Very few times I look at a piece of design and say “I wish i made that” This is one of those times. Antonio Pio Saracino studio created “the guardians” to celebrate the year of italian culture in New York city. Saracino designed a marble Michaelangelos David and a steel super hero to feature opposite each other in a square in New York.
The 2 pieces are enablers of some very key values of mine. A celebration of achievement and potential of humans. and a cross coordination of material display and techniques new and old.
the use of negative space in the pieces never make you feel like they are blocking out your world just inhabiting it in the same fluid way we do.
I wanted to explore and play around with vases further, they were fairly basic vessels with a classical nature that i could eventually dive deeper into at a later point.
It did cross my mind, to throw some vases and 3d scan them. that would be nice. it would be preferable and a testament to the skill and art of vase making. sadly im a terrible thrower. it is not something i feel is impossible, but it is hard. and not easy on my schedule.
so what else?
I shall 3d model it.
best programme i found to use after a bit of googling, was Maya.
and yes, yes it was indeed good. almost to easy.
I created a column by extruding the top face of a cylinder. then i stretched each vertex to shape a vase.
worked very nicely.
shape and theme wasn’t terribly important at this stage. i just needed a shape to work with.
Never thought i would be playing with this particular function. Many 3d modellers allow you to create and edit UVs. UVs are in the most basic way i cna explain are flattened skins of your model. this flat skin can then be exported painted and edited then reimported to the 3d programme and you can then re apply that UV to your model.
this is how they make faces look like skin in games etc.
So in Zbrush i am playing with a stock model.
Firstly i painted the positive and negative points of the face. so the UV understands how to unfold and keep details with out breaking the shape up.
This is what a UV flattened looks like
I took it into photoshop and scribbled on it.
Then brought it back and used it as an alpha to create these shapes.
they look… unique thats for sure.
i am considering using famous paintings and extracting them over models to see what happens.
After working with wireframes i wanted to see how possible it was to use patternated negative space. to wrap a pattern around an object and use its negative ares within the shape.
Many programmes can do this but i found a few useful tutorials for zbrush so i started there.
In zbrush you need to create an alpha. which is a black and white or greyscale picture. then once imported to zbrush, the white and black ares determine what is extruded and what is not. or maybe how much the extrusion is depending on the shade of grey.
Im still working on this..
In more basic forms i used the highlight selection tool to draw some radial patterns on a sphere.
I thought it made an interesting piece. its a pretty solid model to print i think aswell.
Next I went on to play with basic scribbles as alphas, i made in photoshop these were super basic ( and lazy) and then extruded them on different models.
i got some interesting results, but they do interrupt the stability of the model because of what ive drawn.
I also used the stock face model for fun to see what would happen.
next I used one of the stock textures see what i could create on a basic sphere and plane.
i think they look really interesting and definitely something i want to return to.
after practicing in maya i created a vase that i could print and slip cast. importantly i needed to make the vase solid. as in filled whole.. no walls. because the walls will be there when i slipcast and i can control there thickness with time. and also when playing with the wireframe modifiers. the wireframe would make 2 overlapping walls if it wasn’t solid.
after 3d printing i slipcast it and it reproduced beautifully.
now heres the issue.. shrinkage. this clay hasnt been fired yet and will shrink. so now theres the problem. how am i going to make the other half with when one isn’t true its original dimensions.
so i waited till one was leather hard and cut it down the middle to understand its thickness.
new problem. the hollow shell inside isn’t true to the shape on the outside. so i cant match the digital shape accurately.
I was thinking about being eaten, digitally eaten that is. So how would that look? I was thinking about cutlery, an almost ironic idea. to have cutlery eaten. pixelated pieces of silver ware that are half eaten.
in thinking about how i would draw this i started in photoshop. taking a basic knife jpeg and playing about, i wanted to lower its pixel count.
I was struggling to determine how many squares wide the knife was and it was abit of trial and error.
moving on, i wish i had minecraft then i could create it in mine craft and destroy it afterward….oh?!
I found a programme which helps people who like to model real life objects in minecraft, to figure out how large it needs to be and what materials to use in the game.
This could work.
I looked at a section of wood eaten by termites to help me understand the kind of shape of deformation i wanted. it really helped!
I Wanted to start by playing with an idea I had, back at the end of last term, playing with negative space inside a solid shape.
Here I have used a 3D model of a sphere, and Boolean a space inside with a pyramid. This was something I initially couldn’t see until i took it into 123d design and changed the form of the model into slices.
I then took the shapes to the laser cutter and cut everything out in acrylic.
After the arduous task of sticking my pieces together.
間 – This is “Ma” it is the Japanese symbol for “gap” “space” or “pause”I want to look at the utilisation of negative space, gaps and pauses.
So how are we thinking of the negative space in things. I found some poetic descriptions that fit quite nicely.
Thirty spokes meet in the hub, though the space between them is the essence of the wheel.
Pots are formed from clay, though the space inside them is the essence of the pot.
Walls with windows and doors form the house, though the space within them is the essence of the house.
These poetic sayings, appear to be accessing the “soul’ and being of the objects. Im not sure I would be able to 3d model the soul..yet.
Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval.
with this in mind. if i can create such a piece that embodies this. the user should find an enjoyment in viewing the piece. or at least leave with a little more.
I found some great images that could help.
Adolf Hitler was certainly not the smartest man. But he was one hell of a public speaker. Some identify that hitler was so good because of the pauses he took before he spoke. he built anticipation in the crowd.
There is negative space in music that can make it memorable to.
Henry Spencer Moore once said this in The Listener in 1937:
“The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form. The mystery of the hole – the mysterious fascination of caves in hillsides and cliffs.”
I am finding that these sculptures by Bruno Catalano hold negative space that connect one piece to another. its through shape and position that embody a shared experience of 2.
I find that in the opening titles for Hannibal the Tv series. the use of negative space is profound. And it adds to the ambiguity of what the show is really about. A rather beautiful interpretation of cannibals with wine turning into blood or even vice versa. not to mention the emphasis on what the mind and its psychology brings to the show. how the mind breaks and the people break, is really characterised in this opening. It reminds me of Mark Quinns Blood sculpture of a face.
I thought this was good, putting Sauron inside the iris of the eye. was rather striking.
I dont want to look at sculptures so abstract that interpretation becomes almost incessant, cant it be simple but engaging?
The negative space of molded clay is what makes a vase a vase.
cdelucamaker 
