Table of Contents

• Research & Ideation
• References & Inspirations
• Tutorials & Skills Learned
• My Project

2. Digital bodies

Research & Ideation

We started a week with a lecture about Digital Bodies and the role of the body across science, medicine, art and fashion. As a painter I always found the body, and espacially hands,so fascinating tor the way that hand move, contract and how they can be portraiyed.

• Picture I took at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Aug 2022), German x-rays of a child’s hands and feet
• Detail of a selfportrait painting that I did around 2017-2018
• Picture I took at the Leopold Museum (Wien, 2018): Dead Mother I (1910) and The Self Seers (Death and Man) (1911) by Egon Schiele
• Käthe Kollwitz, Self-portrait with hand to forehead (1910)
• My hands, playing with excess of linseed oil
• My drawing of hands and gloves

References & Inspiration

My mum, my sister and I

I don’t remember my father; he died when I was almost 2 years old. But when I look at my hands, I always think of him: my mum used to say that my sister and I have his own hands.

My hands hold the memory of him. I wonder if he's hands would still look similar to mines, how many wrinkles, lines or hair he would have. How would it feel to touch his hands?

Can my body become a tool to speculate about my father being still alive?

Stream of thought

While looking into the web to look for inspiration, I found this interesting blog from Stefanie Darby where she guides the reader through the ideation of her project as she is working on the design for the Play Caucasian Chalk Circle by Berotlt Brecht.

Tutorials & Skills Learned

MakeHuman

Learning Make Human

Make human is an open source tool designed to create virtual humans. It is pretty intuitive and through controllable attributes, users can manipulate gender, age, height, weight and ethnicity. The editing tools are divided in two groups: macro and detail. "The macro targets deal with overall human characteristics like gender, age, height, weight and ethnicity. The detail targets allow for the character to be further refined by focusing on the low level details of such things as the eye’s shape or finger’s length." (from (MakeHuman)[https://static.makehumancommunity.org/makehuman.html]). It quite felt like building a character in The Sims.

Rhino

Learning Rhino

We looked at the basics of Rhino through the yse of simple shapes (cubes and sphere) to later work on our model created with Make Human.

We looked at:

• Viewports: Top, Front, Right and Perspective
• Mouse Navigation: panning, zooming and rotating
• Display Modes: wireframe, shaded, ghosted and rendered
• Object types: Points, curves, surfaces, polysurfaces, open polysurface, closed polysurface, solids, geometry, nurbs, mesh, subd
• Selection Methods: click selection, window selection, cross selection, sub-object selection and sub-bbject chain selection
• Transformation: move, copy, rotate, mirror and scale
• Boolean Operations: union, difference, intersection and split
• Mesh Operations: repair, fill holes, boolean operations
• Rectagular Plane: to cut object
• Bounding Box: Check the sizes of your model

Learning Rhino

It is also usefull to che the How to use page in Rhino!

3D Scanning

3D Scanning tutorial

We explored 3D scanning with Aslı using the Creality Scan Software. Steps:

1. We prepared the set using green cloths and a rotating chair (for a 360 vision, it is important to stay still when rotating!). We positioned the camera and adjusted the hight.
2. We started a new project (Body → Geometry). We adjusted the distance between the person and the camera, (Green = good!).
3. We started scanning. We did a 360 turn then we raised the camera and did another 360 turn to capture the top part of the head.
4. Now we obtained a cloud point → we need to create faces. We set a low resolution and optimized the scan.
5. Mesh settings → reduce number of faces. → select tool to remove extra/open pieces. → fill holes
6. Edit → semply
7. Exoprt → STL or OBJ to edit in Rhino

My notes

Slicer

Learning how to use Slicer

We learned how to prepare cutting sections with Slicer, which creates 2D slices from a 3D model. Steps:

1. Import OBJ model
2. Add the dimension of the material (in mm since the laser cutter works in mm) and setting our objects size:

