21 cm. Stereo lithography model, picture by Roger Ibars. Isn’t she super-sexy?
[thanks to toke, for emergency director 3d coding...]
22 Polygon Porn - Strange Attractors
Polygon Porn is a research proposal that tries to map the relationship between
the techno(logical) image and the act of seeing itself.
Pornography can be described as something, that is designed to arouse lust.
This project is concerned with the threshold of attraction. What qualities
must an image possess to be pornographic? How much can we abstract from an
image, but still retain arousing?
Approach
An exemplaric shift for this project is the so-called ‘Stealth Fighter’ F-117A.
This plane represented a major step in the evolution of planes. For the first
time a plane was designed not only for its aerodynamic aspects, but primary
for its icodynamic ones.
The planes surface consists entirely of polygons, there are no rounded objects
on the outside. (Bombs are rather round, but they are hidden inside.) The
polygonal planes are designed to bounche of incoming radar beams. The plane
is invisible for the radar.
Of special interest is the relationship between seeing-machines and war-machines.
This project tries to investigate the conflict between the desire to see and
the ability to perceive.
Processing
Roger Ibars and me made 100 3D stereo lithographic rapid prototype models
of an infamous female character. The number of each model stands for the percentage
of abstraction, where 1 is the original and 100 is the maximum abstraction.
(The abstraction was achieved by the automatic process of polygon reduction,
which is a part of most 3d modelling programmes.) So, for example, the polygons
of model 50 were reduced by 50%, the polygons of model 99 by 99%.