In 3DCXP, two groups of four artists -- located either in London or Munich -- sent digital models to each other. These were 3D-printed in each artists respective city with locally-sourced clay. What was conceived as a workaround to restricted travel routes due to the pandemic, increased custom thresholds and avoidance of flight-emissions, has allowed the importance of hosting to come into the foreground.
Local clay is sourced, sieved, dried and loaded to a 3D printer -- its viscous mass shaped with a nozzle into a form conceived hundreds of kilometres away. It enters physical reality for the first time. The resulting form is then modified, glazed and stabilised through firing the clay. Additional parts are added, structures support it, space is made -- the idea is hosted.
In 2023 Xxijra Hii is pleased to host the second edition of 3DCXP "Printed Emergence".
Humans have a long history of being fascinated with creating ways to extend their own reality. Through the use of mythology, arts, and technology our species has been finding ways to stretch the ways we imagine ourselves existing in the world. Within current discussions of moving increasingly to meta and virtual realities in order to escape the environmental and systemic devastations of our physical world, there is a heavy focus on constructing new realities and existences that are centered in the virtual. From the digitization of artifacts for preservation, to designing RPG characters, to the modeling of fantastical environments in programs such as Blender or Unreal Engine: we are creating hybrids that serve as parallel and semi-fantastical existences for ourselves, our histories, and environments. 3D printing challenges the ways in which we can consider the physical existence of our online avatars, artworks, and creations. They are no longer relegated to the digital realm, but can be given retranslated or newly invented physical bodies and manifestations. When we consider the exchange of files and the care extended to bring these objects into being, the works become bundles of traveling matrices that evade systemically imposed borders. They transform into items guided by physical qualities and contexts from their newly located geographic areas and materials. They can become moments of speculative imagining that can push the boundaries of how we construct holistic fusions of our parallel worlds.
Within the potentials of a fluid virtual and physical embodiment, we must consider the geographic and socio-political contexts of the point of printed emergence, and the material. By choosing clay as the substrate, we intentionally create a relationship with native ecology and its systemic positioning. The energy of a place is deeply manifested through the earth along with its politics. Each mineral, plant, creature and human plays a different part in contributing to the way that system and energy exists. Through the use of clay as a medium we have embodied one of the oldest metaphors for human and earthen connection: the relationship between land and our culturally specific ideation of self. In crafting with locally foraged wild clay, we tune into and merge with untempered energy that carries a piece of the essence of London to give form to hybrid works that have traveled the cloud to emerge here.
These hybrid objects in the physical realm have had their digital forms and codes manipulated and re-edited so that they can sustain a form that is structurally sound in our 3D planes. Each file has traveled long distances, and gone through multiple evolutions - some of which failed in print, but also yielded clues and solutions to their embodied selves. Each ‘failure’ becomes a lesson that holds clues to the potential of a duality of planes that become enmeshed and don't depend on an exclusively virtual reality. This is perhaps the start of a bridging and mediation of virtual and physical realities; the beginnings of a symbiosis that keeps us grounded in imagining and hosting fluid forms that can go between the realms and further mystify and defy categorization.
Text by: Maria Joranko
3DCXP is conceived as an ongoing collaborative exhibition project and was initiated by Nicola Arthen and Ivo Rick. The first round LDN-MUC took place in 2022 as Testspiel#9 at the artist-run space Rosa Stern in Munich.
We welcome 8 artists to the space to engage with each other in this continuing dialogue.
In 3DCXP, two groups of four artists -- located either in London or Munich -- sent digital models to each other. These were 3D-printed in each artists respective city with locally-sourced clay. What was conceived as a workaround to restricted travel routes due to the pandemic, increased custom thresholds and avoidance of flight-emissions, has allowed the importance of hosting to come into the foreground.
Local clay is sourced, sieved, dried and loaded to a 3D printer -- its viscous mass shaped with a nozzle into a form conceived hundreds of kilometres away. It enters physical reality for the first time. The resulting form is then modified, glazed and stabilised through firing the clay. Additional parts are added, structures support it, space is made -- the idea is hosted.
In 2023 Xxijra Hii is pleased to host the second edition of 3DCXP "Printed Emergence".
Humans have a long history of being fascinated with creating ways to extend their own reality. Through the use of mythology, arts, and technology our species has been finding ways to stretch the ways we imagine ourselves existing in the world. Within current discussions of moving increasingly to meta and virtual realities in order to escape the environmental and systemic devastations of our physical world, there is a heavy focus on constructing new realities and existences that are centered in the virtual. From the digitization of artifacts for preservation, to designing RPG characters, to the modeling of fantastical environments in programs such as Blender or Unreal Engine: we are creating hybrids that serve as parallel and semi-fantastical existences for ourselves, our histories, and environments. 3D printing challenges the ways in which we can consider the physical existence of our online avatars, artworks, and creations. They are no longer relegated to the digital realm, but can be given retranslated or newly invented physical bodies and manifestations. When we consider the exchange of files and the care extended to bring these objects into being, the works become bundles of traveling matrices that evade systemically imposed borders. They transform into items guided by physical qualities and contexts from their newly located geographic areas and materials. They can become moments of speculative imagining that can push the boundaries of how we construct holistic fusions of our parallel worlds.
Within the potentials of a fluid virtual and physical embodiment, we must consider the geographic and socio-political contexts of the point of printed emergence, and the material. By choosing clay as the substrate, we intentionally create a relationship with native ecology and its systemic positioning. The energy of a place is deeply manifested through the earth along with its politics. Each mineral, plant, creature and human plays a different part in contributing to the way that system and energy exists. Through the use of clay as a medium we have embodied one of the oldest metaphors for human and earthen connection: the relationship between land and our culturally specific ideation of self. In crafting with locally foraged wild clay, we tune into and merge with untempered energy that carries a piece of the essence of London to give form to hybrid works that have traveled the cloud to emerge here.
These hybrid objects in the physical realm have had their digital forms and codes manipulated and re-edited so that they can sustain a form that is structurally sound in our 3D planes. Each file has traveled long distances, and gone through multiple evolutions - some of which failed in print, but also yielded clues and solutions to their embodied selves. Each ‘failure’ becomes a lesson that holds clues to the potential of a duality of planes that become enmeshed and don't depend on an exclusively virtual reality. This is perhaps the start of a bridging and mediation of virtual and physical realities; the beginnings of a symbiosis that keeps us grounded in imagining and hosting fluid forms that can go between the realms and further mystify and defy categorization.
Text by: Maria Joranko
3DCXP is conceived as an ongoing collaborative exhibition project and was initiated by Nicola Arthen and Ivo Rick. The first round LDN-MUC took place in 2022 as Testspiel#9 at the artist-run space Rosa Stern in Munich.
We welcome 8 artists to the space to engage with each other in this continuing dialogue.
Xxijra Hii
Enclave 4
50 Resolution Way,
London SE8 4AL
Xxijra Hii is a member of New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) and the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC).
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