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Can't See 3D Creates Virtual Sculptures From Websites

Turning what’s become commonplace back into something unique.

With all this technology for artists to play with, the world of sculpture no longer needs to be confined to the physical realm—virtual sculpture exists, both online and in the digital spaces created by augmented reality, albeit someone awkwardly. And it is in these cyber spaces that Kim Asendorf and Jonathan Pirnay have created their latest project Can’t See 3D, which builds virtual sculptures from images found on different websites.

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The project started today and will continue for the next 30 days and will feature images from the 241 websites who have signed up so far, as well as any others that join throughout the project’s duration. From these one sculpture per hour will be created using around 50 images pulled from the URL and its subpages, then an OpenGL-sculptor will transform them into a three-dimensional virtual object, each one different and decided by the software. The sculptures will then be uploaded to a Tumblr site for all to see and share.

Tumblr is an important part of the project because the ephemeral nature of this blogging platform is part of what the project is addressing. “It picks up the momentary nature of tumblelogs themselves,” said Asendorf. “You see something, but in an instant something else is posted or reblogged. There’s a link to something else and after a while everything just blurs into a big cloud of data, always growing, never really perceivable.”

Asendorf and Pirnay wanted to “create a continuous but limited public image stream” where the resulting sculptures were a reflection of the visual makeup of the internet and all those Tumblr blogs full of images that people have curated from around the web will be turned into virtual artifacts. Asendorf explains: “Tumblr is probably the most used image blog service, and it’s a very controversial one, particularly in relation to art. Many artists use Tumblr as a portfolio and there are many good blogs to be taken seriously, but on the other hand it’s a big mass destruction service—the destruction of digital art—and we want to be part of it.”

By turning these ubiquitous, devalued images, this “Tumblr toilet paper” as Asendorf terms it, into unique sculptures they partly reclaim them as works of art. “It’s not a quality problem,” says Asendorf. “Most images on Tumblr deserve to be seen. It’s a quantity problem. Tons of weakly curated and unloved [or poorly] designed Tumblogs reblogging countless images and spreading them until the value gets completely lost. We decided to run our ‘service’ just for a limited time and a limited list of participating URLs, thus limiting our own pile of dumped images.”

You can check out the results for the next 30 days at the Can’t See 3D Tumblr.

All images courtesy of Can’t See 3D Tumblr