3D Sculptor Creates High Art Death Masks

3D printing seems to have nearly endless applications, from spacecraft production, to fashion, to dental hygiene. As The Creators Project reported in August, it’s a growing area for hobbyists, who are frequently taking advantage of the available technology to produce their own crafts, which can sometimes go awry.

It's also proved fertile ground for established artists, who are using the increasingly available technology, along with 3D scanning, to explore new territory. For sculptor Sophie Kahn, both technologies are essential. Using 3D laser scanning and printing, Kahn creates work that demonstrates the “impossibility of ever capturing more than a trace of the past, or of a living, breathing body,” even as our imaging technology becomes more accurate. It takes the traditional goal of sculpture --  to preserve an image as precisely and permanently as possible -- on its head.

Above, Kahn captures the video portrait of 38 New Yorkers using a 3D laser scanner. "Subjects must close their eyes to protect themselves from the laser beam, and this generates other referents," Kahn explains on her website. "Their serene expressions evoke memorial portraiture, and together the display could be seen as a kind of gallery of the dead."

“I'm really interested in … using technology in a very subjective way and in maybe challenging and critiquing not just how well technology does in capturing and recording, but in looking at the gaps around the edges, where technology fails to freeze time,” Kahn said.

For Kahn, her artistic process is tied to notions of memory and loss. Looking at one of her sculptures, like viewing an old photograph, she said, is a reminder of a brief moment in time that has since passed.

“The act of recording is emotionally laden for one reason or another. When I'm capturing a face or a body that's never far from my mind,” Kahn said. “It's strange too, because I have scans of my own face that are 10 years old and my cheeks were so chubby. I looked so young. I was 21 in some of them. I scan my face now and I see how my face has shifted over time. I find that really bizarre and kind of fascinating too.”

3D laser scanners are made to capture stationary objects. Consequently, when Kahn defies that design by running her scanner over a human face or body, the person’s slight movements causes fragmentation in the scanned image. Kahn then turns the image into a sculpture with 3D printed plastic or by casting it in metal or clay. It’s an imperfect, splintered recreation, one that Kahn often deliberately damages even more to give the sculpture the look of an ancient archeological discovery.

Three of Kahn’s sculptures, L: Gold, L: Degrade, and Reclining Figure of a Woman (seen at the top of the post), were featured in the exhibition, Technoromanticism, this month at Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago. Kahn’s latest work,Triple Portrait of Evie, represents a new approach. While scanning, her subject, a student at Connecticut College, had the idea to turn her head and repeat the scan. They did that three times, resulting in a multiple exposure. The final scan was subjected to a glitching process, causing a crystalline effect that looks like digital rot or decay.

As Kahn explained to us, 3D printing and scanning are useful techniques for artists seeking to make traditional objects in new ways, using new materials. We asked Kahn to show us the work of some of her contemporaries who are using these processes for artistic innovation:

1. Jill Magid

“I am fascinated by forensic reconstruction and incomplete evidence, and in this work, Jill Magid had her head CT scanned and then worked with a forensic artist in the Netherlands to rebuild it. The artist had never seen her face, and only saw a photograph of her after the reconstruction was done,” Kahn said.

2. Claudia Hart

“Claudia was my mentor in graduate school, and she is doing a great deal to build a theoretical context around art and 3D, though her own work and through other projects. I originally got in touch with her because I was inspired by her Mortification series which takes the female body and subjects it to various digital damage, before 3D printing it,” Kahn said.

3. Geoff Mann

“Geoff Mann's Shine is one of my favorite pieces incorporating 3D scanning and printing. It was made by laser scanning a candelabra, and all the glitches that result from scanning a reflective surface are preserved in the 3D print. I love how the reflected light became solidified - like a materialization of light,” she said.

4. Tom Burtonwood

Kahn recommends Burtonwood’s 3D printed accordion book, Orihon. The book consists of 3D scans made of multiple digital photographs of sculptures and reliefs found at The Art Institute of Chicago and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

5. Barry X. Ball

“Barry X Ball's CNC milled portraits are beautiful, and they make an interesting study in versions and seriality. Very similar 3D files can look completely different depending on the material in which they are made. Even the color of the marble transforms them completely. It's a good reminder to me that every material has its own history, and its own resonance and presence,” Kahn said.

Below, watch as Kahn live demonstrates at the Guggenheim Museum how she uses a laser scanner to help produce her 3D work:

Sophie Kahn - LISA2012 courtesy of Sophie Kahn.

Also, be sure to check out Kahn's newest exhibition, Shards, on view at Connecticut College starting October 28.

Sophie Kahn

All images courtesy of Sophie Kahn