Last week I gave an artist talk at City Gallery Wellington on Whisper Down The Lane. As part of it I showed a video of the latest object being printed: After Rohan Wealleans’ He With Glands Of Wasp, and now I’ve put it up on the interwebs so those of you who couldn’t be there can check it out:

City Gallery Wellington has published the exhibition text for Whisper Down The Lane – a project currently being developed as part of the exhibition The Obstinate Object: Contemporary New Zealand Sculpture. Aaron Lister has produced a fantastic piece of writing about the work (if I say so myself), however it’s only available as a PDF download. For the sake of searchability and accessibility I’m making an executive decision (please forgive me CGW) and publishing it here for your reading pleasure:

Bronwyn Holloway-Smith

Whispers down the lane, 2012, mixed media

Bronwyn Holloway-Smith uses the occasion of this exhibition to challenge the boundaries of sculpture, especially its willingness to step into the new expanded field offered by digital cultures and communities. Her project functions as a model for new ways of digitally making and disseminating sculpture, while attempting to bring those sculptures more firmly rooted in the physical world along with her. With echoes of the Pied Piper, Holloway-Smith calls to some of the other artists in this exhibition, negotiating to make digital replicas of their work. The project is ongoing, with the cast of replicas growing through the three-month cycle of the exhibition.

The small, intricate replicas on display work on purely sculptural terms, beguiling with their material qualities and provoking questions around process, about how they are made. First, digital files are created in a CAD programme based on measurements and  photographs or drawings of the sculptures. Different fabrication technologies are then employed in the making of these objects. The first method takes a file and prints it three-dimensionally using a RepRap printer, which builds the object up by laying down successive layers of PLA plastic. A second approach uses a high-power laser to cut a pattern for a multi-layered object, which is  then assembled by hand. Holloway-Smith’s two processes are a digital echo of that old sculptural battle between carving and modelling.

Yet for all their wonder and beauty, these objects are really just surrogates for their digital existence as freely downloadable files that can be saved, altered and built on by users through a Creative Commons licence. This process offers sculpture a radical new way of entering the public realm, but in doing so challenges many core values of the medium, especially around the primacy of physical encounter, a heavy investment in the original, and a strong adherence to traditional models of ownership. Control is taken away from the artist, the collector and the gallery, and placed in the hands of the user. Gallery restrictions on even taking photographs of artwork, based on protecting the copyright of the artist and preserving the role of the gallery as the authentic site to experience art, start to look archaic and self serving. Holloway-Smith’s project is more interested in issues around the democratisation and control of culture than with the making of the objects for display.

The project delights in the difficulties that sculpture poses for these new technologies. Some sculptures in the exhibition resist the process of replication through their scale, complex materiality or the tension between multiple parts. The title of this project nods to Holloway-Smith’s interest in mistranslation, with what gets lost or altered through the process of replication and the intervening hand of the artist. New technologies may offer perfect tools for replication, but those mysteries and vagaries of cultural transmission and exchange will or must endure.

Just in case it doesn’t get approved as a comment, here’s my response to this DomPost article on Aro Street Video facing closure:

While it would be a massive shame to see Aro Video go (I’ve been a customer for years) it’s short-sighted to blame this on piracy. The market has shifted, that’s true, but this avoids the reality that most video/tv content still isn’t made legally available online in NZ.

Just as the industry shifted from renting videotapes to DVDs in the 90s, the format is now shifting to downloadable digital content but the industry has failed to keep up with consumer demand. While illegal downloading is wrong, the enormous success of sites like iTunes and NetFlix (only available in the US) has shown that when people are given a legal alternative to accessing content they will use it. It would be fabulous to see a store like Aro, with it’s reputation for quality content, allowed to make their stock legally available for sale or rent online. The gatekeepers of the industry, however, have made it very difficult for local businesses like these to adapt to meet the needs of their customers and therein lies the tragedy.

