Interview with sculptor Michael Shaw

October 10, 2008

Dr. Michael Shaw is an acclaimed sculptor with many solo and group exhibitions to his name. As well as having won prizes for his work, he has a PHD in sculpture and makes inspiring and thought provoking work. He is currently an AHRC research fellow at Loughborough University where he is exploring rapid manufacturing and digital design. Loughborough University by the way may not sound familiar to you now, but they do cutting edge work in rapid manufacturing and as far as we are concerned is one of the most relevant and exciting places to be right now. You can check out Michael’s website and work here, his 3D printed work here or his faculty page here.

Suffice it to say that we are very proud that Michael, or rather Dr. Michael Shaw, is a Shapeways member and one of our best customers to boot. We’re also glad he took the time to answer some questions we had for him.

Why do you use Maya?

Maya, despite being horrendously complicated, is quite user friendly because the basic means for changing geometry are easily visible and there is a simple logic to things like the attributes editor and the history capability. However, I wouldn’t like to have to learn it again, that’s not to say I’m anyway near mastering it, but that I have no desire to go right back to the beginning! It is in some ways like Pandora’s box, once you open it all sorts of stuff comes out; for example how animation and particle systems can be used to modulate geometry. So it’s is an incredibly rich tool, but at the end of the day it’s just a tool; a really complicated pencil. What’s key is the geometry you develop with it, and without any kind of real world underlying philosophy it’s likely to be quite vacuous.

So Maya is a really complicated tool. What would your ideal 3D modelling tool look like?

Maya is undoubtedly complicated, but I’m definitely not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s tough to learn, but the rewards are great. I guess an ideal 3D software would incorporate the best aspects of the Maya, Rhino3D and so on. I’ve tried things like Solidworks and heavy duty CAD but found them wholly alien. Personally, I favour modelling and working with NURBS, so anything that parallels the way I might make something in the real world would be good.

Rodin said that, “he chose a block of marble and chopped off what he didn’t need” in a 3D modelling package one starts with a blank screen, does this change sculpture itself?

I don’t really think so; because it is inevitable one will either consciously or subconsciously import one’s real world philosophy into the virtual environment. That said, there are aspects of CAD software which have precipitated new forms in my practice that I simply wouldn’t have imagined, or been able to hand craft. For example, in CAD one can effect subtle distortions to the whole of a form whilst maintaining its gestalt, or in other words maintain the sense of its whole be that circular elliptical or whatever whilst twisting or bending along some axis. This for me is a powerful and extremely desirable attribute.

Does working with 3D software mean that you approach a sculpture differently?

In some ways, yes and in some ways no. Most of the sculptures I make in the ‘real world’ have been cast from constructed moulds or constructed in some way, so I don’t really model materials such as clay for example. Virtually, my approach is fairly similar; it’s a kind of construction often starting with line rather than solids in order to create sinusoidal cylinders. I am definitely infatuated with the awesome potential of deformers like bend and twist and their effects when combined; likewise lattice deformers. One of the great things about CAM for the sculptor is the copy and paste function, which means it’s possible to try an almost endless variety of forms without committing to the time consuming and expensive process of fabrication. I contend this encourages a playfulness and experimental exploration which can sometimes go missing under the duress of the physical grind of making things by hand.

You seem fascinated by distortion or changes in a shape. When did altering of shapes, this ‘endless variety of forms’ begin to influence and inspire you?

I’ve always been interested in distorting shapes, however prior to Rapid Prototyping this often involved merely slicing bits off an existing form or squashing them somehow when curing in the mould, whereas CAD/CAM has completely opened up a whole new range of possibilities. It is no exaggeration to suggest it has been a revelation that has revolutionised my practice.

Do rapid manufacturing materials change your process?