1. Choosing a construction technique: for the torso the interlocked slices worked best given the dimension and the quantity of material we had
2. Checking for model issues
3. Saving the assembling steps (Slicer crashes whenever you try to save!)
4. Exporting the project in PDF

Laser Cutting

We received a first introduction to the laser cutter and its workflow from Aslı. All the pictures of the laser cutter come from How to use the BRM Laser Cutter

My notes

Steps:

• Safety measures:
• Always two people in the room (one from the fab/textile lab)
• Be awake!
• Red buttom → press in case of emergency
• If the door is open the laser stops
• Spray bottle with water → use in case of flames
• Never leave the red area when cutting

• On/off button: at the side of the machine
• Reset: press when "wait" appears on the screen. The laser head will move to its home position
• Auxiliary On: turn on laser (it is usually on)
• Control Arrows: move laser head
• Measure your material: Does it fit?
• Adjust laser head distance: Use screws
• LightBurn: Software used for laser cutting
  • Select everything to check the size of your project
  • Edit → delete duplicates (extra lines) → detect open shapes → close them
  • Start on current position
  • Frame test
  • Output off → the machine won't cut that part
  • Show off → that part just doesn't show on the screen
  • Adjust Speed and Power: you can check the testers on the side of the machine. Setting for 3mm cardboard → Cut: Power 40, Speed max. 30, min. 20 / Engrave: Power 300, Speed max.15, min.12

Assembly

Slicer offers an Assembly feature, showing step-by-step instructions for building the model. However, the software is outdated and often crashes when saving files. Here is the pdf if the torso slices.

Materials:

• Glue
• Dowels

My project

Thinking about my father's hands and this cardboard hands, I had this in my mind:

these hands are occupying the spaces that my father's hands are not occupying anymore ➱ how can I work this empty space ➱ how can I work with this absence? ➱ Can I touch/feel this absence?

From this starting questions, I decided to create a sort of shell around this hands with different materials. I decided to use clay and latex since I have them in my atelier.

Here, I'll guide you through my steps in realizing this project and how I applied the skills learned

Hands 3D Modeling

To work efficiently since the time we had, I decided too work with a model found on Thingiverse. I thought the model was already similar to mine as the palm and the finger were kind of proportionate as mine are. I tweaked the model using Rhino, I semplifyed the meshes since I didn't need as many details. I had to delete and correct some random meshes lefted by the semplification around the nail part as they were not connected properly.

I then transformed a bit the nail part: my nails take weird curves, so I imaged he might had the same.

Hands editing

I used the BoundingBox tool to get the exact size for later use in Slicer. I made the model slightly larger than my hand, using a general hand size chart that compares male/female and age groups.

Left Hand by Alessia Talò on Sketchfab

Slicer

I prepared the cutting section through Slicer, a tool that creates 2d sections from a 3D model. I decided to opt for the stacked slices technique since the relative small size of the hands and their details.Slicer gave me two different ways for the building of the left and right hand. So asli suggested to just create a mirror file in LightBurn (the software used for laser cutteing)

Laser Cutting

After we noticed a mistake in my file (one object was outside of the frame, I still don't know if I moves something while working on LightBurn), I could start laser cutting my cardboard.

Assembling

This part was quite easy, sliicer also provides an Assembly stp feature that shows you step by step the instrction to follow. Here's a video of the step. Slicer, being an outdated software, crushes quite easily when you try to save a file.

Assembling phase

Finished hands: top, bottom and side view

Shell making

At this point I went to my atelier to work on the shells. I first had to use the saran wrap to protect the hands

Wrapping hands → Clay shell (2-3) → Latex shell

Left: hands in clay shell / Right: hands in latex shell

The pieces still need to dry. I will get back to this pieces later on to document their state and maybe I'll use them (or the concept) in the next weeks. Maybe the Textile as Scaffold week as Aslı suggested.