degree of undulating randomness, its varying density and depth, and the smooth fall as it transitions to a smooth surface. Creating such a natural – or windswept – appearance required months of dedicated problem-solving and refinement, with some solutions only discovered after delving into the depths of visual scripting forums.
For a game of chess to work effectively, it is important that you clearly distinguish between the two opposing pieces and the alternative squares on which these pieces play. In a monomaterial set such as this, a binary contrast between undulating and smooth surfaces (reflecting the contrasting states of the sand) becomes the primary signifier of this difference.
Broader explorations of touch and sensation
As we spend more and more time typing on keyboards and swiping across screens, our sense of touch – and with it the sensory perception of our bodies – diminishes and is instead replaced by a disembodied and primarily visual engagement with our devices.
Amidst this decline in everyday physical sensation; Representing an exploration of themes of tactility and intimacy, the Dune Chess Set seeks to catalyze the connection between users, their bodies and the world around them. Therefore, the perceived experience of touching my work – or at least triggering the desire to touch my work – becomes a crucial factor in the success of the design as well as its visual appeal.
Photographer: Rory Noble Turner
Software used: Rhinoceros3D, Grasshopper3D
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