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Sarah R. 12.2.2014

                “Where should we look for the no-thing? How will we find it? Surely to find something, we have to already know in a general way that it is there […..] Whatever we make of the no-thing, we do know it”….(Heidegger 189).

If the technology and a time when almost anyone can create anything is coming near, is it important, now more than ever, to attempt to create no-thing with that same technology? If nothing can’t or won’t exist, could the 3D printer, the total technological womb of object-ness, force it into existence? From the moment I asked myself this question I knew there would be no simple answer, no absolute right or wrong.  I knew the process of inquiry would be much more about the exploration of the material than the answer itself.

We could literally and casually, call any thing nothing if we wanted to. Things called in that way are the kind of “nothing” I chose to explore materially through 3D printed error, to arrive closer to the notion of the nothing of vastness, of silence, of total dark or total white. The point where inclusion and exclusion meet, bent like a circle.  I’ve realized no thing is vast, and that vastness is in nothing.

In the digital modeling environment of the CAL there have been an abundance of  varied objects, providing many examples of thing-ness, pushing me to think about what could possibly be called no thing.  As I mentioned in my CST post yesterday, the refinement of the program’s designs resulted in more and more refined glitches, producing objects that were very nearly recognizable as “something”. In looking so long at all of the 3D printed glitches I began pay most attention to the thing they all share, which is the space they hold.  It became clear to me that these objects needed space removed from the context of chaos and error. Through separation from the tangled mess of their shelf life, the pieces become unfamiliar but not completely foreign looking. In the photographs of the last iteration it was my aim to re-introduce these objects, allowing us all to become familiar by seeing them up close and still.

Writing about an engraving, in How Things Shape the Mind, Malafouris writes that although the engraved  shapes may be “‘formless’ that is not because they lack intent; it may be because their ‘intent’ is not about form but rather is about the forming process itself.” (Malafouris 193). The pieces I have been working with were formed unintentionally, formed with the presence of unintentional absence, and convey that mechanical process in their form very organically.  I came to realize that in order to accentuate the beautiful present absence of these pieces they would be best presented in the presence of absence.  And so, for this iteration I made a spatial installation. Sharing such a thing in the digital dimensionality of this screen lacks the materiality, embodiment and facilitation of space I have curated as an explanation of my exploration of no-thing. There is no way you can see the whole piece, when all you can see is this screen, so I will aim at conveying this work through the touch of the language of visual words.

          P                                                                                                      E                                                                                                                                                                                                                   S

                                                                                                                                                                                          C

                                                             I

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 The string then meets each plastic piece and the line turns to static. Suspending the pieces in the air they become unfamiliar again, some are at eye level, some fall far below or above. The movement of walking by the threads causes them all to spin softly.  The dimension of the piece as a whole is roughly, 4 ft x 5 inches x 8 ft. In using all this thread, at points I felt as if I were sewing them somehow into space, sewing them together with cotton versions of themselves. The pieces are all just lines in the end, lines that are not unlike the lines of drawing, or writing, or the knots that the white thread would get into, except these lines are created in 3-dimensions by a machine, “externaliz[ing] nothing but the very process of externalization”. (Malafouris 193).

Ideally this piece would be in a space that was open on all sides so that the viewer could walk completely around it. When standing to face this curtain of sorts, I find myself confronted with a threshold between my self and the other side, although the threads pose no real barrier, the presence of such exists. In my mind’s eye the linear threads form a threshold between two dimensions and three, between digital and material, between you and me, and yet something as soft as breath can cause them to sway. The lines are wavering, this separation made by no-thing and nothing. For the time being they will continue to do so in front of my living room windows. Below are a few shots of the pieces suspended in air. 

Bibliography

Heidegger, Martin, and Thomas Sheehan. “What Is Metaphysics?” 1 Nov. 2013. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/1929-WHAT-IS-METAPHYSICS-2013-NOV.pdf>.

Malafouris, Lambros. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge: MIT, 2013. Print.

Sarah Redden

Blue Rabbit Iteration III

11.18.2014

I am working with mis-printed objects and pieces, made by the hand of a 3D print head.

I have asked, if in a time where we are increasingly gaining the ability for anyone to make anything, is it important to question our ability to make no-thing?

“A nightly print gone wrong” by Ed

Image by: Creative Tools/Flickr (Motherboard)

The two images above yield from a search of the World Wide Web.

