Barbara Rauch in conversation with Bruce Gernand
4 December 2008
Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, Southampton Row, Central café
Context
1. Here we can refer to the ICA presentation and in addition you will be giving a presentation at the concluding V&A conference.
2. Processes: confirm 5 – 7 major steps, the coming together of the pieces.
3. Relationship of digital technology to other processes/ technologies. How would you explain this relationship between the processes and technologies? Are these different processes, the computer in the office and the workshop a separate issue all together?
Bruce Gernand
I was just thinking about this the other day. How process driven my work is. That work leads to other work, and I do get involved in the making process rather than projecting an idea in advance, and trying to fulfil that idea. It is more a situation of play, playfulness. When I was introduced to the digital practice, I had to learn, like learning a new language. “Ah, eh ah…” making these very rudimentary sounds and nevertheless those rudimentary sounds were manipulations in the 3 dimensional virtual environment. They did generate form and you generate ideas to be working with. So I think that when I began to develop the digital, it was a quite natural thing to continue in the way I do: provisional, playful, to see what works. These are my habits. And this is, to a degree, also a subject matter. Although Festina lente (the series of work to which “Bruce dreams the tortoise and hare” belongs) and As Medusa have their subject matters, there is also, I think, another underlying subject matter, which is the process of making. And the process of making digitally and the process of making materially, have these similarities, confluences and so on. But there are also significant differences, mainly to do with the body. The digital, the experience of it, the doing, is disembodied, there is no other way for me to look at it. So much of my attention is to the body and embodiment, that it was shocking to work digitally. Working with sculpture in the way I have done, to then work digitally really was an oppositional experience despite the similarity of approach I’ve just mentioned.
Barbara Rauch
Was the Medusa’s hair playfully put together? Or where are these sculptural parts coming from?
BG
O.k. The first thing that I realised when I was thinking about the scan of my head, I thought, well, it’s just going to be a scan of my head, so what? I had to change the look a little bit, I have to inflect it and this notion of the digital and material led to slicing the two halves, the life cast half and the digital half, and then I realised that I am bald and that there is a lot of surface on top of my head. (laughs) And so, there is this kind of playfulness going on: oh I could give myself hair or a headdress, what sort would I have? Would I want to be a Buddha, a Medusa, what would I want to be? Anyway, about 3-4 years ago, I had been modelling some knot shapes on the computer, and I did actually make one of them quite large, but never completed the sculpture. But then when I was thinking about the Buddha, or Medusa I began thinking of both knots and snakes ….and I remembered these knots I had modelled. I opened the files in the archive, and rather than having them in a large scale, I reduced them to these tiny little knots and that’s how the Medusa came about: I needed to cover my head with “hair” or a headdress.
BR
Would you agree that the working processes are not linear but rather reflexive, back and forth?
In your work is a strong element of chance, particularly in your earlier work, and you don’t seem to lose it with the computer work. You are still allowing yourself the freedom to play. Your work is so alive!
BG
You know, Rodin modelled little hands, hundreds of them, he kept them in the drawers, and sometimes they would become attached to a sculpture, and sometimes not. He had this archive, of little hands, and what was beautiful about them, that they were about gesture. The first instance they were not attached to an arm or a figure. And so there is an archive and I suppose it is very much being based in a studio. In the studio I have moulds, I have positives, small things, tests and studies. And now and again they will re-ignite something. And I guess it is similar in the computer, where I have these files. So in a way nothing is wasted, it’s all to the good. The knots, they were just part of my learning the programme. You can lift that spline up in a three dimensional way, and then morph particular forms, deformations, and so on. So in a way it’s very similar to the studio practice. And reflexive, yes. The digital model is also available to continuous modification. In a way the technical term is parametric: the object has a kind of flexibility it can be changed through any number of operations such as deformations or a return to the construction lines (like the outline for a revolved object). The reflexive even became a kind of subject matter when I was working with Boolean intersections of pairs of objects: modifying their shapes to get interesting intersected forms, the product of two objects merging and separating.
BR
Yes, your relationship seems parallel and intertwined.
BG
Ultimately it becomes intertwined.
BR
Particularly with this work, you deliberately opposed the different working processes.
Shall we address the next question of the surface in your work?
4. Indication of how you regard the surface in terms of importance:
BG
Yes, I did talk about this in a short piece of writing I did for you.
BR
Yes you sent me a condensed version recently.// we can include this here, but I don’t seem to have this digitally – can you please paste it in?
BG – “Paradox and Polarity”. And I think I said it in the ICA talk also…something about the paint on a wall: is the paint part of the wall or is it on the wall: a surface? It’s a kind of thought experiment. We talk about surface all the time, both metaphorically and as the real thing…but it is actually really problematical, it is very mysterious, it is an interface, it is like drapery in sculpture, drapery both conceals and reveals to varying degrees, a kind of surface which carries the meaning. When I got involved in this project, when you asked me…personalised surface – I was thinking …personalised surface?… I don’t really know what this means, and I really don’t know what this has to do with me, I am a sculptor. I make volumes and work with stuff. And then it began to sink in, the significance of it, and really the importance of what a fantastic topic it was.
