Virtual Artifacts

The ongoing digital capture and representation of our environment is creating an ever-increasing quantity of individual information blocks and image components, which have become freely accessible and processable. In the past, sketches, collages, paintings and sculptures were primarily created with the aid of analogue design materials, whereas today we deal with a much larger pool of material-independent resource elements that can be isolated, distorted, textured and recombined at will, by means of digital visual processes. That is the context in which this coursework is to be understood. After an introduction to the 3D graphics program Cinema 4D, the students were asked to put together a collection of various editable 3D models, which were to be taken from freely accessible digital 3D libraries. All 3D models were subsequently checked for possible processability and, as far as possible, broken down into their individual geometric and textural elements. In the final step, a selection of extracted components were to be rearranged and combined to form freely invented and surreal 3D assemblages. In addition to teaching 3D graphics via use of the program Cinema 4D as an example, the aim was to demonstrate and encourage experimental composition techniques, based on free arrangement of digital elements.