The image directly above is the only image that appears more than once in the search results.

Most of the images I have seen of mis-printed objects are captured while the piece is still on the printer, hot off the press, hot off the mess.

It is curious to think of what they might have looked like in the soft virtuality of the software they were conceived in.

The following image is my concept in virtuality.

“screen shot”

I have learned, as I’m sure many of you have too, that there are types of objects that just cannot be printed on the 3D printers in the CAL.

Certain things cannot be printed either because of design dynamics and dimension, or because the CAL lab aids are not keen on severely disrupting the mechanisms of the printers

while many other people also intend to print,

because printing takes time, and is therefore, a part of the priority of this creation process.

Lately I have been thinking about the glitch pieces  I’ve been gathering as sort of embodiments of wasted of time, manifestations of error being let be too long.

In the next six photographs I have attempted to illuminate these objects as anything but wasted time.

“5″

“half”

The filament lines shown in the images above remind me of the traced scan-line, the shadow of the dance that occurs when a person is 3D scanned.

Although the lines are different for these objects,

as the (re)productive motion and exchange between things is conveyed in a sort of plastic electrocardiogram showing the death of intention.

 These glitch pieces posses shadow like qualities in more ways that one, in that the objects re-present more than just what appears physically.

“2″

“matching”

“opening”

In the shadows of these objects it becomes clear not only how they look, but how they can be seen.

 I have come to know these glitch objects as anything other than filled with lost potentiality.

I have been exploring them for weeks, feeling out how they break, how they bend, how they carry the weight of themselves and how they do not.

Through this process I have learned that there is much to be seen in what did, but more importantly, what did not occur on the print bed.

The glitch objects shown above are filled with space where there was once intentionality.

These unintentional objects convey what the printers create when confronted with the unknown, what the machine does when it does not know what to do.

“an ‘analogue’ composite piece”

In the image above is of a few mis-print objects placed on a physical print of a digital computer software glitch.

The piece is a screen shot taken in 2003, called Electronic Card (detail), by Curt Cloninger (Morandi et al. 104).

As I am working with physical glitches, it seemed fitting to use a physical print of a computer glitch to create a composite image,

bringing two types of glitch together in the physical world.

Iman Moradi has defined glitch as

” an artifact resulting from an error.

It is neither the cause, nor the error itself, it is simply

the product of an error and more specifically

its visual manifestation.

It is a significant slip that marks departure from our expected results”

(Moradi 8)

The print and the objects have similar characteristics, exist in different dimensions, but were conceived of similar processes.

  Portraying the  3D printed glitch objects within printed representation of digital glitch artwork  feels akin to viewing them in their natural environment.

This is another presentation of a way in which I feel these unfamiliar objects of uselessness can be seen as appearing very natural.

The image below is an exploration of the same ecology, yet it has been edited in Photoshop on the computer, the “natural habitat” of the piece rather than that of the object.

3D printed glitch objects have been introduced into the white space of a video still called January 11th Saturday, by Cory Arcangel (Morandi et al. 41).

“a digital composite piece”

Bibliography

Ed. “A Nightly Print Gone Wrong.” blog. 3D printing. N.p., 24 Dec. 2011. Web.

Moradi, Iman et al. Glitch: Designing Imperfection. First. New York, NY: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009. Print.

Turk, Victoria. “Motherboard.” 3D-Printed Mistakes Are Inspiring a New Kind of Glitch Art. N.p., 23 Oct. 2014. Web.

Sarah Redden

Blue Rabbit Iteration II

Week 6

11.4.2014

WdCt: 1024

The Poetics of “Non-jects”

Marcel Proust once wrote, “[n]ovelty is never so effective as a repetition that manages to suggest a fresh truth” (Lopes 52). This is interesting at the present moment because 3D printing creates and embodies both novelty and repetition. I am seeking a fresh truth in the materiality of 3D printed waste by continuing to work around a handful of my original questions, such as, it is important to question the rapid production of 3D printing? In a time where almost any thing can be made, is it important, now more than ever, to attempt at making no-thing? If nothing doesn’t or can’t exist, can it be made to exist? Is 3D printing potentially a very appropriate medium to explore this through?

