Trip Report

INTERSCULPT

11-17 October, 2007

11-13 October -- Paris, France

14-17 October – Nancy, Lorraine Provence, Eastern France

 

Stewart Dickson

 

Wednesday, 10 October 2007 – 3:20PM American Airlines/American Eagle Flight 4129S to Chicago-O’Hare – was originally intended to connect to American Airlines Flight 42 departing at 5:20PM to Paris/Charles de Gaulle Aeroport.

 

American Eagle Flight 4129S arrived at O’Hare at 5:21PM – flight 42 had closed its doors and was pulling away from the gate when I arrived.  I was re-booked on British Airways flight 66 via London/Heathrow, which departed at 6:20PM.

 

I made it to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport by 2:30PM on Thursday, October 11th.

I took the RER-B2 Suburban train from Charles de Gaulle Aeroport to Gare du Nord, Paris.  From there I took the nr. 4 Metro to Odéon, which is one block from nr. 1 Cour de Rohan in the Latin Quarter, where I was staying.

 

I successfully navigated the France Télécom system and contacted Christian Lavigne’s former wife, Saly, to locate the keys for accessing the apartment.  I did have to ask a neighbor how to find the letter box.

 

By 6:30PM, I attended the reception at the INTERSCULPT Paris venue at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts & Metiérs -- ENSAM.   (Metro 10 Place d’Italie).

 

My notes on the Conference program can be found on-line at:

http://www.isl.uiuc.edu/~sdickson/IS2007/IS2007_SPD_Notes.html

 

Highlights of the conference program are as follows.  The dates of the French INTERSCULPT venues in Paris and Nancy, 11-17 October, coincide with La Fête de la Science (Festival of Science).  http://www.fetedelascience.fr  La Fête de la Science is a national event, organized and sponsored by the French Ministry of Research.

The dates of INTERSCULPT also coincided with the Paris International Scientific Film Festival, http://www.parisscience.fr

 

At the reception, I immediately reconnected with many colleagues I had met at previous INTERSCULPT events, such as 2003 in Paris and the Conference on Art & Mathematics, Maubeuge, Northern France in 2000.

 

Present at the reception was Michel Daronat, Director of Science and Technology at Axiatec – a design engineering company.  Axiatec originated from an ENSAM incubator program.   Michel Daronat was constructing data files submitted to INTERSCULPT on a Z Corp Z-450 Color 3D Printer located at the entrance to the ENSAM conference venue.

Daronat/Axiatec is using an improved, patented surface post-finishing process for rapid prototyping, which they developed at ENSAM.  The material is said to be colorfast to 20 years.


Daronat built a copy of my Botty-Shelly which looks better in his version of Z-Corp’s ZPrint software than it does at ITG/VMIL Although, Axiatec's VRML importer does not interpret the VRML2.0::textureTransform node.  There seems to be something funny going on in the VRML conversion libraries in use at the Rapid Prototyping service bureaus.  Mary Visser, later at the INTERSCULPT Biomorphism venue in Eastern France complained that this is a perennial problem – data files look different at every location.

 

I saw pieces of art submitted by artists to the INTERSCULPT FTP site, built successfully on Axiatec’s Z-450 3D Printer, which appeared to be unbuildable in ITG/VMIL’s copy of Zprint version 7.5.  I am looking into the Dynamically-Linked Library (DLL) file versions associated with Zprint version 7.5 at our site and compare them to those in use at other sites.

 

I was present at the INTERSCULPT exhibit at ENSAM on Friday, October 12

The Sculpture and Mathematics Conference presentations began at 10:30AM on Saturday, October 13th .

 

In general, the conference presentations have matured and improved since 2003.

There will be a double-DVD documenting the conference and exhibitions of INTERSCULPT 2007.

 

I had seen Raymond ASCHHEIM’s presentation on regular polytopes in dimensions from 0 to 11 at INTERSCULPT 2003.   This year, he has expanded his presentation to include applications to the aesthetic philosophy of the Fine Arts.  He demonstrated the dual of the 24-cell via rotational symmetry groups on Salvador Dali's "Christus Hypercubus".  He showed the compression of symmetry – again using the rotational symmetry groups -- with energy in the cosmology of the Big Bang.  He showed this also on the Kabbalistic Sefiroth, or Tree of Life mandala, which I also showed.  He showed how the Platonic Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Ether [Plasma?  Quantum Vacuum?]) generate the 11 dimensions of M Theory (Meta-String Theory).  The relations here are truly astounding – and I couldn’t find any logical holes in them.

