COMPLEXITIES
AND
CONTRADICTIONS
IN DIGITAL SCULPTURE
Assist. Prof. Dr. William Ganis
Art Historian, NYIT, USA
wganis@nyit.edu
While linguistically problematic, the term “digital
sculpture” has become entrenched among artists
who use three dimensional modeling software to
“sculpt” in the virtual realm, who use digital input
devices such as laser scanners, and (most
importantly for this paper) employ rapid prototyping
or computer numeric controlled machines to realize
their computer creations. In the past “digital
sculpture” has also been used to describe artists that
have created three-dimensional imagery and
animations in virtual spaces. Digital sculpture has
also been applied to physical three-dimensional
pieces by Nam June Paik, Gary Hill and others that
incorporate computer enhanced or projected video.
As a trip to the Zentrum für Kunst und Media (ZKM)
in Karlsruhe, Germany will attest, “digital sculpture”
might describe numerous computer and electronic
environments such as Jeffrey Shaw’s The Legible
City (1995).
In this text, “digital sculpture” will be defined by artists
using virtual sculpting environments and realizing
their works (or significant parts of their processes)
through rapid prototyping or computer-numericcontrolled milling. As we have seen already, this term
is imprecise and the artists I will discuss present
challenges to the implied concepts.
Digital sculpture as defined above is an ontological,
as well as technological breakthrough. Until recently,
virtual worlds have remained separated from actual
space by the computer monitor’s proscenium arch.
Digital sculptors oft use virtual space as a creative
locus but also realize their works in physical space.
These sculptors accomplish their pieces through 3D
modeling software, rapid prototyping (RP), computer
numeric controlled (CNC) and other machines that
are now standard equipment in engineering and
industrial design laboratories. The RP machine is a
three-dimensional “printer” that allows an object that
exists only in the virtual realm to become physical.
This ontological shift is profound, since these RP
objects of resin, polyester, or other materials are
crossovers from another plane of existence—they
are paradoxes of a virtuality that, up until this point,
has been a one-way looking glass. No less
miraculous CNC processes will be later discussed.
RP, including laser sintering and other such digital
sculpture machines are becoming more affordable,
faster, and adaptable. Two decades ago, prototyping
machines were new technologies that were
themselves being developed. A decade ago, three
dimensional imaging equipment was found only in
commercial industry and in engineering research
laboratories. Now firms such as Z-Corp and 3D
Systems make machines that sell for about the price
of a luxury automobile. The software for imaging has
also become more affordable and now works with
consumer computer processors that have speeds
capable of managing data-intensive threedimensional models. Again, even a few years ago,
much of this software was proprietary and had cost
thousands of dollars per license. Relatively few
research computers had the speed and memory
capable of modeling detailed three-dimensional
images. Now, there are a few free shareware
applications, such as Wings 3D, and even powerful
software titles like Maya and 3D Studio Max are
made available to educational institutions and
students for a few hundred dollars per license as their
producers vie for market share and establishment of
industry standards.
While digital sculpture machines are still out of the
reach of most consumers, they are becoming more
common in design firms, service bureaus and
sculpture production studios. In academia, these
machines are still used in engineering laboratories,
but now may also be found in programs for teaching
medicine, architecture, industrial design, and even
the fine arts. Institutions with digital sculpture facilities
dedicated to the arts include the Partnership for
Research in Spatial Modeling (PRISM) Laboratory at
Arizona State University’s School of Art; Manchester
Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and
Design (MIRIAD) at Manchester Metropolitan
University; the École nationale supérieure des
beaux-arts, Paris; and the Fine Arts department at
the New York Institute of Technology. Though these
tools have been around for some time, it is this recent
accessibilty and affordability that has is partially
responsible for a boom in the use of RP for artistic
purposes.
The challenge for digital sculpture artists, however, is
to work with new electronic media without relying on
them for content or presence. It is fascinating to
realize that the virtual realm can now be translated to
the physical world and that sculpture files can be sent
around the world for infinite dissemination and
reproducibility, but, as we will see, these principles
do not automatically add up to quality artistic forms
and concepts.
