Secret Support

2019

20 mm anodized aluminum tubes. Sculptures vary in sizes up to 40x30x120xcm

Secret Support is a series of sculptures that examines the technology and industry of 3D printing and the translations that take place between digital modeling and the production of physical objects. The sculptures appropriate the forms of the printed plastic scaffolding that is automatically generated to support a 3D printed object. Because this scaffolding is produced by a proprietary algorithm owned by Formlabs, and therefore can not be converted to other file formats, the sculptures are made through a series of manual translations between digital and non-digital materialities. This process was an study of how information is instantiated in a medium and how it changes along with it. Secret Support is part of a larger body of work looking at the relationship between technological development, the formal language of support structures, and the craft and labour that goes into making them.

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