Re: Digital artist works with 3-D designs

From: Bradley VanDike (bvandike@yazaki-na.com)
Date: Wed Nov 18 1998 - 15:11:43 EET


This article is great publicity for the RP industry, and for the artist Mr. Rees. However it makes no mention of the RP process referred to as FDM. FDM is capable of producing prototypes in any color under the rainbow with ABS plastic.
With this in mind a couple of the statements made in the article prove to be false. Those who develop the FDM process deserve their due.....

Brad Van Dike
Yazaki North America
Canton, Michigan
e-mail: bvandike@yazaki-na.com
phone: 734-844-6994

>>> Personal Agents by way of Yakov Horenstein <agents@inquisit.com> 11/17 4:56 PM >>>

Digital artist works with 3-D designs
(Reuters; 11/17/98)

By David Kushner NEW YORK (Wired) - Look Pablo, no hands! It may sound like
a malapropism, but it fits the work of sculptor and digital artist Michael
Rees who produces real objects directly from 3-D computer designs. At his
new show Michael Rees: "From Ear to Ear," which opened Friday at the
Central Fine Arts gallery (http://wwwcentralfinearts.com), Rees displayed
more than a dozen surreal anatomical sculptures formed by a process known
as rapid prototyping, or RP. Developed in the late 1980s, rapid prototyping
is typically used by auto and toy manufacturers. An RP machine renders a
computer- generated design by firing a laser beam into material such as
epoxy resin or ink-jet powder. The material hardens to form a precise
replica of the digital image. Rees, who had already established himself as
a sculptor, was a graduate student at Yale when he heard about RP
technology and he realized its potential to create works that were nearly
impossible to form by hand. "The level of control is unbelievable," Rees
explained at a preview reception last week. "Anything you can imagine, you
can build." Indeed, the sculptures seem to have bubbled up from the depths
of his imagination. A tiny elephant grows inside the human skull of "X-Ray
Ajna 3." A spinal section sprouts ears in "Ajna Spine Series 13." Rees said
the works derive, in part, from his interest in the confluence of Western
science and Eastern metaphysics. To create one of his sculptures, Rees may
spend six months meticulously forming an image using computer-aided design
software. The completed file is sent to an RP manufacturer, such as DTM
Corp. in Austin, Texas. Four types of rapid prototyping exist so far.
Stereolithography uses a laser-cured epoxy resin, which produces a
translucent, amber appearance. Laminated-object manufacturing cuts a
combination of resin and laminated paper, resulting in a wood-like object.
Selective-laser sintering fires a laser into a polycarbonate powder,
creating a hard white plastic appearance. Three-dimensional printing, which
solidifies layers of ink-jet powder, is the only method of RP through which
different colors can be selected. Typically, it takes up to 12 hours to
produce the prototype for a Rees creation, work that would take months to
accomplish without RP. He sometimes personalizes his sculptures with
digitally generated impressions of his fingerprint. His mechanical approach
has turned off some members of the New York art community, where Rees said
digital art is still somewhat of a bastard child. Only recently have shows,
such as the annual School of Visual Arts Digital Salon, garnered attention
among the art media.

"Many people in the institutions are very wary of this technology,"
observed Bill Jones, editor of Artbyte magazine. "No one has ever really
imagined that you could take a 3-D design and turn it into an object." The
RP technique, which is being used by only a handful of sculptors across the
world, drew the directors of the Central Fine Arts gallery to Rees, who
currently teaches in Kansas City, Missouri. "I was interested to find an
artist who was changing the perceptions of how sculptures are traditionally
made," said CFA director Zhang Zhang. In fact, Rees tends not to refer to
his works as sculptures. "In the art world, they're sculptures," he said,
"but in the RP manufacturing world [where engineers are used to making
drill-bit casings], they're parts." The technology demands a new way of
thinking about sculpture, says CFA's co- director, Patrick Allen. It's
irrelevant that Rees is making sculptures without the touch of human hands,
Allen said, "He's creating it using the human mind."
(Reuters/Wired)

{Reuters:Wired-1117.00244} 11/17/98

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:47:17 EEST