As an introduction to digital processes I will show
how some artists have employed digital sculpture
technologies for the fabrication of their work. For
sculptors like Patricia Cronin, Tom Otterness, and
Claes Oldenburg with Coosje van Bruggen, digital
sculpture has been a means to and end that is
somewhat incidental. There is no concept in works
such as Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s Inverted Tie
and Collar (1994) or Cronin’s Memorial to a Marriage
(2003) that dictates a digital approach. Maquettes for
these works were created by quite traditional
means—assembly in the case of Oldenburg, and
modeling in clay in the case of Cronin.
Through analyses of the form, digital processes
facilitated the engineering and reduced the overall
cost of the Oldenburg project. A three-dimensional
scan of a maquette aided the material fabrication of
the work. The digital model was used to calculate
loads and find stress points and helped the
fabricators, Kreysler and Associates, to determine
the best materials for the work’s execution. The
digital model also showed exactly how much material
was needed for the fabrication, thus the overall cost
was reduced though much of the production was still
executed by non-digital means.
About halfway between New York City and
Philadelphia there is a unique facility and
organization called the Digital Stone Project. This
non-profit entity houses the only comprehensive
collection of CNC mills and lathes used in the service
of the arts. Here is an opportunity to explore the CNC
sculpting process. Pat Cronin’s clay original for
Memorial to a Marriage was cast into plaster and this
plaster model was laser scanned at the Digital Stone
Project. This process created digital information that
could be used by CNC machines. Once the marble
material was selected the CNC carving process was
a series of blocking out and refining. First, using data
fed to the machines, contour cuts were made and
then the material was sawed, drilled and routed with
ever-increasing precision as finer and finer tools were
installed. The machines can only go so far and the
human hand was ultimately reintroduced in the
finishing of the work, including the smoothing of the
final form, addition of details and undercutting. For
Cronin, the digital process became a matter of
economics, since her work took about five months on
the machines as opposed to an estimated year if the
work was to be executed by human hands. This
process made marble accessible for her very
personal project of commemorating the artist and her
female lover in an enduring monument.
Still, machines can’t do everything and machine time
is quite expensive, so much art thus produced is a
combination of machines doing the blocking out and
human hands doing the rest. While the Oldenburg
and Cronin examples are an excellent introduction to
digital sculpture processes, they are works that could
have been made using traditional carving or
fabrication. Digital techniques are not an intrinsic part
of their realization, but mere tools of efficiency and
economy.
Though born from and developed within the
engineering discipline, the artistic potential of digital
tools were almost immediately recognized by
developers such as Pierre Bezier who made
aesthetically pleasing sculpted forms with their new
machines. Since this time, much “engineer art,”
including physical expressions of mathematical
formulas, complex polyhedrons, and imagery derived
from ultrasound or other technologies, has been
created
through
digital
processes.
While
mathematical
works
exemplified
by
the
mathematician George W. Hart and sculptors
Bathsheba Grossman and Derrick Woodham are
often intricate and sometimes visually compelling,
they are usually trite systemic expressions of fractals,
redundant forms, topological manipulations or planar
rotations. Hundreds of ball-shaped geometric
expressions are often simple changes in formulas
then input to three-dimensional imaging software. Art
historically speaking, such works are the legacy of
Renaissance perspective studies, contrafaitkugel
turnings, M.C. Escher, the Russian Constructivists,
and the optical art of Yacov Agam and Victor
Vasarely.
pieces are realized through a subjectivity that like his
monumental works, emphasize elegance, beautiful
forms and harmonic relationships. Thus far, his
efforts have been rejected by the scientific
community. In a sense mirroring my own dismissal of
mathematic expressions that might be articulated as
“Just because it’s symmetrical and illustrates abstract
mathematic principles doesn’t make it good art,”
Snelson has been told by one physicist, “Just
because it’s beautiful doesn’t make it right.”
