Sunday 1 October 2017

Minor Project | Idea Development


After further conversations concerning the ideas behind my project, Phil introduced me to the term Mimesis, a term defined by the Oxford dictionary as the imitative representation of the real world in art and literature, something that my project is gravitating towards in these first few weeks.

I'm particularly interested in presenting this idea as Phil has informed that this notion exists within the realms of the crisis of representation, a topic which discusses the issues such as those that painters had with the invention of the camera as it essentially made their work irrelevant, as they were trying to replicate the real in a world where the camera had just made presenting and preserving the real a possibility that yielded much more accurate results, essentially putting painters out of business. This idea is extremely relevant to my work as my creations will serve as commentary on a software that is to sculptors what the camera was to painters, why try and recreate exact results in a medium that offers much less accurate representations? 

These ideas lead me to the core of what my project will exist upon, why use Maya to only create models, or virtual sculptures, that could be created in the real world, essentially giving Maya limitations that it doesn't need or necessarily already possess, perhaps we should be embracing the 'ugly side' of Maya and its natural limitations and boundaries, potentially opening up an entirely new realm of work to be created.

The famous works below are perfect examples of the ways in which certain mediums not only open avenues of possibilities but present natural limitations...     


All the works are incredible moments of art in their own right but showcase the boundaries of their mediums.

I'm keen to showcase the 'broken' moments of Maya as sculptures in their own right, as these moments occur when Maya essentially gets to be Maya, the user has little control of the outcome, potentially due to human error, and the software gets to affect a model in the way that it most naturally wants to, creating unexpected outcomes that defy intentions.

The search for these moments will come in the form of a number of experiments that give Maya the chance to 'Maya' something, presenting a number of opportunities for the software to naturally break or affect something, resulting in models or moments that counter what is generally expecting of its creator.



1 comment:

  1. Articulate stuff, Lewis :) And another interesting set of artefacts!

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