uccello chalice
uccello chalice is a model of a model of a model, a conversation between generations of new media artists spanning 5 centuries. Click or tap and drag to rotate and zoom the figure in the field below.
The model used in the interactive has also been 3D printed using a high resolution resin printing process. I created this print at Shapeways.
specifications
- date 2022
- media 3D model in WebGL interactive | clear resin stereolithograph
- size interactive size + duration varies with browser, device, + client | sculpture 12.5″ h 9.3″ d
- exhibition history awaiting public exhibition
origins
uccello chalice is a web and fabrication meditation on the famous Perspective Study of a Chalice, drawn around 1450. Most attribute this work to Paolo Uccello, though some authorities argue it may have been authored by Piero della Francesca. It is a work of “new media” in the context of its era.
This work is also inspired by Richard Talbot, who investigated the geometry of the original wireframe. Another inspiration is Angela Eames, a new media artist. Around 2004, she may have been among the first to transform this drawing into the digital expression it presaged, another “new media” iteration of the idea.
If one judges Uccello’s work as functional cup, it is a failure — the drawing does not create a watertight vessel, and the walls of the cup have no inherent thickness. However, this is not the goal. He wants it to resist any reference to material or scale and transcend the problem of universals. Because it is a wireframe, the first in history, the original drawing succeeds in approaching a purely autonomous, Platonic Form.
To give this strange non-object a material expression, many artists have tried constructing a physical Chalice, but most lack the transparency of the Uccello drawing, though some have achieved notable results. Vija Celmins’ work Constellation – Uccello of 1983 is a meditation on varieties of order and scale, while Neil Dawson’s clever Uccello’s Chalice renders the ephemerality of the original, if not the delicacy.
description
Like these artists, I wanted to honor the inherent immateriality of the Uccello Chalice in material. I also wanted to exploit bleeding-edge digital fabrication to contribute to the media-driven dialogue this work has created across the centuries.
Because the elements of the original wireframe, being pure line, have no material thickness, I drew their modern equivalent: a large array of NURBS curves. Along these immaterial lines I extruded a small circular section, combining these into a fine, unified latticework. Afterward, I smoothed the result, adding enough geometry to create the inference of a quantum set of points — thus, there are no rigidly angular connections, but rather the implication of the vectors and vertices they infer. Once this achieved the desired expression, I scaled it to precisely match the size of the original.
This model required some refinement as I sought a manufacturer who could achieve the industrial-scale clear resin print that would give the object the right size and a proper translucent finish. The resulting object captures and transmits light in much the same manner as a fiber-optic cable. This phenomenon suggests the immateriality of Uccello’s original.
Meanwhile, in the digital model, the audience can experience the model exhibiting the same scale-less, decontextualized conditions envisioned by Uccello, supercharged by interactivity. Zooming in, orbiting point of view, and changing the shading properties, one can feel a range of perceptions, from the delicacy of a tiny object to the vastness of an architectural monument, with a directness that the original drawing can only allude to. This is best experienced in the full-screen mode accessible through the embedded asset above.