Lev Manovich, a Professor of Cultural Analytics at the European Graduate School (ESG CITATION), and “one of the leading theorists of digital culture and media art” is quoted by Warren Sacks in an essay called Aesthetics of Information Visualization. Manovich writes that “[i]f Romantic artists thought of certain phenomena and effects as un-representable, as something which goes beyond the limits of human sense and reason, data visualization artists aim at precisely the opposite: to map such phenomena into a representation whose scale is comparable to the scales of human perception and cognition” (124). It seems that out of any time in history, out of any medium of making art, that computer art, more specifically 3D printing, could produce a valid exploration of materializing that which has been previously perceived as impossible to materialize.

France and Hénaut, in an article called Art, Therefore Entropy, describe a situation in which a blank canvas is perceived as expressing or possessing very little complexity, a canvas with one brush stroke on it conveys only a little more, yet a canvas mixed with many colors until the tone reaches that of a dull grey possess infinite complexity, or “white noise”. In this there is inherent complexity and simultaneous minimalism. Could the materiality and process of 3D printing be analogous to the complexity just described?

There is a current genre of art that is exploring complexity in process and material, it is called glitch art. Glitch art “mythologizes the computer error as its ultimate muse and most potent tool”, creating pieces of work that manipulate the functionality of standardized software. Some of these artists are actually using bugs they’ve found in software and some are just “introducing noisy data to functional algorithms or applying these algorithms in unconventional ways” (Temkin). The artists who are “introducing noisy data” are essentially making the machines make mistakes, whereas the artists who are using true bugs are working with and curating error itself.

In my search for photographs of 3D printed glitch art I have found many images, but very few if any that conveyed the misprinted object as an intentional object. Most of the photographs of print errors were calling for viewers to diagnose what potentially went wrong in the print process so that the error could be rectified. These images were presented as a means of problem solving, not as the presentation of problem objects. These glitchy prints have a place on the World Wide Web, but it is not so much a creative space of representation, as it an object in a space that needs fixing.

I have encountered the word “space” many times in my research, whether it were digital space, maker spaces, outer space or bodily space. In encountering this word so often I felt it might be interesting to revisit The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard (1958). Bachelard was born in Northern France in 1884, and died in the autumn of 1962. He got a BA in Science, became a professor of chemistry and physics, until 1922 when he turned his focus more towards philosophy and poetry (ESG CITATION). The Poetics of Space was first published in French in1958 and was translated to English in 1964.

The book is kind of a meditation of the everyday, of the beauty and unusualness of commonplace, and a metaphorical rendering of domestic space. This text is very significant in that so often Bachelard seems to be playing with the metaphor of playing with metaphor in poetry, so the text lends itself in many directions, an Indra’s Net so to speak. I focused in the chapter Intimate Immensity. I began to think that the act of 3D printing could be creating a kind of intimate immensity, with open source software connecting many people and their thoughts in maker spaces or their own homes. Through this connection we may “discover that immensity in the intimate domain is intensity, an intensity of being…It is the principle of “correspondences” to receive the immensity of the world, which they transform into intensity of our intimate being.” (Bachelard 193).

Since the first iteration I have been intrigued and focused around the question of what can be made out of the objects that come out of the 3D printers that are “ugly” and useless? Through my observational experiences of the past six weeks and through research, I have learned that the proper printer itself cannot easily make what ever it is that can be made out of the waste objects of the 3D printer. I have arrived at the notion that in order to discover what can potentially be made out of the waste objects that come out of the 3D printer, I may first have to explore what can definitely not be made by a 3D printer. By working from the edge of the metaphysical or material potentiality of PLA and 3D printers as creators of objects and just as often as creators of “non-jects”, I am finding juxtapositions are key in getting to the heart of this matter. Intimacy and immensity, freedom and restriction, every thing and no thing, complexity and simplicity, beauty and error, a poetic approach of contrast seems key. In the final weeks of this project I aim, through process and further research “to give an object poetic space” as Bachelard writes, to do so “is to give it more space than it has objectivity; or, better still, it is following the expansion of its intimate space” (202).

Bibliography

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. The Orion Press, Inc, 1964. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts. Margot Lovejoy, Victoria Vesna, Christiane Paul. Books. N.p. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

“Gaston Bachelard – French Philosopher – Biography.” N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

“JSTOR: Leonardo, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1994), Pp. 219-221.” N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

“Lev Manovich – Professor of Media Theory – Biography.” N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Lopes, Dominic. A Philosopy of Computer Art. USA and Canada: Routledge, 2010. Print.

