innovation in the visual arts symposium

17 November 2001
Clunies Ross Centre for Science and Technology
brisbane Technology Park, Eight Miles Plains

This program was organised as two events (a) A half-day Workshop “Rapid Prototyping for Sculptors and Designers” presented by Gilbert Riedelbauch of the Canberra School of Art ANU, Mike Naylon of the Queensland Manufacturing Institute, Eight Mile Plains, Brisbane, and Sam Bucolo and Nathan Chan of QUT’s Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, and held at the Institute on 20th October 2001, (b) a full-day Symposium “Innovation in the Visual Arts” held at the Clunies Ross Centre for Science and Technology and the Queensland Manufacturing Institute (next door) on 17th November 2001.

Speakers at the latter event were Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe AO who opened the Symposium, Gilbert Riedelbauch Rapid Prototyping for Sculptures and Designs, Mike Naylon Rapid Prototyping Techniques, Sam Bucolo and Nathan Chan Haptics and 3D form Development, Donal Fitzpatrick of QUT Creative Industries Faculty New Developments in Sculpture, Gavin Sade and Keith Armstrong of QUT Communication Design Computer-aided Interface Design – Art with Ecology, Susan Ostling of Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art Exploring New Ideas “FUTURE FACTOR” and Mark Burry RMIT Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture) After Gaudi: New Solutions to Old Problems, and QAAS President John O’Hagan Summing up.
 
 
 
linda correli on the symposium

On 17 November 2001, 80 people gathered at the Clunies Ross Centre for Science and Technology, Brisbane Technology Park, Eight Mile Plains, Brisbane, for a one-day Symposium, Innovation in the Visual Arts, organised by the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Symposium was held in conjunction with INTERSCULPT 2001 organised by Ars Mathematica in Paris, part of a plan to use Rapid Prototyping via the Internet to produce "hard copy" of sculptures at a dozen World sites.

At the Symposium, speakers from Queensland and interstate addressed diverse methods of engaging technology in a range of artistic practices including performance and architecture. As well, speakers presented computer-aided 3D design, new developments in sculpture, interface design and commercialisation. Participants also toured the Queensland Manufacturing Institute's state-of-the-art facilities such as Rapid Prototyping and a new Virtual Reality 3D Theatre. Rapid Prototyping turns ideas into reality by converting a 3D digital design into a plastic, wax or sintered-metal prototype that can be unique, or used for mass production.

Opening the Symposium, Professor Emeritus Ian Lowe AO said that the arts play three roles: representational, aspirational and inspirational. "The arts are a constant reminder that the future is not somewhere we're going but something we're all engaged in the act of creating. There's always a range of possible, probable and preferable futures. The arts warn us of what is probable, shows us what is possible, and inspires us to what is preferable. The arts are significant socially, culturally, spiritually and ecologically."

session one
The first session, chaired by Provost and Director of Griffith University's Queensland College of Art, Professor Mostyn Bramley-Moore, was dedicated to Rapid Prototyping technologies. ANU's Canberra School of Art lecturer and artist Gilbert Riedelbauch uses Rapid Prototyping to produce jewellery and sculptures. He demonstrated how his sculptural objects are created through the combination of mathematically described surfaces known as minimal surfaces and computer aided design together with Rapid Prototyping technologies. The most basic minimal surface is a flat sheet of paper and a simplified description of a minimal surface is that the sum of all the numbers equals zero. Working in this way, the objects are not touched by human hands until they have been rendered by the RP machinery. This process results in challenges and extensions to traditional craft and art-making.
For Riedelbauch, "the resulting objects derive their aesthetic strength through continuous, self-intersecting double-curves swinging through space. Design and produced using only digital technologies, these objects claim a new category for themselves."

In making his objects, Riedelbauch creates an object as a digital wireframe image using a mathematical equation. This image is imported into CAD and it is here that the lines and curves are given width. That is, the third dimension is added so that the image can be produced as an object. "In Rapid Prototyping, the umbrella-term for a series of related technologies, an object modelled on the computer is reconstructed layer by layer. These layers get fused together during the build process. The thinner the individual layers, the closer will the produced object resemble the original, the computer model. Again an approximation which we have to accept."

