Paper short abstract:

In this paper I use two bodies of politically critical artwork to examine how 3D scanning and printing technologies utilised in artistic research contribute to STS dialogue on the backstage and practical technical concerns around the production of art, as well as material outcomes of digital processes.

Paper long abstract:

Within artistic practices technology can become a means for subversion and tool for political action. In this paper I examine two bodies of artwork which employ 3D scanning and printing technologies. I look at how these technologies and their use within artistic research contribute to STS dialogue on the backstage and practical technical concerns around the production of art. The cases include Renzo Martens' Institute for Human Activities, in particular IHA's collaboration with the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League to produce large scale sculptural self-portraits. To produce the final works, it was necessary to digitally export them from the Congo using 3D scanning and 3D printing techniques. These 3D renderings were then used by master chocolatiers to produce the final sculptural forms in chocolate, using "the very cocoa that League members have produced for global markets for the last century." (Martens 2014). The chocolate sculptures are for sale, subverting the art market by using Martens' profile to generate money for the plantation workers, in what Martens termed the "post-Fordist, affective economy". In another case study, artist Morehshin Allahyari reproduces antiquities destroyed by ISIS in Iraq, using 3D modeling and printing. Each (re)created sculpture also holds an embedded harddisk containing visual and textual information on the particularities of the lost original. In both cases, the technologies were instrumental in transforming the physical to digital to physical again, injecting a compelling technological backstory about material outcomes of digital processes (both hidden and overtly expressed) to artistic research with a critical, political outcome.