a syntfarm proposal.

Project Summary

SYNTRELIEFS is a project that captures and 'freezes' various city phenomena, by scanning cityscapes into 3D reliefs and later fabricating them in the form of rapid prototypes.


Proposal

SYNTRELIEFS is a social and urban research experiment, which collects recipes, methods, and myths about public spaces. On this occasion, Syntfarm will explore situations that capture: merging of public and private spheres, diverse communities and classes manifesting their 'diversifications', corporate icons entering private spaces of passers-by, homeless people defining 'sustainable' home solutions, etc. The analysis of city life would be embraced and commoditized by fabricating rapid prototypes of found cityscapes and situations... 

The objects will be scanned with various 2D and 3D scanning techniques and then they will be rapidly prototyped. RP objects will be exhibited and used to promote and question life of the objects and phenomena which are found on the streets of the city. The historical, anthropological, functional, and aesthetical values of the found situations, along with their alive-ness and complexity, are reduced to a series of pure singular expressions which will occur once they are fabricated and reduced to the raw synthetic forms of rapid prototypes. the visual style of objects would appear with some mistakes/glitches of the scanning technique which would give them another quality by giving them a 'frozen' look...

Syntfarm is planning to perform extensive multiple hour walks for x number of days and look for 'scanable' items which would depict an alternative lifestyle which autonomously and sustainably manifests itself on the streets of the city. Syntfarm will focus on initiating a lively dialogue between visitors to the showroom and the artifacts displayed. All the objects found during walk will be fabricated and with the simplification of their multiple complex planes, Syntfarm would stress the importance of commodifications for visitors interaction and enjoyment. Also, the objects will be tagged with the various information sets about them.

Project Location

we will be exploring all the areas that have possible distortions and merging of public and private spaces: areas where homeless people gather, where people dispose old furniture, where corporations invade public space with their logos, brands, etc... all of these will be 'frozen' - captured as a 3D relief which will be glorified in the gallery.

Has this project been presented before?

for ISEA08, we are showing SYNTBOUTIQUE which is a predecessor of SYNTRELIEFS and in SYNTBOUTIQUE we will focus on scanning and tagging the objects found during our trip in Mongolia and visit of nomadic families in the northern territory in Mongolia. in SYNTBOUTIQUE we will have videos that promote their lifestyle and focus is on alternative lifestyle found with in homes of people that don't have access to information technologies, electricity, etc.

Additional Production Information for Curators

One of the premises that drive this project is on the cynical glorification of the objects and phenomena around us. all of the objects are commodified based on the context of where the objects are located. in the gallery, street or in nature we question a notion of objects that can believe instead of people: as zizek claims "the things (commodities) themselves believe in their place, instead of the subjects: it is as if all their beliefs, superstitions and metaphysical mystifications, supposedly surmounted by the rational utilitarian personality, are embodied in the 'social relations between things'. They no longer believe, but the things themselves believe for them." (Zizek, 1989.)

syntfarm is very much interested in giving a lecture in which we will compare the life of people in mongolia and their use or appropriation of (found) objects in daily lives and comparison with the similar or comparable situations in the big city. what would be compared is again alive-ness of the objects and relations between them but without belief in lacanian idea of objects believing instead of people.


rapid prototypes: ideally, we would work on this together with the organizers who would help us find a partner or connect us to an institution that can support us by giving us access to the rapid prototyping machine. currently we estimate 3 days to print/or cut all the objects based on the technology available.



test object, "homeless cart/home"
rapid prototyping technique, subtractive
3d model created with custom syntfarm open source software
image source unknown