CrowSkull_Redux

Working towards my passion for bones, taxidermy, sculpture and CG animation – Reworking the skeletons in my closet

AKA : Using found art as a means to integrate the tactile into the non tactile digital medium.

After a leave of absence from my studies I have decided to return to my original orientation for my masters which is my digital sculpture work.

Examples of my earlier found works (1994- 1995- artwork part of Rights of passage, graphic novel).

By using the tech with the ACID vision imaged based modelling software to drive my goal of sculpting and reworking of found objects in the digital.
I am exploring imagery from my childhood in Zimbabwe- I have always seen bones as beautiful sculptures –I remember visiting friends ranch as 5 or 6 year old and seeing a huge elephant skull on their front lawn and thinking “Wow! Amazing I want one for my room!”
As a child I used to practice taxidermy with my older brother, skinning cane rats, duiker and snake and monitor lizards – I always saw the remains of creatures a great big jigsaw puzzle waiting to be solved.

Everywhere I went as a child in Zimbabwe I saw skeletons and taxidermy in people’s homes – it was a part of my child hood culture- Both my siblings still have skeletons and as their bric a brac and home clutter. It seems to be a part of our heritage of growing up at that time in that place.

Close up detail of deer skull (skull courtesy of Brisbane Museum).

This passion for this aesthetic was also reinforced by HR Geiger’s creature creation in the film Alien- but my work hopefully doesn’t have the same associations – as for me there is a purity of form – almost a landscape to the topology of bones.
I also have an illogical interest for Xeno Taxidermy but without the need for getting into the blood and guts of it so to speak. And there are the health and safety issues- hell let’s admit it - space. I live in a flat with an 8 month old child now, not a big farm where I can bury carcasses and dig them up later for fun jigsaw times.

3DSee

I am working with David McKinnon to integrate the Acid vision/3Dsee application into a computer games studio workflows- demonstrating its potential commercially as well as using it as a practicing digital sculptor/vfx artist. My goal is to further develop/promote the Acid vision software in my field of expertise. Which is character modelling for real time 3D applications, simulators, games and digital sculpture.


I am also using 3DSee to convert my photographs of animal bones from the Brisbane museum to create a model and texture library to create useable (animate-able) 3D props for an animated sculpture /vfx piece, (A sort of software art piece).



This technique of mixing media real and virtual would allow me some creativity in the form of re-manipulating the bones - reconfiguring them making new species – (Digital Xeno taxidermy).
I have been looking at artist and naturalist Sarina Brewer as well as Jan Svankmeyer’s animation work as a source of inspiration for future works.

Prix Ars submission

Its been a long time since I have updated my blog-
I have been working on a less educentric approach to my work - I have veered away from the educational videos back to digital sculpture - aproaching digital sculpture from it use as a virtual archiving tool as in use by 3Dsee and instead using its library of assets (as well as my own) in "found art" aproach- butone in which I can then manipulate and edit.



BirdSkullVideo_Process from Jake Hempson on Vimeo.




Prix Ars submission info from Jake Hempson on Vimeo.