Kenneth Snelson
Atom I
2003
laser sintered rapid-prototyped in polycarbonate powder
8 x 8 x 8 in.
George W. Hart
120 Cell
2003
laser sintered rapid-prototyped in polycarbonate powder.
One sculptor working with scientific principles in
reconceiving the structure of atoms is Kenneth
Snelson. His pieces of “speculative reasoning”
suggest a scenario for the orbits of electrons at the
quantum level. If they remain compelling, these
Obviously, the computer facilitates all of these
geometric visualizations. These polyhedra are
usually near automatic expressions of the medium
realized through repeated regular forms. Many artists
have taken two-dimensional forms and reiterated
them in space. Three-dimensional software also
eases the distortion of geometric forms on many
planes. Sadly, they are a cliché that has already been
used too many times but are still shown even in
recent exhibitions of digital work. Snelson deserves
the last word on this polyhedral art. (Just as) I might
suggest to those making these endless permutations,
it is now time for us to move on to something more
noteworthy.
Another trend that is a hallmark of digital sculpture
today is the use of anamorphic distortions. Such
deformations can be gripping as they seem to alter
visual reality. The distorted forms are uncanny—
familiar, yet quite changed. The arguably best-known
piece created from a digital sculpture process
employs such computer-aided distortion. In
payphone (2002), which was featured at the 2002
Whitney Biennial, Robert Lazzarini used RP to model
his compound planar distortions. This piece was
finished through painstaking material fabrication
processes in which he incorporated the same
substances as in the original object: thus, anodized
aluminum, stainless steel, Plexiglas, and silk-screen
comprise the final sculpture. Lazzarini’s skulls (2000)
are realized in crushed bone though their forms were
determined in virtual modeling environments and RP
models were part of the fabrication process. These
works point, of course, to the most famous precedent
for anamorphosis, the memento mori device in Hans
Holbein the Younger’s The French Ambassadors
(1533). In Holbein’s work, the skull does fall into
perspective at an extreme angle, especially as seen
from below. The illusionistic translation of the threedimensional world into the two-dimensional world of
painting can still be sorted out. However, as one tries
to figure out the perspective (as in the Ambassadors)
one discovers that Lazzarini’s pieces are demonic;
his pieces seem to defy resolution. As the overall
foreshortenings and elongations become more
complicated in three dimensions, the forms remain
warped from all angles. Moreover, his forms are
distorted but the materials used to express the forms
often behave as expected—for instance, wood grains
that do not stretch as in his violin (1998) offer a visual
paradox, a normalcy within the alteration. As of late,
Lazzarini has started to explore other distortions. His
table, notebook and pencil (2004) employs wave
distortions in his manifestations of impossible
objects.
Anamorphosis is employed by Dan Collins as well.
Collins, who is the co-founder and director of the
PRISM Laboratories at Arizona State University,
creates three-dimensionally distorted rapidprototyped sculptures that he presents as parts of
larger media installations. In several works, including
Robert Lazzarini
Skull
2000
resin, bone, pigment
edition of 6 + 2 AP
14 x 3 x 8 in.
Robert Lazzarini
table, notebook and pencil
2004
digital image for mixed media installation
dimensions variable.
I Cannot Tell A Lie (2004) he has trained a camera
on a warped object in order to correct the severe
attenuation through a video lens that “sees” the
object at an extreme angle. The meaning is clear—
journalists, writers of history and other interpreters
are “mediators” who proffer skewed realities that
society takes as truth. In an American society that
has come to believe through repeated insistence
communicated on television and radio that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was
linked to Al Qaeda, Collins’s work seems all the more
poignant.
In other alterations of objectivity, Collins artistically
plays with input devices. His Twister (2003), for
instance, was achieved by having his body spun on a
turning “lazy Susan” while it was laser scanned. The
resulting image is akin to moving an object while it is
being photocopied. Turning this scanned data into
something useful was a daunting technical task, as
Collins had to create a “solid” virtual form without
holes that could be used by RP machines.
