Utopian Models ?

At the moment I am redesigning the Sound Unit on a 3D program (‘Sketch-Up’ which has been recently bought up by Google, and there is a free version available). These 3D programs have a strange effect of producing smooth utopian images, which have become the aesthetic of 3D virtual realities. I am playing with these images in the understanding that they are an abstraction, and at odds with real life.

It is the difference between these two worlds, the strangeness created by translation and linking the virtual and real, that the materialising of a digital model of ‘Sound Unit’ makes so exiting. At the same time the 3D model looks odd because it attempts to copy a real life situation.

When it is build we will be able to explore both representations of a conceptual space that lies at the origine of it all. We will be able to move between ‘reality’ (architectural and psychological space), 2D prints, 3D virtual reality and conceptual space. I’ve tried this out in an other work: ‘Inside Out Events’ in a different context but it shows some similar ideas. See www.axisweb.org/graduates/waltervanrijn.