{"id":9688,"date":"2019-01-22T12:03:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T16:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/?p=9688"},"modified":"2026-03-16T14:40:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:40:43","slug":"impressions-in-the-land-an-exploration-of-digital-modeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/2019\/01\/22\/impressions-in-the-land-an-exploration-of-digital-modeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressions in the Land: An Exploration of Digital Modeling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Posted on\u00a0January 22, 2019<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Vivien Wise<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

During the first semester of my fellowship in the Digital Scholarship Center, I focused on learning how to make a physical, fabric object from a digital, 3D model. In my last blog post I went over the process of figuring out a way to make this happen. You can read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I have more than just samples!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modeling Myself in a Mountain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My goal was to create a three dimensional, fabric object that depicted my body embedded in a mountain range at human scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started with a digital 3D model of myself (created using photogrammetry in the DSC) and a digital 3D model of a mountain range (pulled from Sightline Maps)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I used 3D modeling softwares Maya and Meshmixer to combine my body with the mountain range, creating an impression of me in the land; an additional topography in the mountainscape. I then imported the 3D model into Pepakura, where the application turned it into a flat pattern for me that could be saved as a PDF. The PDF provides a few different pieces of information \u2014 cut lines, fold lines (mountain and valley), and edge IDs (to match edge to edge). This took a fair bit of tweaking, to find the right number of pages and position all the shapes correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possibly the biggest game-changer in the whole process was that I realized I could set the PDF pages to 12\u201d x 24\u201d, the size of the laser cutter bed. Withy my parameters, Pepakura is able to create a PDF of all the cut lines in addition to a PDF with the fold lines and edge IDs. Once the PDF was completed, I prepared 55 pieces of cotton muslin with a stiff interface and ran them through the laser cutter. I then used a projector to trace the fold lines and transfer the edge IDs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sewing the Pieces<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After all this prep work was done, I could finally start sewing! The thing I\u2019ve been waiting to do all semester!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this life size fabric mountain version of me was all sewn together, I built a cardboard frame to hold the sides up and then slid it on. This finished piece is approximately 6\u2032 x 4\u2032 x 1\u2032.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea behind this project came from asking myself how I find topographical intimacy (a term coined by Lucy Lippard). What does it mean to find intimacy within a landscape? How can I connect to the land? The mountains are a place with which I feel connected, grounded. This led me to considering a sort of self portrait within the land, an intimate embedding of myself within a topography. What would it be like if I could lie down amongst these bodies of land, like lying in tall grass but at a different and impossible scale? Is the topography of my body that different from the topography of these mountain bodies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This piece would not have been conceived or constructed in this manner without my work in the Digital Scholarship Center. The way I came about this project is unique to a digital process that is not the standard way of creating 3D fabric objects, and is not necessarily the fastest way to accomplish the task. The outcome is unlike anything I would have considered prior to my time here and I\u2019m excited about what it means for my art practice and upcoming projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Posted on\u00a0January 22, 2019\u00a0by\u00a0Vivien Wise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34028,"featured_media":9689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[405,2,352],"tags":[238,174,513,514],"class_list":["post-9688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-humanities","category-grad-students","category-visual-art","tag-3d-modeling","tag-photogrammetry","tag-sewing","tag-topography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9696,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688\/revisions\/9696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}