Convergent Media: Body 2002

Project # 1: make a model

asdf The Conception

I began with a color copy Modrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie. I didn't take me long to spill water on it thus confusing the delicate

geometric precision of the work. Recontextualized as a water color or not, the task at hand was to produce a three-dimensional model

based on this image using basswood and glue. But what does it mean to take a two-dimensional image and reconceptualize it in the third

dimension? On one hand--or should I say (write) "eye"--I look at Modrian's painting and think "This is a piece trying it's very best to look

two-dimensional. Yet in the next blink, my brain that so desperatedly wants to percieve depth to which it is accustomed, arb itrarily , frenetically

assigns depth cues here and there and then back-tracks to assign completely opposite depth cues there and here. Do these words that you read

and I type this very moment--imagine two distinct moments sharing their momentum--float above the black? Inbetween? Behind? Or are these

words simply assemblages of pixels existing as points? Or are the pixels electricity having no bodily form whatsover? For that matter, can

we even begin to imagine the dimensionless point without the three dimensional space that surrounds it and without time? How do we come

to understand the presence of the second dimension anyway? Vision? But 3-D vision is an illusion, everything I see is projected upside-down

within my eye and latter broken down into chemical electricity. Touch? Even the thinnest onion paper in the world has height, length, and width.

It's certainly not smell nor taste nor sound. Is it understood intuitively? Perhaps. If so, what does that say?

khksf The Processs

I decided to interpret the white masses as empty space and the colors yellow, red, and blue as having a specific mass

which corresponded to the value in hue: yellow being a 1/4" in height, red being 3" in height, and blue being just over 6". The gray areas I saw

as neglible. It may be noted that the colors are not uniform in the original painting, hues are ever so slightly differing. In the same spirit of

abmisal difference, these heights are not completely uniform--though that is due less to conscious design than the difficulties of unwieldly

craft materials. The scale of the model in the length and width is 13.5" '. The placement and orientation of the component models parts was a

direct reflection of the original model.

I wanted a feeling of espaciosness and a feeling of suspension. I wanted gravity and groundedness, but I also wanted levity and

clairvoyance. Something realistic, something fanciful. The forms, in my opinion, are easy enough to recognize as being reminiscent

of a skyscrapper cityscape, but the thatched plane which supports and binds the towers bisects them suggesting reflections, a mirror.

The view from the top is open and shadowless suggesting emptyness, flatness. The view from the corner side is layered and shadowed

suggesting congestion, depth.