“Non-Object Oriented Art.” N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Sarah Redden

Blue Rabbit Iteration I

Week 4

10.21.2014

The work of Shane Hope

What is not worth not making?

                  My idea is to work primarily with pieces taken out of the 3-D misprint box in an attempt to make some thing that does not necessarily resemble any thing. In this process I want to experiment with printing methods, and manipulation of printed pieces. I am curious about our relationship to beauty, ornament, decoration, perceptions of “trash”, and “uselessness”. What can be made of the objects that come out of the 3D printers that are “ugly” and useless? In order to explore these ideas I would like to approach the Blue Rabbit project through tactile engagement, using my hands to work with a material that isn’t necessarily made for it, a material made for “computer’s hands”.

                 Most all of us are all are touched one way or another by the hands of computers. Yet, if things shape the mind, what effect is the un-touchable digital world of “things” having on us in the physical world of multi-dimensions? Through technology, theoretically anyone could make almost anything without touching much. It is important to question this rapid production? Is it important, now more than ever, to attempt at making no-thing? If nothing doesn’t or can’t exist, can it be made to exist?

In both art and science there is much to be seen, but there is also a great deal, and sometimes a great deal of meaning, in that which cannot be. This is a principle explored often in Modern and Post-Modernist art, and also by the four individuals I have found whose work relevantly embodies, plays with, and speaks about, material, abstract 3D printing, trash and Post-Internet art. These folks are Shane Hope, Edward May, Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

            Edward May has a WordPress site just like all of us, and that is about the only thing I could find out about him. The website is called “Anti-Composition within Objectism and Post-Internet art”. May writes about many different mediums in relation to Post-Internet art, with one of the unifying themes being the exploration and propulsion of anti-composition. Anti-composition is defined by May as occurring “within post-internet art and new media when something that cannot or does not resemble nature is assembled in a way which is meant to look disturbed.. It is an exploration of nature in a way that is not natural and is a reaction to the use of objects within society.” He goes on to add, “[a]nti-compositionist art cannot resemble natural objects or manufactured items but instead explores the things we cannot see.” (May).

Cue Webster and Noble. In 1998, Tim Noble and Sue Webster made a piece called “Dirty White Trash (With Gulls)”. The piece is made up of trash the artists’ collected trash over a period of six months. Photographs of the piece depict illuminated trash that has been arranged in what appears to be a random heap in the corner of a gallery-type space, but created in the shadow of this trash is a perfect outline of two individuals sitting back to back, drinking and smoking. They have taken a waste object(s) that reveals nothing in itself, only in what it “leaves behind”.

With an interest and skepticism in molecular manufacturing, Shane Hope raids a protein bank database looking for organic shapes of interest, and when they aren’t quite what he was looking for he writes Python script to skew them even further. The designs are then 3-D printed and wildly manipulated in the process. All of the shapes are then amassed and assembled together in a beautiful, chaotic mess. Wired magazine calls Hope’s pieces “paintings”, (Flaherty. Wired) which is another interesting relation to the idea of returning to traditional mediums of art in highly unconventional ways, which is one component of Post-Internet art (May).

I feel that the principles of anti-composition with the relationship to technology and objects, the execution of the British duo’s piece, the technique of Shane Hope, and the influences of many more to come will greatly inform and weave almost seamlessly into the context and exploration unraveling before me. In spending a quarter exploring these ideas I hope to gain a better understanding of my relationship to objects, materials and meaning. Hopefully I will gather greater perspective of the unique ways in which objects carry meaning, or more specifically don’t, and how this is decided and understood, consciously or otherwise. I also expect that I will become quite familiar with PLA as a material and medium of creation, while simultaneously becoming familiar with the physical iterations of student work in class through their trails of printed trial and error, and beautiful mistakes.

Bibliography

Flaherty, Joseph. “3-D Printed Paintings Make Jackson Pollock Look Plain | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 8 Oct. 13. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.wired.com/2013/10/3-d-printed-abstract-expressionism/all/1#slideid-256431>.

 May, Edward. “Anti-composition within Objectism and Post-Internet Art.” Edwardmayobjectismanticomposition. 5 May 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://edwardmayobjectismanticomposition.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/anti-composition-within-objectism-and-post-internet-art/>.

 Noble, Tim, and Sue Webster. “Tim Noble & Sue Webster.” Tim Noble & Sue Webster. 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/>.