Writing Iteration 1.
In examining 3D modelling, its tools, uses, and implications, a comparison to its tactile forerunner provides a useful framework. Discourse on the grand tradition of sculpture is often grounded in concrete terms; the stately stature of a marble statue enduring throughout the centuries perched above the town square. Inherent in such a medium are implications of wealth and power, which are tied to the materials it necessitates and the public space such works often occupy. Sculptures project certain voices, at times with loud ignorance to the fraught histories which underlined their creation. In the monuments we build, we construct the narrative of our societies.
3D modelling purports to offer a more democratic means of creation rooted in the shared knowledge economy and free-flowing information of the digital age. In theory, an individual may experience, in tactile terms, everything from the marks of cryptic ogham stones to the curves of Michelangelo’s David. Such a notion, unfortunately, proves idealistic when faced with the unequal access to technology that still defines our world. If not everyone can access such means of production, then surely in the context of our time the medium and its tools are closely intertwined with the act of publishing. What will you do with that digital Venus di Milo?
3D sculpture sits in a liminal space that exists in a realm equally cyber and physical. The potentiality to produce at comparatively cheap cost, when possible, copies of an object lends the medium power as a publishing device. My project will seek to explore this dimension of the medium by using 3D printed models as wayfinding markers that reveal the city of London and highlight important denizens from its past whose names have yet to adorn a blue plaque.