 

Aschheim also presented interactive slides on the rotational symmetry groups authored in VRML, with a user interface consisting of three-dimensional VRML icons.  I think that this is the first time I’ve ever seen this done – even by Mark Pesche, the author of VRML.  Raymond Aschheim and I exchanged electronic copies of our slides on memory-sticks.  I have studied Raymond’s VRML files and I definitely want to develop things like this of my own – perhaps in the Cave/Cube/Canvas VRML viewer.

 

Gregorio FRANZONI showed a more detailed construction of Thomas Banshoff’s Klein bottle, as generated by the Moebius band.  He also showed exhibited physical, color models of the Moebius <-> Klein metamorphosis, rendered via 3D printing.  He showed Apéry’s parameterization of the Boy surface, the Morin surface (halfway model from the Optiverse) as well as the problem of Viviani’s Windows.

 

Patrick Saint-Jean, of ENSAM and INTERSCULPT/ENSAM’s manager in charge of AudioVisual setup & operation, presented a very interesting concept of knowledge-space, “Quantum Texturologics”, which he called collectively a “PolyAgogic CyberSpace”.

Simon DINER’s presentation on “Le Nombre d’Or” (the Golden Mean) was even quite coherent this time around (a departure from INTERSCULPT 2003).  Peter JANSEN’s sculptures of Quaternion Julia sets and other Strange Attractors are quite extraordinary – for not the least reason that he is vacuum-casting them in Bronze and Aluminum at thicknesses approaching 1.5mm.

 

Dr Jean-François BONNET and Maria HERNANDEZ presented their project, ASTRALE – a European-Latin American collaboration for research in Art, Science and Technology.  

 

 

There were many other highly interesting presentations made, and again, notes of these are posted at: http://www.isl.uiuc.edu/~sdickson/IS2007/IS2007_SPD_Notes.html

 

On Sunday, October 14th I traveled via the TGV (high-speed train) http://www.tgv.com to Nancy in the Lorraine province of Eastern France – a 2-hour journey.  The Sculpture and Biomorphism venue of INTERSCULPT 2007  Conference began at 1:00PM at the Conseil-Général de Muerthe et Moselle, 48 Rue du Sergent Blandan, Nancy.

This would be the equivalent of the County Government – or Department of Muerthe et Moselle, one of four Departments (Counties) of the Lorraine province (Canton).  La Fête de la Science posters also appeared here.

 

The INTERSCULPT Biomosphism venue included presentations on Historical scientific study of the human phoetus (fetus) and an overview of modern Biomedical Visualization – apropos to the slides I showed on work I have done in this area.

 

Glenn Davidson and Anne Hayes of ArtStation  http://www.artstation.org.uk presented their work via teleconference from Cardiff, Wales in the UK.  I ran slides for this presentation.  I've known these folks since the International Sculpture Conference, Computers & Sculptors Forum, University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 1992.  These two are extremely successful in their work by integrating a very simple, yet brilliant technology – a small robot which executes Logo Turtle Graphics on the floor with a pen – with a large, audience-participatory event.  Every member of the audience becomes fully involved, invested and carries away a lasting memory of the experience and a sense of partial ownership of the installation and the event.

 

Mary Visser, Professor of Art at Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas http://www.southwestern.edu/academic/sfa-site/art-site/11avisserm.htm  Presented her personal artwork – we (ITG/VMIL) have built some of it for the INTERSCULPT exhibit at the Krannert Art Museum.  She also presented documentation of the International, traveling RP Art Exhibition she organized in 2003 with Robert Michael Smith (one-time webmaster for the International Sculpture Center), professor in the Department of Fine Arts at New York Institute of Technology.  http://www.rpsculpture.org    http://iris.nyit.edu/finearts/faculty/full-time/rsmith.html

 

Andrew Werby of Oakland, CA presented his work in biomorphic assemblages which he executes in CAD and produces using 4-axis CNC milling.  http://www.computersculpture.com  Andrew remained with us for the next two days.  Mary Visser and her family joined us for dinner Sunday night, but departed Nancy for Paris and elsewhere in Europe Monday morning.

 

I remained in Nancy to act as an assistant program manager for the Exhibition.  In addition to a Z Corporation color printer, an InSpeck structured-light facial digitizer was brought in on Monday.  Christian Lavigne and I were both trained on the use of this device and we proceeded to collect facial scans from many visitors to the exhibition.

I assisted in giving a presentation on the exhibit to a local school group.  I assisted in opening the exhibit at 10:00 each morning, met and greeted visitors to the gallery and gave explanations of the work where needed.

 

Christian Lavigne and I attended a cocktail reception given by and for the French Army on the evening of Tuesday, October 16th.

 

On Wednesday, October 17th, I rode the TGV back to Gare-de-l’Est, Paris and then the RER-B2 from Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport, where I caught my flights back to Chicago O’Hare and Champaign without further incident.