Three original Aerial Diptych Follies trade on a surrealist inspired form of non-human theatricality, where imagined scenarios and histories, perhaps hundreds of years apart, are enacted by fictional, didactic instruments—nonsensical and seemingly purposeless, objects, follies as it were, cavorting and masquerading, as aerial acrobats. This work gets under the metaphorical digital hood by interrogating imaging and digital modeling practices. Amongst other things, key motivations include the nuanced interplay of 3d modeling toward the production of an image, while playing with the lack of depth in the original images.
Several things were discovered in the process of working: shadow and light became highly configurable in render space and became key in the manipulation of 2D imagery; and light sources negate shading and shadow effects, rather appearing as ‘flat’ objects, transforming them into kinds of notational markings that directly affect the compositional geometry. Shadows can be turned off, or altogether transformed, collapsing space, complexifying relationships or producing novel effects, such as shadowed lighting. Finally, utilizing the three dimensionality of the model allows for new 2D imagery where these effects collapse, or are redefined, to produce a layered spatiality, masked by the original view.