It is a very rich philosophical area which is explicated by visual art more than anything else. The surface is there and there is a depth to it, if you make a print or a painting, there is depth or flatness or the relationship between the depth and the flatness and so on. And for me in sculpture, then, surface defines this volume, it defines the container. And I think that there is a lot of meaning that can be derived from that, not just in terms of texture of surface, but what it encompasses, the form that it defines. So the project really took me back in a way to re-visiting my earlier approach to casting, to working with bronze. The ideal thickness for bronze is 4 – 6 mm; that’s the same thickness, roughly, as our own skin.
BR
Another concern would relate to the importance of the surface. When you work on the digital file on a flatscreen, what is the moment of translation into the physical. Is this an easy transformation, or is this easy for you to translate?
BG
Well, again, this relates to material practice and my own material practice, in that I do work a lot indirectly, making a form in one material, making the mould, even paper models, there is this thing being transformed into another material, into a mould, into yet another material. To a degree there is a similarity in working digitally in that one is working with polygons, then one can render these facets, one can move back and forth, in terms of its visual look, what it looks like on the screen. It helps you see the form better, because there is a kind of obscurity – not so much an obscurity, but it’s not real. There are meshes, meshworks, you don’t know what it will look like in material. So, it is working back and forth, as I do with material practice.
BR
Would it have been an option for you to keep the model on the screen, one that’s perfect as it is? I suspect you wouldn’t be satisfied with the screen version. Have you produced purely screen work?
BG
No, I haven’t. Only in so far as there might be a proposal for something. But the intention I guess is always to embody them, bring them into reality. The digital work is really virtual in a strict sense, as something to be actualized, the potential and the intention to be actualized. The work on the computer has a provisional quality. I might work a long time on the computer to “complete” an object, to finish building it. But it isn’t really finished, for me. It is there to begin a next phase, to become a next phase. Not quite raw material, or even raw information because it has been processed with action, skill, thought, those kinds of engagements. But for me, I think of it as virtual, not yet actualized
BR
Is it about touch?
BG
Yes. And other things. This is one of the things about sculpture, it relies so much on haptic qualities whether you actually touch it or not, it relies so much on its orientation, relation to gravity, its place in space. This sculpture here ….can’t be floating…(throws some object in the air). Whereas it can be in digital space. But touch and haptic experience is not just sensuous in an integrating way. It is about resistance in the world, the resistance of the world. Objects in real space behave differently. They, like the world and like us, have a resistance and are subject to physical laws. So haptic is not just learning to appropriate or consume the world, it’s also about learning the limits.
BR
We have both used FreeForm, the haptic sculpting pen. But still, even if it gives you a feedback in a virtual space, it is very different to real sculpting.
BG
Yes, I think it is very different.
And again it is that haptic quality that in this tool is somehow disembodied. Yes, you can set resistance — I want to carve in butter, or something harder, you can set those resistances and yet, you are still working with this strange stylus at a strange angle… Really it is only a simulation. It wouldn’t help you to learn anything about the world as far as I can see. Not like a flight simulator for a pilot which I imagine is a very effective tool. The problem with the FreeForm tool is that there is a separation of the haptic from the visual, too much separation, too much infrastructure.
Even though it is called haptic and freeform modelling, it is still digital.
BR
Let’s move to the next categories of questions:
Specific issues to the new piece of work
1. At what point in the development of the work is the size of the image fixed?
BG
In terms of the scale, the size of the image….we were just talking about the knots of the Medusa, which were digitally modelled things, as were the hare and the tortoise and in materiality the hare and the tortoise have been two different sizes and the knot could have been large, but then has been quite small. But the scale is really fixed by the life cast and the scan of my head; that determines the size.
BR
Do you consider yourself lucky that the two scans fit together at the end?
I remember you measured the distance between your eyes.
BG
You know, I just assumed that the scan would be the right size. I did some basic measurements to see how far apart they were.
BR
I remember a discussion with Ben, when he said there is no size attached to a digital file.
BG
This is strange, it is correct to say there is no size to the digital file. Well you are modelling a tea cup and you can specify that it should be 10 meters or one centimetre, that’s the sense in which it has no size. So, there was a moment of panic at Ben’s remark. But the scan (photo-chromatic scanner) must have a dimensional accuracy. I guess you could change it as a digital file. But, as a scan, it would have dimensional accuracy, otherwise, when you think about it, it would have limited application.
BR
So when do you know/ when is the decision made?
BG
That’s really dependant on lots of things. For example when I was working in ceramic, there are size restrictions, in terms of the kiln, in terms of the sizes of the moulds I wanted to be working with. Press moulding clay into the mould… there are always constraints that come up….
