Sculpt Fade – Ringkern

“Sculpt Fade – Ringkern” is the first work in the Sculpt Fade series. The set-up shared by all the others is described here.

Sculpt Fade builds coloured cuboids from the traces of a sculpture. As in Sculpt Trace, on each part a line travels along its edges; every copy of this line becomes a cuboid, copy after copy with a narrow joint in between – and so chains grow out into space like fans, ribbons and staircases. The colours come from the active palette and change constantly, all at once and gently. Only some of the chains carry full colour; the others remain light and grey like the quiet bodies in Minimal. Each face has its fixed level of light – bright on top, bright towards the sun, darker facing away; fractal clouds of light drift across them, and the cuboids cast shadows on one another.

At the end of their trace the cuboids break apart: cracks run obliquely and irregularly through the block and open up, dust from the fracture trickles out, the pieces come loose one after another, tumble away and finally shatter into a cloud of white and coloured particles that flies on along the pieces’ path and drifts outwards. At the front, where new cuboids form, white dust foams like surf.

With Fade X you grab the parts on your phone – in the browser, without an app: ring, sphere, trackball, 3D mouse, joystick, gamepad, arcade, VR, camera, touch and writing. For each work, six films show it in a walkthrough, up close as it breaks apart, in changing colour worlds, with two controllers in the hand and for two.

Sculpt Fade belongs to the Sculpt family, alongside Sculpt, Sculpt Color, Sculpt Dark, Sculpt Dark Color, Sculpt Void, Sculpt Void Color, Sculpt Void Full Color and Sculpt Trace.

About the sculpture: Render4Sculpt, 126 cubes – two rings of 36 cubes each around a double core of 3 × 3 × 3 cubes. As a 3D print in the Sculpture Garden: “Ringkern”, 25 cm, work number 2026.00.291. Also as Sculpt, Sculpt Color, Sculpt Dark, Sculpt Dark Color, Sculpt Void, Sculpt Void Color, Sculpt Void Full Color and Sculpt Trace – Ringkern.