the Digital Sculptor by George Fifield

The term 'multimedia' as it relates to computers, is a misnomer because in the digital realm all media become one. Though different sources are brought into the inner workings of the computer by different devices, within it, there exists only the single digital medium of ones and zeros. We can input in a number of ways. We can type and scan and digitize audio and video. But once that is done, these different sensations, visual, timebased or sound are all available for similar dynamic and seemingly effortless transformation. Changes that can be applied to one form, can often be applied just as easily with another.

In the past, artists working with computers have been limited in the ways they could output files. They could look at the information on a screen, print it out onto a flat surface or dump it to tape. Today, a technical revolution in three dimensions has begun. Though three dimensional design software has existed for many years, an amazing set of new three dimensional input and output devices are becoming available. The digital sculptor/printmaker of the future will find that many of the same concepts, if not the same tools, that printmakers, videoartists and musicians found waiting for them in the digital realm are usable in there with three dimensions as well.

Sculptor Michael Rees has a completely digital studio. At present he works solely in CAD software to create his sculptures. He explains one appeal, "While rapid prototyping is expensive, you don't need to have a [large] studio or materials." Over the years he has used six different rapid prototyping technologies and says that they all have their own special qualities. In the future, Rees says, "There is no reason why rapid prototyping shouldn't be at Kinkos and [it] should be inexpensive and easy."

"Working in CAD," Rees says, "is closer to the thought of sculpture than any process imaginable. It is a language within which whatever one can describe, one can build. The ability to visualize complex structures within structures without the constraints of the properties of those objects is extraordinary. For example I can't put a tomato inside of a rock and see them both, I can only imagine it. In CAD, the tomato is in the rock." 
There are also a growing number of ways to input three dimensional design into the computer, besides drawing them with a mouse. A major market which already exists for the 3-D printer is the medical market. It turns out that the CAT Scan and MRI data can be translated directly into these .STL files. MRI files are huge, in the realm of over 100 megabytes, but it means that doctors can generate accurate, immediate scaled down models of tumors and bone tissue previous to surgery. They can actually touch the shape of something, before they open the patient up. This is a world of difference from looking at two dimensional photos. It is quite a startling moment to realize that one is holding the model of a living person's skull. Having a model of your own skull, on a shelf in the den, may become a new gift sensation.

New digital software is already being developed to add a handmade look to the perfection of the 3-D scanned object. Today, you can pass digital video through filters that add faux film scratches and film tones to it. It is also easy in Photoshop to add, for instance, a water color effect filter to a scanned photograph. In the 3-D CAD environment, there are ways to bring in images, besides scanning, and use them for displacement shading or other modeling. Michael Rees adds his fingerprints, in this manner, to all his CAD images before printing them out. Some times he enlarges his fingerprints and they become an element of the surface design. In the digital world, we bring into it our memories of working by hand. "As a result of this," Rees says, "that wonderful weightless environment of the computer, what is akin to me to dream space, is informed by the real world metaphors of building, of weight and gravity."

There also already exist three dimensional scanners which use lasers to map the exterior surface of an object or a person and generate an .STL file. Some are big enough to map an entire human. These whole body scanners are being made for a number of uses. For instance, in Hollywood, film special effects designers need to accurately map the face and body of an actor so they can then use a computer to morph them into the latest monster of the week. But these files can be 3-D printed as well, generating a photographic sculpture.

These small full length nudes and body parts can be collaged within the computer or printed numerous times. The wide spread availability of true 3-D photography will change much of the role of the artists' hand in traditional sculpture. Some are even big enough to map an entire body. Printed out these reduced files of heads, whole bodies or objects represent three dimensional photography. These files of scanned objects and body parts can be easily collaged within the computer. As photography changed the meaning of painting, three dimensional object photography will change the role of the artist’s hand in traditional sculpture. Realistic sculptural representation entails a sense of great effort. With 3-D object photography the issue is only one of resolution.

Video sculptor Denise Marika scanned her own body for her sculpture, in-terra. She describes the process, " It's both  disturbing and kind of fascinating to be able to create images and have no input other than having sort of offered your body at the onset, and then be able to take the output and then start working and manipulating the use of that output."

