A Research Project
by Boo Chapple
and Inger Mewburn



This project was born out of my interest in foregrounding the material processes involved in constructing images with contemporary imaging technologies and Inger's interest in modes of production akin to those of Roccoco architecture, with its intense viscerality of form.

The 3D scanner used in the project is employed at SIAL to produce smooth translations of physical objects into digital space. However, in order to enact such a translation it is necessary to counteract certain tendencies inherent in the physical mechanisms of the device. For example, the laser will not reflect off black and it is reflected strangely from metal. Because the scanner has such a high frequency resolution any small fluctuations over time are captured as a tremor on the surface of the scanned object. In our scans what is produced is a strange mixture of body and its informational artifact. Breath quivers. A giggle and I have three nipples. There are fragments of nothing between my fingers.

To produce an image one must follow the contours of the body with the scanner in such a way that, despite not being able to see it, one begins to feel the physicality of the medium. It is as if you are shaping the image in the same way as a Roccoco artisan would shape a piece of plaster moulding. There is no smooth translation here, but rather a performative iteration of surface and boundary.

The first product that was generated as part of this research was a spoof poster presentation for the Beijing Biennale of Architecture. Text and image from the poster are displayed on the right hand side of the page. The poster represents: A new interpretation of the meaning of the term 'architecural pornography' usually used to refer to the hyper-realism of commercial models; a parody of the fetishistic writing style found in contemporary cultural theory; a redeployment of parametric modelling concepts in the corporeal realm. Segments of the text are lifted from an article by Mark Burry (director of SIAL) in 'Surface Consciousness'(Wiley Academy, Ed. Mark Taylor) entitled 'Between Surface and Substance'(pages 13 and 14).

Mobilising the inherently parametric nature of living flesh we have created a series of design strategies which embody the emergent properties of lived experience. Using a portable 3D scanner we performed an iterated transduction of surface in motion in order to capture the movements of a densely experienced moment. As we manipulate the flesh the topological intersection of constituent parts reveals an intensity only achievable in the biological domain.

The organic nature of the openings between adjacent membranes was emphasised by their adjustability in accordance with the position of arousal zones along each length. For instance in a matter of a few seconds the entire character of a concupiscent region could change from equal openings along the whole length to a uniform swelling along the lengths towards the middle to accentuating the openings at the erogenous centre of each face tapering away to being closed at the top bottom and sides.

The second stage of manipulation is the lacerating of the external surface which melds with the internal in a movement towards the erasure of all boundary between flesh and world. It is this movement which animates the design creating an uncanny more than bodiness, incorporating an excess of affect which renders the experience strange.