High Tech Art comes to the Zoller Gallery
February 16, 2005
The International Rapid Prototyping Sculpture Exhibition will be on display March 1- 26, 2005, at the Zoller Gallery on the University Park Campus as a part of a two-year tour of the United States and Europe. The exhibition is the culmination of three years of work by juror Robert Michael Smith and curator Mary Hale Visser, and is supported by 3D Systems, Inc. and the Sarofim School of Fine Arts of Southwestern University.
“Rapid prototyping” allows a real world or virtual object to be constructed with near perfect accuracy by using data from a computer-rendered object. This process was used to help surgeons successfully separate conjoined twins Maria Teresa and Maria de Jesus Quiej-Alvarez from Guatemala in August of 2002. Also, by using rapid prototyping, archeologists can view, analyze or even replicate artifacts from a fragment or a negative void in the earth.
Juror Robert Michael Smith is a professor of sculpture, 3D computer visualization/animation and philosophy of aesthetics at the New York Institute of Technology and Fine Arts. Smith is a member of the Board of Directors for the New York City chapter of SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics) and president of the Sculptors Guild. He is also a board member of the International Sculptors Symposium, Inc., the Washington Sculptors Group, and the Philadelphia Sculptors.
According to Smith, “artists have consistently been at the forefront of new technologies to present classic concepts with fresh vision.” Smith adds that artists traditionally help to “humanize technology.” This exhibition contains works by well-known contemporary sculptors who have explored this new technology to create works that cannot be constructed in any other way.
Works like Dan Collin’s self-portrait, “Twister,” introduce dynamic data information into what is normally a static scan by having the body move during the scan. Elona Van Gent built a modern-day cabinet of wonder, modeled after Russian Czar Peter the Great’s "Kunstkamera," which housed collections of anatomical anomalies. Also featured in this exhibition is one of Van Gent’s “wonders,” a hybrid monster she designed digitally by using the computer to randomly select cataloged objects from her database of forms. Mary Visser’s work, “Circle of Life,” with nine female forms suspended in a cylindrical form, could not be constructed with such detail in any other method with such anatomical exactness that creates the illusion of a machine from human forms.
Smith says, “The sculptors included in this exhibition are the aesthetic pioneers of rapid prototyping. Despite the similarity of production, there are clearly diverse ideas and aesthetic styles presented. Despite vast global distances between these sculptors, there has been regular and intimate communication regarding this new technology and concepts central to digital sculpture.”
For more information, check outhttp://www.rpsculpture.org/rapid.html
Zoller Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 9-5; Saturday 11-4:30; Sunday 12-4
Contact: Michelle Tillander, mdt167@psu.edu