Keith Brown: GEO_01

  • ©2003, Keith Brown


Artist(s):



Title:


    GEO_01

Exhibition:


Creation Year:


    2003

Category:



Artist Statement:


    The possibilities for computer-generated sculpture are obviously immense. As the computer gradually takes its place in the tool chest of the contemporary practitioner, we are inevitably seeing changes that challenge our traditional views and preconceptions about how sculpture is conceived, produced, and experienced. The computer and related technologies, for many, including myself, have become much more than simply a new set of design and production tools. They have presented us with completely new media to explore, and no doubt there will be many more to follow. If there is one single influence that will separate the art of this millennium from that of the past and constitute a paradigm shift of aesthetic and conceptual advancement, of equivalent cultural significance to the first “hand paintings” made in the caves of Paleolithic man, then my calculated guess is that it’s going to be, if it is not already, computer technology.

    My work embraces a wide range of digital activities, both virtual and actual. My main concern is with “real virtuality” or “cyber-realism” rather than “virtual reality,” reversing the order between the cyber and the real. These works present sculptural forms and images that could not be realized except in the digital and cyber environments, thus producing a new order of object, which is made physically manifest in 2D and 3D media. Using the computer in a direct way as the medium, my work is conceived while interacting with the cyber-modeling environment. The work includes 2D and 3D printing techniques.

    GEO_01 was designed in 3ds max and output via a 3D Systems thermojet wax printer and then cast into bronze using the lost-wax technique. The burnished finish produces surface reflections that give the form a certain ambiguity, or elusive physical properties, that reflect and deform the environment it is placed in.