AoTDA chapter 3

Wands dedicates the third chapter of his book to the medium of computer assisted sculpture. I found it curious, since most of the time that I have spent working on digital art has been invested on using these same sorts of tools (CGI, raytracing, 3d models and animation) but I have almost never thought of it as a series of tools for creating real life sculptures. Instead, for much of the time that I have spent working in Blender 3d, Wings 3d,  and POV Ray, I have been focused on the possibilities of Special effects in film making and creating virtual environments.

Bruce Wands mentions three sorts of artists who use digital tools to aid them in their sculptures. First there are artists like Bruce Beasley who use the digital space in order to plan out their conventional sculptures. Basically, they might use a virtual environment as a sketch book to work through ideas before engaging with the traditional mediums.

After that there are sculptors like Dan Collins use CNC milling machines to render computer models into a physical form. In his work "twister" he used a "full body laser scanner" to scan his image into a computer while he was spinning on a turn table. The result is that the data set was corrupted into this twisted image:

The third group of digital sculptors that Bruce Wands describes uses a the computer to create digital sculptures that are meant to stay in the virtual.

When I was a kid, I used to make all of these paper models of space ships. Mostly I was making my own custom versions of the Star Ship Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I developed my models as a sort of free-hand version of these 3d Paper model kits that you could find at Borders Books. A quick look online shows that there are many kits available now, though I hardly recognize them. I might be looking at the same kits for the Enterprise D and not even know it, it was so long ago. What's important is that building these models freehand gave me a strong grasp of the concepts behind vertices and shapes in 3d space.

I have thought many times over the years about returning to my artistic roots, giving up this life of crime to go make art to fill a gallery with. Forgetting all that stability 9-5 stuff and just sticking to abstract sculpture. Well, its a fun thought. Thanks Bruce for taking me on another digital art adventure.