Brendan Reid

PhD Student

Brendan Reid is an AHRC funded PhD student, thesis tile: 'Rapid Prototyping and 3D Printing - Applications of digital technologies within sculptural practice'

The bases of the research project were generated as part of a separate Art and Humanities Research Council grant awarded to the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR). The centre has an established track record working with old and new technologies to create new working methods and processes. This PhD project has come about through a desire to examine how emergent technologies (including 3D printing, 3D scanning and a range of 3D software) can be used in collaboration with existing methods of sculptural practice. Through the use of collage/assemblage and recombination a new synthesis of working methods and 3D practices are being realized.

As a researcher, Brendan has a background in sculpture and printmaking; specifically collage as a working method. Until recently the virtual digital world has remained separate from the physical world. Artists working in a virtual environment have created work with its own set of working methods. Creating new environments to challenge and extend traditional working methods. What the art historian William Ganis has described as an ontological breakthrough has occurred within 3D practice. Emergent technologies standard equipment in engineering and industrial design, are now becoming more widely available to artists and designers. As Ganis states;
“This ontological shift is profound, since the RP objects of resin, polyester, or other materials are crossovers from another plane of existence- they are paradoxes of a virtuality that, up until this point, has been a one way looking glass”
(Ganis, Ars Ex Machina: Digital Sculpture, Sculpture Org.October 2004, Vol 23, No 8)

This point of collision has opened up new possibilities for creative practitioners. Through a synthesis of physical materials and digital materials, new hybrid practices are emerging. New poetic synergies are made possible through the collage and recombination of digital and physical technologies. Despite the extensive research in 3D digital technologies undertaken from an engineering and design perspective, less is known from the perspective of a fine art practitioner. Accordingly, there is a need to take a heuristic approach in order to examine how technological developments have been appropriated and adapted within a fine art context. Many fine art practitioners have a history of working with industrial technologies and materials, for example one only needs to think of artist’s use of screen-printing processes that were once standard only within industry. Artists, invariably, use materials to create personal interpretations and intentions. Within sculptural practice it is common for materials to be used within a metaphorical context.

With the emergence of digital technologies new material synergies and contexts are emerging. Our canon of materials has been extended to include digital information. This new thinking of materials can be, through the use of a variety of computer software, mediated in hybrid forms to create new synergies. New material realities such as combinations of sound and physical objects, traces of digital spaces are merged with more traditional working methods of making. At a formal level 3D objects produced using the 3D printing technologies work within technical limitations. For example only certain materials can be used with particular machines, there is a limitation to the scale of the objects. When objects are produced using 3D technologies they become available to comparison with existing sculpture objects in terms of their material and formal qualities. They can be examined for the significance of materials used, whether for purely formal reasons or in terms of content and context.

At a formal level this research project aims to develop working methods to create larger scale sculptures as a ‘road map’ for art and design students and practitioners within limited financial parameters. Through a collage of 3D scanners, computer software, 3D outputting devices such a 3D printers and computer numerically controlled milling machines, laser cutting, and more traditional casting and mould making methods new practical working methods are emerging. At a conceptual and contextual level the researcher aims to examine how this broadening of materials has informed and extended sculptural practice. Sculptures and objects created can be viewed within a contextual framework as a form of interpretive mediation. Through material associations including digital and physical sculptural objects are emerging which oscillate and metaphorically represent new hybrid realities. Through extending and re – examining our concept of what constitutes a material a new space of interpretative mediation is emerging within contemporary sculptural practice. Brendan Reid is also a lecturer on the programme for MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking within the university. Previously he was the Programme Leader for Foundation Studies Art and Design at Swindon College. He is a practicing artist who has exhibited widely in the UK, Europe and USA.

contact: brendan.reid@uwe.ac.uk