PROTOTYPES
A series of generative objects that engage with the meta surrounding the practices, philosophies, and aesthetics of prototyping.
Prototypes is at once a broad statement about how each one of us is furthering the works that have come before us through our own revisions and representations, and it is also a deeply personal project. Inspired by my practice as a coder and artist, but also by my upbringing and passion for skateboarding — the objects I’ve created express my appreciation for brutalist architecture and recreational landscape design. I’ve tuned the drawing, layout, and layering of shapes in Prototypes to resemble aerial views of contoured playgrounds, skateparks, waterparks, fountains, public squares, and other pedestrian architectures. Transitioning from macro to micro, further aesthetic cues are taken from modern industrial design including the circles and rounded rectangular forms found on computers, cameras, smartphones and other modern electronic devices.
One of the most exciting parts of creating long form generative artwork is the collaboration with indeterminacy that can allow for the emergence of outputs that give one a sense of synchronicity or even synchromysticism. I have tried to optimize the shape generation engine of Prototypes to stumble into creating images that are likely to trigger pareidolia or apophenia in the viewer. I have personally observed a plethora of surprising forms within test outputs resembling plants, animals, faces, bodies, landscapes, as well as a vast amount of symbols seemingly related to ancient human history, religion and the occult.
Instead of using a pre-existing 3D rendering engine or library to render the sculptural form and matte-white finish I employ, I wrote my own algorithm that simulates 3D form by procedurally applying layers of shadows and highlights to shapes, thereby creating the illusion of depth in these 2D renderings. This is similar to the way master painters traditionally layered shadows and highlights in oil paint to render form and light on canvas. The technical foundations of this technique are inspired by the recent web/app design trend of NeuMorphism. Each Prototype is rendered using SVG (Scaled Vector Graphics) which means the work can be infinitely scaled while retaining clean and precise details, producing an image of each object far superior to what would have been possible using a standard 3D rendering engine.
Through this pleasingly lifelike emulation of physical form these objects entice the viewer to touch them, to trace their edges; contours, protrusions, and press their indentations. I intentionally wanted to evoke a sense of tactility in these digital objects to remind us of our lingering desire for physical objects in an increasingly flat, screen based digital world.
Art Blocks has a rich history of generative projects that emulate the look of drawing or screen printing that led to offerings of physical plotter drawings or digital prints corresponding to the minted outputs. I believe the next logical step for a pioneering Art Blocks project would be to produce physical sculptures based upon generative outputs that emulate sculptural forms.
Using the 2D digital Prototype objects as schematics I will precisely sculpt and model 3D versions then utilize rapid prototyping technology to produce physical sculptures using white archival plastic materials that match the digital renders nearly perfectly. This gesture furthers the exploration of prototype meta by posing the question: how or when does an artwork or object transition from being a mere prototype, sketch, or plan to becoming a final product?
These sculptures will be offered in limited numbers for collectors who purchase above set thresholds during the Dutch auction mint. In order to give collectors the opportunity and time to choose exactly the outputs they would like to have produced as physicals I plan* to airdrop production tokens to those collectors who purchase within the available thresholds. Collectors will then be able to mint or purchase further outputs and later redeem their production tokens for the sculptural production of the Prototype outputs of their choosing from those that they have collected. However, only one physical will ever be produced for each unique Prototype output, maintaining the 1/1/x exclusivity of the digital token outputs while allowing for collectors to curate the outputs that will ascend from the two dimensional virtual realm of our networked screens into solid sculptural objects that can exist and be experienced within our more personal spaces of three dimensional physical reality.
Planned size tiers for sculptural production offerings:
Large: 15in x 30in x 7.5in**, CNC machined out of High Density Urethane block, hand-finished, max edition of 5
Medium: 10in x 20in x 5in**, CNC machined out of Delrin Acetal block, max edition of 20
Small: 5inch x 10inch x 2.5in**, CNC machined out of Delrin Acetal block, max edition of 100
*Final mechanics will be developed in cooperation with ArtBlocks.
**Depth dimensions will vary depending upon the depth of procedural layers existing within each unique output.
***As reference for those who attended ABMarfa 2023: The two Prototypes physical sculptures I produced for my wife and I to wear as pendants measured 1.25in x 2.5in x 5/8in. That is 1/4 the width, 1/16 the face area, and 1/64th the volume of the Small sized sculptures I plan to produce.