Often Rapid Prototyping is a means to quickly fabricate a model which can then be rescaled up to something larger, so in this case it functions as a means to an ends. Other times the Rapid Prototyping object is the final artefact. I don’t envisage not making ‘real world’ sculptures and I think a symbiotic relationship will continue to exist in my practice for the foreseeable future whereby one medium informs the other and vice versa. I like the white SLS nylon (White, Strong & Flexible), but only when the form is so thin light can almost pass through it, but the ideal RP materials would be the transparent ones if only they were really UV resistant.

So is process or the end result the most important to you?

Process, technique, call it what you will, is simply a means to an ends for me; the only thing that matters is the outcome. What defines the quality of the outcome is the dynamism of the geometry, and form generation is the central tenant of sculpting in my opinion. I would argue that it is the primary concern of the sculptor because in selecting materials, colours and surface finishes one operates as a conductor, whereas in establishing geometry the sculptor is solely responsible. Rapid Prototyping and CAD seem to have enormous potential in extending the possible vocabulary of three dimensional forms.

What are the limitations and advantages of rapid manufacturing?

The limits of Rapid Prototyping are inevitably the cost and the build envelope of the machines. The former can be mitigated somewhat by creating hollow geometries with thin walls or caged or perforated structures; whereas the latter is definitely a restriction for me given my focus on singular sculptural forms means part by part construction is out. The primary advantages of Rapid Prototyping are that you get what you design and that the complexity of the geometry bears no consequence on the possibility to manufacture. In other words, it doesn’t matter how complex the form is in terms of overhangs, subtle or complex distortions or forms within one another the machine just prints it layer by layer. Sometimes I fear that the outcome can be a little too antiseptic and that the imperfect touch of the human is missing, on the other hand imperfection and distortion can be built into the virtual geometry if so desired or one can just accept the austere perfection as its quality and work with it. One is also limited by the visual aesthetics of the materials currently available for use. Real pungent vibrant colour would be a welcome development, rather than the slightly washed out pastels that the Z-corp machines produce in my opinion.

What do you mean by, that 3D printed work is “too antiseptic and that the imperfect touch of the human is missing”? Is it like Muslim artists in bygone days making beautiful carpets but leaving in one intentional error to demonstrate that only God is perfect?

I’ve always aspired to make ‘perfect’ objects by hand, but never really been able to achieve it, now RP has enabled me to produce certain forms whose geometry is so consistent that they might be considered to be ‘perfect’; but having seen the results I’m not sure it’s really what I want. You finally get what you always wanted and end up disappointed! On the other hand, models straight out of the machine invariably have evidence of the strata by strata manufacture; the layering remains and testifies to how they were made, so this might be considered an imperfection in itself. I quite value the resulting lines because they function as contour lines that simultaneously are and describe the form: and similar linear qualities have been present in a lot of my previous sculptures.

Anyway perfection is really a kind of abstract notion or philosophical stance. The example you give has a lot of parallels with the Japanese aesthetic notion Wabi-Sabi, which favours imperfection over perfection. I have an empathy with this way of thinking. For example, even in sculptures by Brancusi such as Bird in Space which in photographs appear to be ‘perfect’, there are often deviations in the geometry or pitted marks in their surfaces.

Is the Rapid Manufacturing process too clinical to you?

Well, it certainly removes production out of the worlds of chance and happenstance; often in real world production errors can occur and these can prompt new developments in terms of form or technique. However with the actual outputting of Rapid Prototyping objects this does not happen simply because the machine faithfully prints the data it is given. However, unexpected occurrences can also emerge in the modelling of virtual geometry so to some extent the unexpected is still present and intuition can play a role in shaping work in the CAD/CAM arena.

Does a smudge from the artist’s hand, a mistake somehow make a work more human? But, would the work not be more perfect without the smudge?

There’s a lot to be said for the signs and errors of the human hand. It has something to do with a quite primal need to mark things with our own signature in some way I think. Somehow there needs to be a bit of dirt under the fingernail for me – for instance it’s the grain of sand in the oyster that produces the pearl….!