Dan Collins
Twister
2003
CNC foam with polyurethane coating.
In experimentation with the digital media, Collins
uses scans of himself and his mother to create
strange hybrid siblings. Evocative of William
Wegman’s photographic Family Combinations
(1972) in his Forgetting Ourselves and Sons and
Mothers works (1995-99) Collins uses threedimensional “morphing” algorithms to achieve a form
arrested halfway between his face and that of his
mother. RP makes manifest an incestuous
crossbreed that is distinctive yet creepy in the
preservation of features from the “donor” individuals.
In yet another example of anamorphic distortion,
Barry X. Ball stretches a laser scan representation of
Matthew Barney (2000-2003) to create a portrayal
that tells something of Barney’s own fantastical
personas. In the virtual environment, Ball stretched
Barney’s likeness and added grotesque details such
as the punctured cranium, sagging bust and the
subtle decorative patterning. From this digital file, Ball
had a piece of Mexican onyx with blood- and phlegmcolored veins and inclusions CNC milled at the Digital
Stone Project to create this techno-mannerist
portrait.
Barry X. Ball
(Matthew Barney)
2000-2003
Mexican onyx.
Some sculptors have engaged digital processes
because they retain verisimilar qualities even when
images are greatly scaled. For instance, Jon
Isherwood enlarged fingerprint patterns for a sitespecific work titled Prints and Passages (2003) at the
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul,
Minnesota. While this work perhaps could have been
realized by hand carving, the digital process is
arguably necessary for conceptual resonance since it
offers an “objective” form and mirrors the
investigatory processes of the crime labs within. The
digital fingerprint is an index of an index kept in
databases that are searched and compared
electronically in such police laboratories.
In other works, Isherwood uses scaling to infuse the
properties of one material in another. Works like
Temptress (2003) started out as plaster models that
were subsequently laser scanned. In this case, the
Swanson red marble that is cut on CNC machine
retains the plaster’s organic irregularity and slump.
The loose spontaneity of shaping and cutting plaster
is captured in this transubstantiation; viewers are
unaccustomed to seeing such marks or material
expressions in marble. On the other hand, Isherwood
adds machine-perfect incisions and designs to these
organic forms. Works such as The Sensualist (2003)
suggest the digital process inherent in their creation
through such precise patterns.
Jon Isherwood
Prints and Passages
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, St. Paul, Minnnesota
2003
granite.
In another example of transformation and scaling,
Lawrence Argent includes huge mouths in his
Whispers (2001) installation situated at the University
of Denver in Colorado. In this work, the mouths were
once again laser scanned from real people. The
resulting digital data was used to sculpt these large
mouths through a CNC milling process. Despite the
hyperbolic enlargement, these sculpted mouths
retain the veristic features, including skin texture and
folds, of their life models.
Lawrence Argent
Whispers
University of Denver, Colorado
2001
limestone, bronze, interactive sound elements.
Michael Somoroff also works with a realism that he
then alters and mines for data. In his Tempus
Formare (2001) works, Somoroff, starts with
photographs of nudes taken through long exposures
that he then combines to create abstracted forms of
varying values. Somoroff then transforms these
values into three-dimensional forms by plotting
highlights and shadows on the z-axis. The resulting
form achieved through an RP process is a subtle
abstract relief.
Jon Isherwood
Temptress
2003
Swanson red marble
20 x 17 x 15 in.
Keith Brown is an artist who has been using digital
technologies for years and runs the Manchester
Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and
Design. Brown’s works are formal abstractions
derived from 3D modeling tools. His works deal with
beautiful relationships of organic shapes and
complex interlaced curves. In a recent work, Through
(2005), Brown emphasizes a phenomenological
approach to looking insofar as the piece constantly
reveals itself as the viewer walks around it. Derived
from an RP process, Brown uses polished bronze in
his final realization not just for its material splendor
and link to sculptural tradition, but to achieve a
reflectivity in the work that shifts with the viewer and
“animates” the piece. Brown has stated that
“reflections were the first virtuality,” thus he sees the
distorted mirrorings as allusions to the virtual
process.