Industrial Design Lecturer in QUT's Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering Sam Bucolo explained the limitations of CAD such as the steep learning curve required in order to use this technology and keyboard and mouse interface. Haptics modelling <www.sel.bee.qut.edu.au> allows for an extension of this two-dimensional input and introduces devices, which allow users to interact with computer-based geometry using their sense of touch. Haptic refers to the sense of touch, which is one of the most fundamental ways in which people perceive and interact with their everyday environment. Touch or haptic interaction differs fundamentally from all other sensory modalities in that it is intrinsically bilateral allowing users to perceive and change objects simultaneously in the same location.

Although interaction has been available since the early 1940s, used primarily for remote manipulation systems, current commercial systems have adopted this approach for design development allowing designers to sculpt and 'touch' design concepts using a physical stylus and virtual clay metaphor. Haptic technologies are a more useful tool for artists and sculptors as they allow the user to experience their virtual objects in a more physical way. As with physical modelling the designer would begin with coarse development, working towards a finer resolution of the intended 3D form. Precision modelling can also be performed using 2D profiles and creating extruded, revolved or lofted cuts and solids to assist in precise geometry creation. Once completed the shape can be exported as a polygon mesh for computer visualisation or rapid prototype development. Modelling times vary according to geometry complexity and form resolution.

The technology was tested by users with varying degrees of experience. Bucolo said that it took a novice user four hours to model a jug using haptic and eight hours for an experienced CAD user. While the technology runs on a personal computer, it requires 1 gigabyte of RAM. Future research into haptic will explore its impacts on design process and also research into design tools that move beyond a single source of feedback.

Industrial Chemist and Sales Manager of Queensland Manufacturing Institute, www.qmi.asn.au, Mike Naylon explained that objects are made in three ways using:
- subtractive methods (where material is removed or carved from an original piece of material such as stone or wood);
- formative methods (such as potting where a material is formed, shaped or moulded);
- additive methods (such as Rapid Prototyping where materials are added where we want them).
Rapid prototyping is useful as we move towards mass customisation where consumers are able to design and produce the things they want. Rapid prototying is an enabling technology in the product development process and generally, it 'prints' an object from a 3D virtual image such as a CAD drawing. As Riedelbauch explained earlier, the technology slices the 3D image into layers and prints the object one layer at a time in three dimensions. At present, the technology imposes size limitations. However, large objects can be built in pieces and assembled.
Naylon described the various methods of Rapid Prototyping:
- stereolithography where UV light draws on epoxy resin and generates a chemical reaction;
- selective laser sintering where nylon powder is fused together by heat;
- fused deposition where plastic is extruded and the layers built; and
- laminated object manufacturing uses a purpose-made brown paper out of which the layers are cut and stacked to build the object.

session two
Chaired by CEO of QMI Dr Scott Loose, the second session was described as the 'arty' part of the day's proceedings where artists and academics addressed the technological context of several artworks. "Globally, there is significant convergence of art, technology and manufacturing. From a manufacturing perspective, I am increasingly seeing art and design issues entering the manufacturing arena as part of that convergence," he said.

QUT's Head of Visual Arts Donal Fitzpatrick presented his paper New Developments in Sculpture (or Sculpture After The Matrix). Introducing the work of Queensland sculptors, Charles and Kim Demuth whose installations and sculptures feature polymer cast figures, Fitzpatrick referred to a 'post-photographic mediated experience' which young artists working three dimensionally were exploring. Referencing a 'cinema of sculpture', Fitzpatrick foregrounded experimental visual arts practitioners who are turning away from the totalising image of the screen and asked "what does cinema have to offer this generation of artists raised on television's lurid cartoons and the computer's glossy virtuality."It appears as they push further into the common ground of virtual space, the conditions of time and space they left behind are also profoundly changed. They are changed in ways that require re-inquiry. If the cinematic as a form exists mainly from devices of control - the totalising screen, the conditioned audience quiet in their darkness and the conventional duration of Hollywood time determined by the human bladder - what opens up in the challenges of this orthodoxy are the possibilities of shifting the parameters, shifting the goal posts and, in particular, moving the parameters of duration. "Freeze the movement digitally and move about inside the space. The generation of students who keep me on my toes, were all completely stunned by the film, The Matrix. This ability to move around inside a space has had a profound affect on sculptors. By allowing for a spatial progression through the architecture of a scene where the objects within that moving image could be contemplated from all sides."