When 3-D photographic reproduction achieves the economic level of print reproduction, sculptors will face much of the same issues as printmakers did when the copy machine first appeared. Issues of what is the original and what is the copy will fade, as issues about the meaning of multiplicity in sculpture grow. It is one thing to cover a gallery with tiny 3-D reproductions, it is another to cover a square mile.

Does this all mean the hand of the artist is not welcome in the new world of the 3-D object. Not at all. There is incredible work being done on input devices for computers that will not just allow the hand of the artist to directly form the digital object, but probably change the literal feel (as in 'look and feel') of the computer desktop as well. A company called SensAble Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts has developed a device that they call a 'haptic interface'. This means true digital touch. The computer user with this 3-D mouse-like device can actually feel the shape of a virtual object that only exists in the computer.

The PHANToM looks like a pen on an articulated armature. You can hold the pen and within the reach of the armature swing it in all directions freely in space. But when this device is connected to a 3-D CAD space, a virtual box, for instance, filled with virtual objects and a little crosshair representing the point of the stylus, a remarkable thing happens. When the crosshair in the computer touches on one of the walls of the space or the objects, the user feels it directly through the stylus; your hand stops. The cognitive dissonance is perfect. Your hand moves around the illusional object, feeling its shape as you look at it in the computer screen, even feeling its backside, the side you cannot see on the screen. Furthermore, all the parameters of the various objects can be manipulated through software. The softness of the objects' surfaces, the gravity acting on them, their mass and bounce, even their stickiness can be changed with the slide of a virtual switch. There are three PHANToM systems, each giving one larger and larger room for movement, from the space of a hand pivoting at the wrist to the space of an arm pivoting at the shoulder. At present they are expensive, costing at least $20,000 per device. But as uses multiply, market forces will bring this price down.

Interesting software for these devices is being made for drawing and sculpture. The virtual objects can now be deformed by hand. With the flip of a switch, material can be added or removed. This is called 'virtual prototyping'. It is sculpting by touch within the computer. And the stylus on the PHANToM can be replaced with a thimble which does the same thing directly to the tip of ones finger. People have even used two PHANToM thimbles, one on their forefinger and one on their thumb to reach out and pinch and sculpt virtual material, just like you would clay or wax. The same medical MRI files can be used with the PHANToM, so doctors can perform surgery simulation, called Virtual Endoscopy, before they do the real thing.

Two immediate sculptural benefits of the digital 3-D revolution are scale and storage. Scale modification has always been a laborious task for sculptors. To manually scale-up is painstaking and slow. New digital scanning, 3-D software and 3-D printing offer effortless scaling. Because the digital work is instantly scalable, Rees says, "I can imagine an object's build envelope as being 8 inches or 8 feet." It is possible to create a perspective of objects. By continually scaling the same sculpture by 95% and then placing a series of identical shapes in a row so that the viewer  sees them getting larger as they approach . Nick Capasso, Associate Curator at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA. is hopeful that, "If scale becomes effortless, it will encourage more artists to consider scale as an aesthetic device."

Capasso was also intrigued by the issues concerning the speedy reproduction of objects these machine allow. Without casting, exact reproductions of identical objects can be made as long as one keeps supplying the machines with material. "If you can have five hundred identical objects without having to sweat, that opens up a world of possibilities about sculptures that have to do with the idea of sets, sculpture that relies more on the interrelationship among a set of related objects than on the formal properties of a single unitary object." Capasso explained that, "this has been done before but [these systems] makes this so much easier."

Storage issues will also change for sculptors. All those old huge molds will be replaced by small hard drives holding bits of information. Most 3-D files are in the two to three megabyte range and hard drive storage is one of the amazing price stories of the digital revolution. The cost per gigabyte of hard drive storage has dropped by a factor of twenty over the last five years and you can now buy a one gigabyte hard drive for $100 or less, if you know where to look. These are just some of the changes that will overcome artists as sculpture, printmaking and photography all crash together in cyberspace and the issues of all these different media become digitally intertwined.