Keith Brown
Through
2005
bronze.
Keith Brown
Shoal
2003
ABS plastic
10 1/4 x 8 x 7 3/4 in.
In another investigation of virtual forms, Brown gives
us Shoal (2003). This biomorphic work is so complex,
with so many undercuts and complex interior spaces
that it would be impossible to create with the human
hand. RP machines, since they build thin layer by thin
layer have no problem creating intricate relationships
among hollows and solids. In this instance, Brown
explores what forms these new technologies make
possible. Shoal is achievable only through RP
manufacturing.
The raw RP material revealed in Shoal leads to
another point. To date, institutionally successful
digital sculptures have been “transubstantiated,” as
many artists have their forms painted or cast in
bronze or other metals in order to make works that
are “finished” and attractive. RP pieces become more
acceptable when, through application of finish and
fetish, they offer an alluring materiality. Despite the
digital sculptor’s subversion of traditional
approaches, materiality is re-established in singular
or rare objects when they are finished in bronze,
paint, or other substances or offered in limited
editions. The eggshell matte white RP materials are
hardly appealing, moreover, they read as studies.
Limited to sizes smaller than a cubic foot in the most
affordable machines, the sizes and plaster textures of
the raw works suggest maquettes. Moreover, the
term “prototyping” indicates the transient: thus each
of these objects seems merely a model for later
actualization. Indeed, this has often been the case.
Elona Van Gent uses digital sculpture to create
completely different forms of fantasy. The digital
sculptor Michael Rees has described digital imaging
as a process in which one can “place a tomato inside
of a rock,” Using 3D scans of animal parts
incorporated into three-dimensional digital models,
Gent has made fantastic machines and now makes
animal amalgams such as Rover (2003) or
Acephilopod (2003) similar to those fantastic beasts
painted by Matthias Grünewald or Hieronymous
Bosch. Her works point to a historic moment when
feats in craftsmanship and new technologies were
considered wonders akin to mutant biological
specimens. She creates creatures for twenty-first
century cabinets of curiosity that seem to have one
foot in the late medieval world. Her works infuse a
historic fascination that prevents us from becoming
blasé about the miracle of RP’s spontaneous
materialization.
Robert Smith also makes eccentric sculptures that
are a late expression of surrealist language in their
overt and oft ambiguous sexuality. While it seems
that his work could be realized through traditional
processes, Smith maintains that the virtual
environment allows freedom to experiment with
“universal” organic forms, that is, Freudian and
Jungian symbols, that are unbound by materiality. In
other words, the artist can develop numerous ideas
quickly and concurrently and without the boundaries
of traditional materials. Many of these initial forms are
rejected, some are developed and relatively few are
materially expressed. The virtual modeling
environment is far superior to the sketchpad in that
objects can be examined from all angles and ideas
for scale, texture, coloration and lighting can be tried
and modified. Smith also shows that works can be
further modified, scaled and made in different
materials; he has executed his works in RP resin,
CNC foam, marble and black granite.
Elona Van Gent
Rover
2003
laser sintered rapid-prototyped in polycarbonate powder
6 x 6 x 3.5 in.
Robert Michael Smith
Gynefleuroceraptor
2004
black granite.
Robert Michael Smith
Artemisa I, Amaranthe I
2004
CNC foam with polyurethane coating.
Ironically, in some parts of the world, human labor is
still less expensive than using CNC cutting machines.
Robert Michael Smith had the latest version of his
Gynefleuroceraptor (2004) executed in China. His
employment of manual labor is ironic since Smith
creates his three-dimensional images using digital 3D modeling software. In a twist of process, he gave a
digitally executed maquette to a fabricator who set a
team of craftsmen to work carving his piece in black
granite. Smith was able to have the sculpture (along
with a large granite base) executed, polished, crated,
and shipped for approximately one-fifth the cost of
making the work by machine in the United States.
