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JONATHAN YEO: I didn't
go to art school.
But I love faces, and I was
always interested in portraits.
Faces are always
inherently interesting.
They've got a power to them.
It's an amazing genre to be
in because everyone knows it.
They have expectations
of what it should be.
And as a platform
for experimenting,
it's sort of unique.
In recent years, I've
experimented more and more
with different approaches,
different media.
Just recently, I've
actually, I suppose, become
a sculptor thanks to this
rather extraordinary bit
of technology.
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BRYAN ALLEN: Technology and
art are implicitly combined.
There's a huge history of
artists pushing technology
in new ways, and technology
actually playing catch-up
to artists.
So for this project,
we engaged really
early on with Jonathan
Yeo, exploring
ways in which we can use virtual
reality, specifically, Tilt
Brush, to create
new methods of art.
JONATHAN YEO: It's really
hard to communicate
the power of painting
in three dimensions.
One of the extraordinary
things about Tilt Brush
and working in virtual
reality generally
is you can make these
sweeping gestures
that you would see if you were
doing an expressive painting.
By coincidence, I also had
a 3D scan done of myself,
and it turned out that the
3D models could be imported
into the virtual reality.
From that, I was able to
draw a self-portrait head.
The fact that you can
freeze these movements--
it's sculptural,
but it doesn't have
to obey the laws of physics.
One of the strange things is the
second you take the mask off,
it's completely gone.
That got me into
thinking about how to use
it to make a real sculpture.
BRYAN ALLEN: My role as
a design technologist
is to really dive deep into both
creative and technical projects
to help find new solutions, new
aesthetics, and possibilities.
When artists are exposed
to a new technology,
they can see something
completely different in it.
So for this project, we
started playing around
with how would this look if
we were to be able to 3D print
these drawings?
There's this amazing
opportunity to rethink
the way that this tool
is used and really
push it in a new direction.
JONATHAN YEO: The process
of creating something
in the real world was
much more complicated
than I ever realized.
BRYAN ALLEN: One of
the biggest challenges
is something looks great in
VR, that doesn't necessarily
mean it looks great
in the real world.
We worked really, really
hard to develop a toolset
and processes to translate
that virtual object
through this pipeline into
a physical work of art.
JONATHAN YEO: What's
the difference
in material of these two?
BRYAN ALLEN: We'd
try something, say,
hey, what does this look like?
Oftentimes, he would
have ideas, say, oh,
can this be a
little bit tweaked?
Can this be smaller?
Can this be thicker?
JONATHAN YEO: So there's a
lot of backwards and forwards
and trying things and
getting it nearly right
and then changing it.
None of us had done
anything like this before.
Nobody had done anything
like this before.
There's a freedom there.
There's nothing to
measure it against.
BRYAN ALLEN: So after the
iteration on the creative side,
we took the original
asset and broke it up
into 37 individual pieces that
were optimized for printing.
We then took those pieces to
the Foundry and the UK Pangolin
where they were able to
reassemble them and begin
the process of
creating the bronze.
JONATHAN YEO: In
casting it in bronze,
I wanted to underline the
point that this virtual reality
software, which is
new and dazzling,
but sort of ephemeral
and is-- substantially,
it's-- literally is not there--
could be used for
something which
is so associated with weighty
permanence as bronze sculpture.
What's extraordinary to me is
that the end result has still
retained the lightness you
feel when you're making it.
It doesn't feel heavy
or blocky or like
anything that would have
been made in any other way.
BRYAN ALLEN: It's amazing to
work with an artist that really
wants to dive into something
that's never been done before,
who embraces the experimental
nature of the project.
That's what's really exciting
is when design, engineering,
and art come together.
JONATHAN YEO: It's
very healthy for people
outside your world, whatever it
is, to come in and say, well,
why don't you try that?
It's that interaction
where you discover
new and extraordinary things.
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