Generally I refer back to the sense of working on size that it’s here, in torso size.
This feels a lot better than this (small and large). I like to work with the constraints of the materials. There is a “logic” to material. I’m not so interested in virtuoso effects. The right size. This size (indicates with arms) relates to the heart and torso and it relates to something that one has control over. You know, I don’t need heavy lifting kit, or need to call so and so to help me move it.
BR
So what would you do if you need to print s.th. in 3D. If the printer doesn’t give you the size? Where do you find a practical solution?
2. At what point is the actual surface considered?
BR
You were painting over the digitally printed surface. You added a layer of patina.
BG
The patination was really to homogenise the surface. To make the surface more uniform, so that the digital stripes, the striations, would read more clearly. That was the only reason, because I didn’t really intend to use patination. I wanted the bronze as raw as possible. I wanted the “signature of the digital” to read along with the rest, the life cast, the traces and accidents of the casting process.
BR you could have decided to leave the print as it came from the printed, but you wanted a completeness, to bring it into one.
BG
But also I needed that fine fine detail, I wanted that to have more clarity to differentiate between the life cast facts of my pores and wrinkles, on the one hand, and the digital striations of the rapid prototyping process on the other.
I painted ferric patination, brush and heat….and basically what you are doing is oxidising the surface very quickly. Instead of leaving it outside for a month, or years.
BR
On our visit to your studio, you showed me a painted ceramic shell, and it looked crafted, it looked touched. It wasn’t like a digital print, but a weird in between handmade and rapidform print. You do have a lot of experience with dealing with surfaces. You manage to not overwrite the material, but rather you underline the materiality with your choices. You seem to approach this very carefully.
BG
Yes and no. It’s a matter of applying the chemical, heating the metal, I was very interested in patination 20 years ago and explored and used it thoroughly. With this it was actually quite simple, I just wanted to reduce certain features and highlight that linear aspect of the scan.
3. What factors determine the choice or creation of the surface in this new work?
BR
We have covered some of this…
BG
The choice of the surface is really the choice of the material. And that comes again out of my experience with metal casting, but also through the context of the AHRC case study. We did the scan at Chelsea…you introduced me to John Nicoll the foundry director, and he invited me to cast in the foundry. I thought why not… It was an opportunity, then, to revisit earlier themes and practices.
It supports my Festina lente project: slow foundry work, laborious and complex and takes time, and the digital which is meant to be quick, but how long did we have to wait for Angie’s digital files, you know, the metal pours just like that (gesture of quickness). It is very ambiguous what is quick and what is slow.
And the other thing is of course, making connection with material processes, other processes, and bronze casting is an ancient technology. So the bringing together of ancient and very contemporary technology is very interesting.
BR
Yes, and John Nicoll is also interested in new processes, your project must have been very interesting to him. He modelled impossible forms….printing it with rapidform, an object that could not have been produced as one piece without the new technique.
So I gather your collaboration with him was good?
BG
Very good, yes, I would like to work with him some more.
4. How does working digitally contrast with other practices used?
BR
We just have to cover the last question in this section.
So how does it contrast?
BG
Well it does, and again and again. The digital is not embodied, it is not haptic, it’s taken place on and beyond the surface of a screen. And it has a kind of level of abstraction, I guess. Or there is a different kind of coding that’s going on: 333 facets of this size… curved over this kind of parabola…make this kind of shape… But there is no physical resistance. It is virtual in the way I spoke about earlier, virtual/actual. You can zoom in and out, you can revolve it, and spatial things become more dreamlike.
BR
I was talking to Andrew Folan today. The more we work with a screen on 3D the more trained our vision becomes. We get used to working with virtual spaces as well.
I was thinking of going several hundred years back, and people didn’t understand the 3rd dimension, the brains had to adapt slowly to a new perspective.
This kind of fourth dimension, and new ideas of reality, might be soon embedded in our ways of thinking. Another generation might add some more level to this.
BG
I have enough trouble working with three (laughs)! Well I think people have always understood three dimensions experientially. It’s integral to our psychological development. It is the representations of space which shift and change culturally and historically. I think our brains have been pretty sophisticated for a long, long time. So, I’m not sure I agree about how much the technologies actually influence these deeper structures.
BR
But your flattened cup or some early work, when you dropped the clay…the moment of being dropped, using gravity, you fix the work in that state, that’s kind of the fourth dimension in your work.
BG
Yes time …
The sculpture is the container of all these moments, all the gestures of the making, and so on, condensed into one…thing.
BR
Even in the life cast, you are casting a moment, with a certain expression on your face. The scan took a while…time is captured in your expression and in the final piece.
Thank you Bruce!
BG
Thank you Barbara for inviting me to be part of the project. It’s been very productive for me. Also stimulating and challenging. and reflexive, back and forth, which I like.