Michael Rees
Putto 4 over 4
2004
Luminore iron on fiberglass
over styrofoam with a steel tube armature
145 x 87 x 138 in.
Another artist employing biomorphic forms, Michael
Rees is one of the most successful sculptors
consistently employing digital processes. His
exhibition “Large, Small and Moving” from 2003
shows the relationship of his sculpted forms to their
genesis in 3D animation. The looped Putto 8 2.2.2.2
(2003) video is the focal point of the exhibition, the
literal source for all of the objects; it demonstrates the
kinetic possibilities of the sculptures and an entity
that with eight infantile legs and a segmented shared
torso, struggles with itself and shows us a timeless
model of the human condition. His Putto works
bespeak conflicts of faith, the internal angels and
demons of conscience, and the drama of the
psychodynamic. All of the sculptures in the exhibition
are then rapid prototyped or CNC milled from 3D stills
from the animated subject. In a more recent series
Rees starts with another animated investigation of
conflicted organic forms. From this animation he
derived Putto 4 over 4 (2004) that was installed at the
Aldrich Museum of Art in Connecticut. Using a digital
process in which CNC foam was milled, armatures
added, and then resin and iron coated, Rees made a
monumental object that escapes the size limitations
of most rapid-prototyping processes.
In her use of digital technologies Karin Sander takes
a radically different approach to making sculpture. An
artist renowned for her conceptual and sociological
approaches to art making, she uses digital sculpture
techniques in a hands-off method, sending her
subjects to imaging laboratories to be scanned and
fabricated through RP. Her 1:10 (1999-2000) series
is a collection of miniature individuals. Each person
chooses the way he or she is captured in the laser
scan including the clothing worn and the pose. The
laser scan is an objective recorder of data; the
resulting sculptures capture details from facial
expressions to wrinkles in clothing that are quite
realistic—these three dimensional works are
uncanny because we are familiar with such
spontaneity in photography, but not in sculptural
expressions. Her works evoke the photography of her
(sur)namesake, August Sander, who, in the early
twentieth century photographed a cross-section of
German society. Karin Sander also captures a
section of contemporary children, men and women.
Because until just recently RP processes have been
quite limited in their ability to render color, as part of
her process Sander had the sculptures sent to an
airbrushing studio, where anonymous artists added
colors based on photographs taken along with the
body scan. Despite the fact that digital sculptures can
be quite refined, Sander has chosen to leave in these
finished pieces jagged edges or coarse image
“pixels” as a trace of the digital process.
In a twist on the 1:10 series, Sander created a
participatory installation at the Staatsgalerie,
Stuttgart. 1:9.6 (2002) is another title based on the
scale of the objects produced through RP. In this
work, visitors to the gallery were able to participate in
the exhibition by each paying eighty euros to have
their bodies scanned for manufacture of miniature
likenesses. Each homunculus was then donated to
the museum as part of an installation kept in the
permanent collection. Sander again used a laizesfaire approach. She simply set up the process and
allowed individuals to choose whether or not to
participate and to express individual personalities by
each choosing their own poses, clothing and props.
1:9.6 also allowed everyday people to have their
portraits included in the collection of a world-class
museum, thus Sander’s work offers an inclusivity that
subverts the historically elite museum milieu.
Karin Sander
Karin Sander 1:10
1999
3D bodyscan of original person,
Fused Deposition Modeling, Rapid Prototyping,
Acrylonitrile — Butadiene — Styrene plastic,
airbrush paint
dimensions variable.
Another artist who uses RP in the service of
investigating larger sociological concerns is Elizabeth
Demaray. In The Hand Up Project (2004), Demaray
has used computer aided design software to create
small houses for hermit crabs. Because too many
people comb beaches and take shells, there are very
few large shells left for these creatures that shed their
old shells and trade them in for larger ones as they
grow. Out of earnest concern for these creatures
Demaray has created tough polycarbonate shells in
varying sizes that easily fit the crabs. Demaray uses
nearly indestructible plastic in the service of (despite
plastic doing so much harm to) ocean ecology.
