PART 4 — Metaphors to Making
6-minute read
The idea of a thing
A smart artist makes the machine do all the work.
– Cornelia Solfrank
Artists are makers, but what do they make? A thing, or an idea? In the contemporary era, processes of making have been batted around between craft (creation by hand), industrial process (creation by machine), and concept (supremacy of idea over object). While there remains a tendency to authenticate and validate a work of art by recognizing the hand of the artist in its production, increasing numbers of artists embrace the industrial and conceptual as valid touchstones for making. Throw in the digital, now, and what does it mean to make something? This debate began about two centuries ago…
Revolution…
The Industrial Revolution brought many benefits, but for some crafters, it brought obsolescence of skills and loss of status. Early in the 1800s, factories introduced automated looms operated by a cheap and unskilled labor force into the English textile industry. Around 1811, skilled weavers who objected to their obsolescence started a movement. The weavers took Ned Ludd, a legendary chap who had reportedly destroyed a knitting machine a generation earlier, as their mythical leader in a frenzy of machine breaking that ultimately led to military intervention. Luddites, as they came to be known, have since symbolized fear of technological change, but this association misrepresents their anxieties. In The Making of the English Working Class, historian E. P. Thompson quotes news accounts of the day:
They broke only the frames of such as have reduced the price of men’s wages; those who have not lowered the price, have their frames untouched; in one house, last night, they broke four frames out of six; the other two which belonged to masters who had not lowered their wages, they did not meddle with.
— E. P. Thompson
This report suggests the Luddites were acting from a sense of economic self-preservation rather than a blind fear of change. They were by their actions critiquing a social policy of free-market wage deflation. Thompson suggests they would have been unconcerned about adopting new processes if they could keep their livelihood.
Arts and Crafts to the Bauhaus
A social critique of the Industrial Revolution came from designers as well as craftsmen. The artist and critic William Morris, inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, called for a rejection of the shoddy products and working conditions of the industrial milieu and a return to quality, traditional craftsmanship and making. The Arts and Crafts Movement was a somewhat utopian social ideal spurning industrialism. However, it became a prelude to Modernism with its call for simple quality and honest use of materials. It inspired designers worldwide, including Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago, Art Nouveau in France, and even the beginnings of the Bauhaus.
The Bauhaus began as a merger of the Belgian Art Nouveau architect Henry van de Velde’s Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. Soon after Walter Gropius took the helm, it began to reconcile the Arts and Crafts values of material integrity, simplicity and quality with the processes and aesthetic of the machine. Additionally, it leveled the hierarchy among all makers: fine artist and craftsmen had equal status in the curriculum.
Meanwhile, Marcel Duchamp changed the terms of artmaking forever with the factory-produced Readymade Fountain, in a deliciously subversive linkage between the industrial and the conceptual.
Embracing the machine
By the 1960s, the tendency to embrace the industrial came to full flower with Donald Judd. He did not build his own work. Rather, he specified it via a working drawing to be constructed in a factory. Artists such as Sol LeWitt also rejected outright the validation of the artist’s hand. He declared the idea behind each work to surpass the work itself. Joseph Kosuth went even further and claimed that art is not making work, but making concepts.
In the meantime, Robert Mallary began a search for the means toward a technical revolution in art. Mallary was known for his Neo-Dada found object assemblages. But around 1967 he collaborated on a computer program named TRAN2, which his website describes as:
… a computer graphics program with twenty sub-routines to generate sculpture. The program presupposes a means of compiling form description data for use by the computer. This is done by breaking down the solid into a regular series of parallel cross sections, or contour “slices,” which are then graphed and digitized as X, Y and Z coordinates and transferred to punch cards. A sequence of mathematical transformation procedures is brought to bear on the contour sections whereby the computer, in effect, models and reshapes the contour sections into an original sculpture. The computer plotter reproduces a series of perspective views of the generated form together with a complete set of the transformed contour sections. These are used as patterns to complete the sculpture in some appropriate material.
— Robert Mallary
In short, he creates a primitive form of 3D printing, as seen above. By using the computer to “fill in the blanks,” Mallary opens the door to the concept now being explored by many contemporary digital artists: creating a process through which work can self-organize. Andrew Kudless of Matsys and David Fletcher proposed the Resonant Field for the Jardins de Metis in Canada. They create mounds at a self-forming angle of equipoise. These are seeded with local flora and left to evolve into a unique ecology. Cornelia Solfrank pushes the boundary of auto-organization even further, allowing the view to set the terms of art self-generation in the Net Art Generator project.
What does it mean for a work to make itself? The presence of the hand of the artist may not validate it, but the presence of the mind of the artist does. We find that in the script that determines the form, not the form itself.
… or Evolution
In this section, we explore software primarily through metaphors to making. The terms for making in art — drawing, sculpture, photography, cinema, performance art, and so forth — are well established, but jargon-laden and specialized. If you are unfamiliar with cinema, and you land in a territory of animation that’s informed by cinematic metaphor, you quickly become lost. A metaphor is meaningless if not perceived.
Some software wears its metaphors to making on its sleeve. Photoshop is clearly organized around a darkroom metaphor, for example. But how many Photoshop users who have never stepped in a darkroom understand the dodge or burn tools? Further, how many understand there are as many painting metaphors as there are photographic ones in this robust, more-than-photographic tool?
This portion of the text exists to familiarize the modeler with artistic processes of making and their metaphorical extensions into digital practice. It turns out modeling integrates a broad range of art practice, from drawing through performance art, from craft through concept. Rather than obsoleting previous means of making, modeling synthesizes and evolves them into something utterly new, yet recognizable — if we know the metaphors! This knowledge allows the digital artist to become Solfrank’s smart artist.
Chapter synopses
CHAPTER 13 — Metaphors to Drawing
This chapter explores the historical evolution and practical applications of projection systems in art and science. From Albrecht Dürer’s drawing machines to modern 3D modeling software, it illustrates the importance of understanding perspective for visual representation, encompassing concepts from Renaissance art to contemporary digital interfaces.
CHAPTER 14 — Metaphors to Sculpture
The evolution of making, from the Industrial to Digital revolutions, sees varied processes: Addition (Modeling), Subtraction (Carving), Assembly (Manipulation), and Substitution (Casting). From clay sculpting to digital sculpting, from Michelangelo’s stone carving to CNC milling, each method brings ancient and modern techniques together in a creative synthesis.
CHAPTER 15 — Metaphors to Photography
The interplay of light and material in 3D modeling parallels the setup of a photo studio. Understanding light’s role as subject and object is crucial. Modelers manipulate various types of lighting akin to real-world setups, influencing composition and depth. By simulating camera optics, they craft scenes with precision, akin to photographic compositions, mastering depth of field and motion blur for impactful rendering.
CHAPTER 16 — Metaphors to Cinema
Navigating through cinematic history and techniques, the text meticulously examines the evolution of film from rudimentary optical devices to modern innovations. It explores pivotal moments like the advent of sound and animation, illuminating their profound impact on the language and artistry of modeling.
CHAPTER 17 — Metaphors to Performance
Explore diverse topics spanning puppetry and performance art to digital animation. It explores puppet manipulation techniques as a metaphor for rigging, the intersection of art and technology, and the evolution of animation software like Maya. From traditional magic lantern shows to the rise of CGI, it unveils the creativity shaping the world of visual storytelling through modeling.