2014 Exhibition

One day it occurred to me that the entire foundation for our built environment is rooted in various notions of perfection; the perfect strip mall, the perfect modestly priced family car, the perfect microwave. These things are all designed to fill a market niche or replace a product currently filling the niche with a “more perfect” version. It also occurred to me that most of these “perfect things” now begin life in computer-aided 3D modeling – a medium where perfection can thrive without the constraints of gravity, scale or scarcity of resources. Over the past few years I’ve worked a lot with 3D models and amassed quite a hefty collection of these “perfect objects.” I started to think about their life cycle – an object is modeled in Sketchup, prototyped, manufactured, then trashed and replaced by a better object designed in Sketchup.

Katabasis is a 40-minute video landscape with audio accompaniment that moves the viewer though an elaborately constructed Sketchup junkyard to explore the themes of death and rebirth. In various world mythologies Katabasis refers to a trip to the underworld. The trance-like animation of this film carries viewers through an underworld wasteland of 3D models through the journey from death to rebirth.

Performances start on Friday and Saturday at 9pm and 11pm at the CCS Ford Kresge Building.