All digital sculptors deal with data as visual
information is quantiified by the computer. The last
sculptors I would like to discuss are those who derive
their images directly from data taken from existing
sources. Mary Bates Neubauer, for instance, creates
Karin Sander
Gordon Tapper 1:10
1999
3D bodyscan of original person,
Fused Deposition Modeling, Rapid Prototyping,
Acrylonitrile — Butadiene — Styrene plastic,
airbrush paint
7 1/16 in. high.
three-dimensional models using information from
urban sytems. In her Philadelphia series she uses
statistics regarding city water and electricity usage
among other figures to create her organic sculptures.
Through an aesthetic object, Neubauer shows the
organic patterns of collective human behavior.
Gregory Ryan has created sculptures based on
measurements from United States Geological Survey
satellites. His Landcubes (2003) show sections of the
earth’s surface at a scale of 1 to 100,000. Ryan
enters these measurements into modeling software
and gives three-dimensional expression to each
value. The result is a strikingly detailed topographic
map that reveals mountain ridges and valleys, even
while typical depictions of ecologies, climate and
even patches of water are missing from this
description.
The forms of Ryan’s Water Walls (2003) are derived
from liquid algorithms that are mathematical models
of the behavior of water in wind. Ryan makes works
that seem to have a nearly photographic specificitiy,
though the water revealed never existed as such.
These algorithms are again expressed in threedimensional modeling software. CNC foam is then
cut from this data, and Ryan then casts the finished
works in aluminum, which is brushed to approach
water-like reflectivity. In both of these examples Ryan
reveals forms that are recognizable, yet they have a
distanced relationship from the natural geographic
and hydrokinetic phenomena described.
As the product of a new technology, digital sculpture
today seems parallel to nascent photography in
showing an unfolding potential. Digital sculpture in all
of its present forms will likely later seem much as we
now perceive Niépce’s heliographs, Talbot’s prints,
or Daguerre’s plates. In early examples, we
recognize technology’s promise—ghostly images
that will yield robust pigmentation; grainy calotypic
multiples that anticipate gelatin-silver negatives;
even stereoscopic prints that portend extraction of
the “real” from the “virtual.”
Artists using digital sculpture point the way to the
potential of these technologies. Exhibitions with
works produced at each of multiple venues show that
the infrastructure for increased accessibility is
already in place. Like photographers hand-tinting
their work in the 19th century, artists who today
transform materials in their digital 3D works disclose
capabilities they desire. As anticipated by artists
through their material transformations, incorporation
of full color and controlled application of different
materials is already being introduced in the newest
generation of machines. As the technology becomes
more sophisticated, these machines will also enable
illusionistic material expression and moving parts.
Combined with nanotechnologies, these machines
may one day be able to express different materials
through “printing” molecular changes.
With these possibilities in mind, it seems that digital
sculptors have just begun to scratch the surface in
exploring a new set of media tools. Now that the
introduction to the new medium is over, digital
sculptors have to move beyond complex polyhedra,
distortions, filters, morphing, scaling and other
obvious solutions that are already revealed as
clichéd in this small sample of artists. A generation
away from the inventors of the medium, perhaps it is
more accurate to say that today we are standing next
to the Nadars and Disdéris of digital sculpture. It is
exciting, if futile, to imagine what manifestations the
digital Cartier-Bressons, Callahans, Shermans,
Salgados and Gurskys will yield in the upcoming
generations. I can think of no other medium so
poised to offer myriad new possibilities for
expression. As our artists of today show, the
expressions can be inane meditations on the medium
or conceptually brilliant, but despite the mediation,
they can be pieces that in the future tell us about the
human condition and must do so with relevance and
resonance.