Last night, purely by chance, I came across an interesting web site by a British artist called Sophie Kahn; a lady that was born in London but grew up in Australia. I don’t know if she is famous in the modern art world but I found her sculptures which she 3D printed and videos of her incomplete 3D scans quite intriguing.
3D printed partial reconstruction of a sculptured head
This artist captures the human body using a 3D scanner which is not up to the job and she does so on purpose. She does not want perfection nor anything close to it. The idea is not to copy the human form exactly but to capture it in motion or slightly different positions. When the incomplete or more correctly imperfect scans are combined into a video, the fragmented impressions are quite eerie. For me, some are even spooky; like looking at ghosts (not that I have never seen any ghosts for real but I am sure you understand the meaning).
The artist has physically created many of her incomplete scans too, casting them in bronze from 3D printed molds. These sculptures remind me of statues from ancient Greece or even some scenes from Spielberg’s movie, A.I. Artificial Intelligence; not too dissimilar to what you can often see in museums. Statues and sculptures with parts missing, twisted forms or bits broken off.
Sophie Kahn’s art work is indeed very intriguing and I am sure she is trying to say something. Unfortunately high level art criticism passes by someone like me – I never get it. Only sometimes after being told. Well this is what the artist has to say about her work:
“They also speak to the impossibility of ever capturing more than a trace of the past, or of a living, breathing body, despite our grandest efforts to fix it in place. This concern with the instability of memory and representation is the common thread that weaves together the ancient and futuristic aspects of my work.”
It is worth taking a look at her 3D printed sculptures and videos at sophiekahn.net and see what you think. There is also a series of three articles about 3D printing on the move from an artist travelling around Europe called Sloris.