Sculpt Trace – Ringkern

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

Sculpt Trace draws a sculpture with lines. Each of its parts carries exactly one line, whose ends travel along the part’s edges like runners – at each corner mostly towards where no one has been for the longest time. So the line sometimes lies on an edge, sometimes cuts off a corner or runs straight across the body, and over time every form is covered completely.

What it leaves behind lingers for a while: copies of the line as fans, soft arcs that follow its ends, and in between wafer-thin, almost transparent skins that cast shadows from a fixed direction of light onto the mesh behind them. With fast movements the mesh grows tighter; close to the camera it becomes brighter, further back darker. A few lines glow strong and wide, the others remain as a quiet mesh in the background – which ones stand out changes slowly.

What is new is the hand in the work. With Trace X, every part of the sculpture can be grabbed on your phone – in the browser, without an app. Ring, sphere, trackball, SpaceMouse, joystick, gamepad, arcade, VR, camera, touch and writing: every gesture takes effect instantly on the real work, and the traces redraw the movement of the hand as fans, arcs and skins. The films show the work on its own, in the hand and for two; each work in the series introduces two of the controllers.

Sculpt Trace is the latest series in the Sculpt family, after Sculpt, Sculpt Color, Sculpt Dark, Sculpt Dark Color, Sculpt Void, Sculpt Void Color and Sculpt Void Full Color.

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 and Sculpt Void Full Color – Ringkern.