As mentioned, overall the film industry is doing remarkably well despite its crocodile tears over enormous losses due to piracy (and we’re yet to see concrete statistics backing up these claims). A recent study in to entertainment spending (called “The Sky is Rising” – google it) found that the film industry was indeed booming: with global film/tv spending increasing US$100 Billion in the past 10 years. Language like “piracy” and “cannabalises” is no more than industry propaganda that avoids the issue of an industry failing to adapt. That said, I don’t think this is Aro Video’s fault at all, but that of the suppliers they depend on. Blame them, not the customers.

I’ve just come across this white paper by Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge titled “It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology“. Although it was written just over a year ago, it’s a fantastic read and still highly relevant as 3D printing technology continues to evolve towards the domestic market. He’s released it under a Creative Commons BY-SA license so you can read & share it from here.

It’s an interesting look at how this new technology might be seen as a threat by those that hold Intellectual Property rights over 3-dimensional items (copyright, trademarks, patents…). As 3D printers enter the domestic market it will become very difficult to enforce these kinds of rights as people start imitating and modifying objects in the privacy of their own homes. As we’ve seen in the recent copyright battles over the internet (spurred by music and film downloading) some rights holding organisations are resistant to adapting to new technologies, rather using the law as a way of clamping down on the freedoms this new technology provides to individuals.

Following suit, it is highly likely that 3D printing will spur a similar battle between public versus private rights. As Weinberg emphasises, the challenge lies in being prepared to advocate for laws that protect creativity and innovation before these vital ingredients for progress are eroded from beneath our feet.

So how close are these things to the domestic market? You can put a RepRap together for between US$500-1200 (as estimated over here and available over here). If you prefer an out-of-the-box model the biggest yet, dual-colour Makerbot: the Replicator has just been released for US$1,749.00 and these things are just going to get cheaper.

And to end on a shameless self-endorsement, to see what 3D prints can look like check out this art project (printed with an earlier version of the RepRap): Ghosts in the form of gifts.

Found on my conservatory roof, naturally sculpted by hail in a mysterious magical fashion.
Wellington, 13 September 2011.

A teacher at Lyall Bay Primary School recently emailed me to say her class of 8-10 year olds had been studying Pioneer City over the course of two months. I met with Room 11 this week to tell them more about the project and to hear about and see their work: including their own Pioneer Cities in shoe boxes, poems, and an exercise thinking about who would be eligible to go to Mars. Here’s what I saw:

On the outside, the Shuttle Launch Simulation Facility building was made to resemble the Shuttle Vehicle Assembly Building. CLUI photo

Titled A Complex Complex of Complexes, this article from the Center for Land Use Interpretation on the tourism aspect to Cape Canaveral is an interesting read:

The Cape’s importance to the world’s history of space flight is rivaled only by the Baikonur  Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan.* More than 500 launches into orbit, or beyond, have been launched from the pads at Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, including all of the US’s manned space program flights, and 3,000 or more suborbital launches have taken place from its shores. The forty or so launch complexes at the Cape (called SLCs or “slicks” or even more simply LCs) line the shore of central Florida like an eighteen-mile long hemispheric coastal battery aimed at the sky. Of these, most are relics; a few have been converted to other uses; and seven or so are currently actively used in orbital launches.

* It should be noted that the Russians have had more than twice as many successful orbital launches as the US, with over a thousand launches each at Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, and from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, 500 miles north of Moscow.

Ghosts in the form of gifts is the winner of the inaugural award for Open Source in the Arts.

The Open Source Awards recognise New Zealanders’ contributions to open source projects, use of open source products, and promotion of the free and open philosophy.

Read an article about the work & award by Courtney Johnston  on Best of 3: http://best-of-3.blogspot.com/2010/11/congratulations.html

Bronwyn Holloway-Smith will speak about the work at the Girl Geek Christmas Dinner on 15 December.

A second print of the work is scheduled to be exhibited in early 2011 – stay tuned!