A first attempt at digital sculpting.

#Artwork

I’ve never tried digital sculpting. I’ve seen my students and peers noodling away in Zbrush, creating some awesome work. But every time I would try it, the user interface (and MacOS port) would completely turn me off.

Recently, however, I decided to give Nomad Sculpt on iOS a go. And wow, it’s fantastic. Starting with a sphere, I just poked around a bit. A guy’s head? Let’s go with that.

After some time I clearly had to figure out retopologizing, but from then I was able to refine some more. I was really starting to notice not having any reference by this point. I was just making this guy up.

Then I made the mistake of posting it on socials. A mistake? Because I did the same thing I’ve seen so many students do — ignore the ears. Ugh! So, ears.

I didn’t quite know how to approach eyebrows and hair, so I just gave it a go. It’s not great, but it’ll do. For some reason, his hair made him look French to me. Lastly, I wanted a little bit more dynamism and asymmetry, so a little twist in the neck, and a raise of one eyebrow. I tried adding the little loose flesh of the eyelid being pulled up.

In all, I’m super excited about doing more digital sculpting with Nomad. It’s a solid piece of software — I have to figure out more texturing and retopologizing, though! It has to be a mess in there.

I was also noticing that every time I would reopen the file, the details would get softer and softer — note the interior of the ear, the nostrils, the eyelid corners, and the lips. Curious.

An exploration of the role of curation, snobbery, and telephones in the gallery.

#Artwork

My MFA first year group show, Heavy/Light, took place at the Disjecta Gallery here in Portland. It's a beautiful space, a little off the beaten path, but a great fit for us. My piece, 503558666, is a phone-based experience, mixing modern corporate culture, contemporary art criticism, and classic choose-your-own adventure games. Creating it was grueling — overall, it has over 60,000 words, including narrative branches that are only accessible at certain times, by certain people, or purely by chance. But my intention was to have a depth of interaction that contradicts the flat, minimal visual presentation; so I really needed to push the content. I'm glad I found a good text-to-speech system, because attempting to record all the narration would have been insane. The piece evoked some interesting reactions. Some didn't know it was a phone number to call, some chose not to call at all. Those that did spent anywhere between a couple of seconds to 47 minutes of time with it.

Erotic telephone numbers. Except, not.

#Artwork

This summer I was contacted to participate in a group show, called “Beyond Erotic”. The show description read:

By using elements of sexuality or the erotic, artists face challenges when communicating other ideas through this lens. Likewise, the viewer is presented with the challenge of reading through layers of eroticism and sexuality to encounter concepts like humor, social commentary, personal choice, subversion of expectations, and to question the ascription of taboo. In Beyond Erotic, artists present evidence of these challenges and ask viewers to participate in a conversation through media including video game technology, painting, drawing, photography, tableau, performance, writing, humor, and automated sex phone chat. I was initially invited to show my “Controller” piece, but was also asked to create something new for the show. Going with the theme of the show, I created a phone sex line.

Yup. Called “SexPRIME”.

SexPRIME, while ostensibly some strange throwback to 1993's heady mix of pay phones, Photoshop type effects, and loose morals, is an exploration of self-identification, safe and unsafe spaces, and cultural restrictions on identity. It is entirely not erotic, in case you were wondering.

It can still be called at: 877-989-9091.

And yes, it's free to call. Honestly.

#Artwork #Personal

I just had a lovely studio visit from Bean Gilsdorf. The process of a studio visit is fascinating — two people, who probably have never met each other, get together and talk. Things like that should happen with more frequency. And happen across disciplines.

We only had half an hour to chat, so we didn't get too in-depth, but I was excited to hear her thoughts about how to get the most out of grad school, ideas on submitting proposals for writing, and about the importance of just getting out there and talking with people. It's given me more impetus to get deeper into the Portland art scene, and see what's going on around here.

I would strongly recommend anyone take a look at Bean's work, and especially to check out her column Help Desk with the Daily Serving.

Audio landscape narrative gallery installation

#Audio #Game Design #Artwork

Installation • The Lodge Gallery, Portland November 2013.

Aumission is an audio soundscape , traversed using a customized Xbox controller.

Interleaving historical 8-bit audio and realistic quadraphonic sound, the participant is invited to explore the narrative in an nonvisual game.