Description
My artwork for objkt4objkt 2025 - available May 12th-18th.
This artwork takes the iconic Stanford Bunny, a seminal object in the history of 3D graphics, and transforms it into a dynamic exploration of digital representation and the nature of identity in an increasingly data-driven world.
The familiar form of the bunny, originally captured through 3D scanning a ceramic figurine and existing as a collection of 69,451 triangles, is subjected to a deliberate algorithmic displacement. Each triangle breaks free from its neighbors, creating an evolving spray of disconnected data.
Over the course of a minute, this chaotic cloud of geometric information slowly coalesces, the individual fragments finding their way back to reconstruct the recognizable shell of the bunny, only for the cycle of dissolution and reformation to begin anew.
The choice of the Stanford Bunny is significant. As a widely used test model, it represents an early endeavor to translate a physical object into the digital realm. Yet, like all 3D models, it is fundamentally a surface, a convincing illusion of solidity that lacks internal structure. It is a shell that mimics form but possesses no inherent substance beyond the data points that define its exterior. This artwork emphasizes this characteristic, laying bare the constituent triangles to reveal the model's constructed and ultimately hollow nature.
This deconstruction serves as a metaphor for the broader ways in which our digital world apprehends reality. The digital representations of objects, environments, and even individuals are only as complete as the data captured.
Just as the bunny lacks internal organs or a tangible history beyond its scanned surface, the digital profiles created by computer systems are often superficial "shells" of the complex entities they purport to represent. These systems track us through data points, assembling impressions that, while potentially appearing whole from a certain vantage point, are inherently incomplete, devoid of the nuanced, often unquantifiable, depth of true being.
This resonates powerfully with the poignant reflections of Bob Arctor, the protagonist in Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly." As he struggles with his fragmenting identity, Arctor muses on the surveillance technology observing him: "What does a scanner see? ...Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a… holo-scanner… see into me – into us – clearly or darkly? I hope it does… see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk." Arctor’s desperate hope that an external, technological system might possess a clearer vision of him than he does himself is a stark allegory for our contemporary relationship with data. We risk ceding our self-perception and agency to systems that hold an inherently limited and potentially distorted impression of who we are.
"Deconstructed Perception" mirrors this anxiety: the bunny, temporarily dissolving into an unintelligible cloud of data, reflects a being reduced to its barest informational components, hoping to be seen and reformed, yet aware that the resulting image is but a surface, a shell vulnerable to the clarity, or murkiness, of the scanning gaze. The artwork invites contemplation on the substance of digital identity and the unseen voids within our data-driven reflections.