Frank Smullin: Analytic Constructivist

Duke at the time offered little in the way of a formal CG program. (I had heard anecdotally that the school had an arrangement with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that Duke would specialize in AI and cede high level CG work to UNC.) Apparently I was at the wrong school, so I was particularly pleased to meet Frank that morning, huddled over what looked to me at the time to be amazing and exotic computer-generated images of a sculpture he was contemplating creating.

I knew I could learn a lot from this man, and I worked for Frank Smullin as much as I could in various capacities: sometimes in a work/study position for pay; sometimes as an independent study for college credit; sometimes just on my own time. I helped him write some of his software in BASIC on a Tektronix Vector Computer and I helped him assemble some of his small scale CAD/CAM sculpture prototypes using pink construction paper, cardboard tubes, Elmer's glue and an X-acto knife.

As an artist Frank had many styles. He was a strong draftsman capable of great realism in sculpture and drawing, but he often worked in a modern art idiom, using mitered cylinders. When he did this kind of work he called himself an Analytic Constructivist.

I once asked Frank why he liked cylinders so much. He explained to me that he liked the dual nature of the cylinder: when it was tall in comparison to its radius, the cylinder's resemblance to a one-dimensional line emerged; when it was short in comparison to its radius, its quality as a curved two-dimensional surface dominated.

Frank's sofware was, in the parlance of the day, a CAD/CAM system. It allowed him to engage in both computer-aided sculpture design (CAD) and computer-aided sculpture manufacture (CAM).

In its computer-aided design aspect, Frank's software worked as follows:

The software allowed Frank to maintain a list of vertices. It also contained a scheme for maintaining a vertex connectivity list, a means for representing those connections as mitered cylinders of a given radius, and the ability to draw the structure from any arbitrary angle.

Frank used a pen plotter to create his vector drawings, and (as raster graphics were beyond the scope of his hardware and software) he hand colored the drawings to give them an air of solidity.

When Frank was satisfied with his computer-aided design, he moved into the next phase: computer-aided manufacture.

When Frank was ready to prototype a design, he used a pen plotter to output a number of sine wave templates onto contruction paper.

The templates were usually scaled to be wrapped around cardboard paper towel tubes. Each sine wave, when wrapped, became a perfectly mitered cylinder. We cut these mitered cardboard cylinders with an X-acto knife and attached them together with Elmer's Glue.

The software could accomodate multiple cylinders meeting at a common point. Each line pair generated its own wave form. For a given cylinder all relevant wave forms would be superimposed, and the final template would be bounded by whichever portion of whichever wave was lowest.

The software could also handle off-center piercings of one cylinder through another through a routine I worked on with Frank which he called the Peanut generator. The programming of this routine took us some time back in the early 80's. I've simulated its functionality with relative ease today using Maya to planar-project an off-center circle onto an unwrappable file texture.

When Frank was ready to build a full-scale sculpture he would enlarge his templates, cut them into sheet metal, and have them rolled into tubes by a sheet metal fabricator. Frank did his own welding.

Frank had a wiry athleticism which made his sudden death (from a cerebral aneurism) in November of 1983 so unexpected. He was 40 years old -- two years younger than I am now.

Frank Smullin was the kind of person I greatly admire: part artist, part scientist, and full of curiosity. Sometimes when Novembers come around again I find myself thinking about him. The computer graphics industry has come so far in the last two decades. I'd like to see what he'd have been doing now.

Some contemporary artists of note:

Bathsheba Grossman

Carlo Sequin (cites Frank Smullin as an influence)

Bjarne Jespersen

...and more

UPDATE 2/2/2006
Here's a cardboard CAD/CAM project Paul Haeberli did in 1977