This is an ongoing project using digital fabrication machine --- potter bot, which is a 3D printer using clay as its material. Through a process that I develop the model as data in the computer, then the data is translated into physical object by potter bot, finally I scan the physical object back in the virtual space in the computer, this final model is developed from the original model, with an process of physical existence engaged. I aim to raise a question about the relation between the data and the physical objects, and also a question about the relation between the machine and the body.
As Stacy Jo Scott noted in her paper Digital Fabrication, Embodiment, and the persistent Materiality of Transcendence, in the process of traditional practice of sculpting with clay, the act of touch the clay as a reciprocal exchange between active agents, but within the digital art it seems like the touching process is abolished. The digital media is generated on a space ordered by algorithm that is seemingly untouched by material qualities and gravity. “However, machine is performing a most basic human impulse: to materialize an idea through language”. The machine translates my idea in the language that is printable. The machine and the hand both allow the maker to reflect their vision through material, thus the machine is not supposed to be viewed as “other”, instead, the machine should be viewed as organism. Does our body end at the skin, the feet, or the hand, or the eternal media that we use to materialize our idea?
Using potter bot, I printed feet. It collapsed in the process of printing and created a pattern. This accidence generated by the machine and the material clay itself is bizzare but it makes the process clear, it becomes proof of the existence of machine’s intervention. I, as the maker of this piece, and the machine produce this piece. The foot, as the end of our body, is printed through an expansion of our body --- the potter bot. I did not touch the item until it had been printed. But is the touch only physical? I did touch it if I perceive the machine as part of my body. After the touchable item transforms from the digital data, I performed an additional move, scanning the foot back in the computer. The intention of this move is to transform the physically existing object back to data. However, is the data different from the original data? The data developed from the real object is transformed by the data itself. Essentially speaking, is the second version of data the same as the first version of data after being physically touched?
The idea of foot comes from a trip to Sri Lanka. The culture of walking barefooted is fascinating to me. We are uncomfortable of barefooted or this intimate connection between man and nature. The texture of printed feet from potter bot is a response to the touch on the dirt of the ground. In Sri Lanka, the feet, as the end of our body, are connected to their environment. In other words, nature seems to be an expansion of their bodies, by the intimate touch of the feet.
Final installation in Maya
documentation
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