This is evident particular works by Robb and Demuth. Robb's tableau presented at the IMA, transformed that gallery into a cinematic space. Using cast sculptures of his body, Robb is breaks the vapid narrative of the 1970s film Coma and edits a reconstruction of the image. Using similar technical processes offered by casting with polymer resin and fibreglass. Demuth's work Crash is constructed in a space that could only be arrested from the cinematic. We are invited to walk around the scene of a car crash frozen at the moment of impact as if we were physically in the domain of The Matrix.

Head of Communication Design at QUT Gavin Sade and QUT lecturer Keith Armstrong discussed the work of art/science collective Transmute , www.outlook.com.au/keith. Both artists and members of Transmute, Sade and Armstrong, exposed the interdisciplinary nature of the collective's work in their presentation titled Computer-aided Interface Design - Art with Ecology. Transmute collaborators include choreographer Lisa O'Neill, composer/musician Guy Webster and environmental planner Liz Baker. The collective has received funding for several projects and develops installation and performance works across sites and disciplines.
Armstrong's doctoral research informs the "development of a praxis from ecological/ethical theory; abstracting design and guiding principles from ecological movements (such Deep Ecology, Postmodern ecology, eco-feminism, etc) scientific ecology (principles of energy exchange, producer consumer models, interconnectivities)". In particular, Transmute is informed and influenced by Felix Guattari's formulation of 'ecosophy' whereby a connection between ecology and philosophy is established and engenders an understanding of the world in an ecological sense. Sade's research interests include the development of socially intuitive, intelligent interfaces that seek to extend the humanitarian potential of new media arts in ways that democratise the medium.
Transmute aims to actively and creatively facilitate collaboration across the physical and ecological sciences, technologies, social sciences, humanities and fine arts. To this end, Transmute's works include Public Relations, Transit Lounge and Liquid Gold. "Mirroring this interface between theory, practice, ideas and innovation our necessarily complex works engage with the idea of new media space design and tessellated mixed realities. We employ the Internet and virtual systems to develop appropriate, ecologically-inspired virtual, interfaces that merge and connect mixed realities, forms, places and spaces in complex, multi-dimensional forms. It is through this ordered complexity that we intend to inspire our partners, the interacting public, to actively question and dialogue with these ideas."

session three
Dean of QUT's Creative Industries Faculty Professor John Hartley introduced the speakers in the final session. QCA's Deputy Director (Development) Fine Art Susan Ostling is currently developing an exhibition Future Factor which highlights ideas for the future. Focused on craft and design, Future Factor explores innovation, invention, aesthetics, future materials and objects as well as new processes and technologies.

The artists involved in the project speak of an interest in developing unusual or high-skilled use of materials and processes or adaptations of technologies. Artists have been selected in relation to the role new technologies or applications have played in the vision and realisation of their work. All artists speak of an interest in developing unusual or high-skilled use of materials and processes, or adaptations of technologies.

Future Factor will open at Craft Queensland’s CQ Gallery in April 2002 and tour to Gold Coast Art Gallery, Object Galleries, Craft ACT, RMIT Gallery, Jam Factory and Design Centre, and Sunshine Coast University Gallery. It will show the work of the following practitioners: Tom Annear, Rina Bernabei, Kylie Bickle, Marc Harrison, Elizabeth Kelly, Sheridan Kennedy, Ruth McDermott, Luis Nheu, Peter Prasil, Pearl Rasmussen. Gilbert Riedelbauch. The exhibition will be curated by Susan Ostling and the exhibition design developed by Malcolm Enright. It will be supported by a catalogue with critical essays, a web site and public programs.

In the development of ideas for Future Factor, Ostling said that she was interested to investigate what motivated artists, designers and craft practitioners to innovate. "Were there paradigms I wondered, beyond the logic of business, at work in motivating experimentation with new processes, solving technical problems, inventing new applications for existing processes and finding adaptations for new technologies? Some of the responses to my inquiries from the artists in Future Factor affirmed that there were other motivating paradigms: a desire to solve problems, a desire to make things that were previously close to the impossible; a desire to stimulate new ideas and opportunities; to produce better solutions to ever changing social and physical environments; to create a new visual language for objects and a new experience for individuals viewing and using them; a desire to create something that captures the known and the unknown."

In his presentation, After Gaudi: New solutions for old problems, RMITU's Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture) Mark Burry presented two projects: his work with Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona and the development of an interactive, moving wall. The church was commenced in 1882 by another architect who was followed by Gaudi a year later. He spent 43 years working on the project and it occupied the whole of his professional career until he died in 1926. As one of the principal consultants on work towards completing the Sagrada Familia, Burry is concerned with untangling the mysteries of Gaudi's design. He said, "few people realise that this a steel framed building built by shipwrights and clad in stone. This was a fantastic creative act to be able to make the pieces of stone fit together without a single seam."

Gaud realised that very little of the building would be completed in his time - there were three disasters, it was too difficult or too expensive - so he eventually coded it using hyperbolic surfaces which are mathematical surfaces with 9 variables: 3 axes of rotation, 3 axes of position and 3 constants which determine the actual shape. These surfaces can be described by straight lines in space. Using computer technologies to produce models and unravel the geometry of the building's pieces rather than drawing, tracing and casting with plaster, Burry was able to save time. When it came to building, rather than spending 6 months testing the design, new versions could be generated every 10 minutes. One of the jobs undertaken by Burry's team was a 35 metre window which fits into an asymmetrical space in the building's facade working from an original model by one of Gaudi's successors. Technologies used to model and build the window included computer modeling, algorithms and rapid prototyping.

The second project, the interactive wall for Birmingham's Hyperdrome, was a response to a competition in 1998. "Our solution was to do nothing: nothing with nothing was happening but something when something was happening in the sense that it picked up movement." The basis is mathematics to generate one-off algorithms to choreograph the movement and responses to sound and action around it. A panel of the wall was presented at the Venice Biennale for testing and in 2001 the wall was prototyped. The wall's surface is a kind of mesh and behind the surface, 800 (20 cms apart) pistons generate movement.
In summing up and closing the Symposium's proceedings, President of the Queensland Academy Dr John O'Hagan said that many of the greatest achievements have be made by versatile workers who could operate beyond the specialty in which they were originally trained. For example, in the relatively new fields of molecular biology and genetic engineering some of the most outstanding recent advancements have come from research in physics, chemistry, mathematics and instrumentation, rather than from classical biology and medicine. Offering a similar view of the future for the arts, he observed that "many future advances will evolve from computing, optics, mathematics and other sciences and be created by artists using emerging technologies".

The Symposium was supported by Arts Queensland, the Queensland Manufacturing Institute, the Clunies Ross Centre for Science and Technology and Ionode Pty Ltd. Valuable assistance was given by Craft Queensland, Queensland Artworkers Alliance, Society of Sculptors Queensland, Queensland Potters Association, Queensland College of Art and QUT’s Faculties of Creative Industries and of Built Environment and Engineering.
 
Written by Linda Carroli
Linda Carroli is a writer and Editor of fineArt forum, an art, science and technology electronic magazine http://www.fineartforum.org. She is an award winning new media author and has produced several web-based hypertexts independently and collaboratively.