Lauren
CST Week 5
10/27/14

“In VEs (Virtual Environments), a quasi merger of embodied perception and externally transmitted conception happens at the level of sensation. The appeal of this electronically facilitated merger is reflected in the current grown of cultural and academic interest in the cyborg- the human-machine…”
-Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality

Where do we end and machine begin?

Technology is striving to shrink or exterminate the gap between human mind and computer capability. Parallel to this is the play between artist/artisan and computer science as a new tool in the artists toolbox. From my observation of the class’s way of interfacing with Tinkercad, the transition is in its young adult life, but by no means matured. There is the angst of wanting. A yearning for the product to be a refined work, and yet the actuality is an experimental shout into the material world. A culmination of basic shapes into slightly more complex structures that are seeking to be fully formed. But how can a (sub)culture already critical of plastic reproduction take printmaking seriously? Only when our identities become involved, or personal investment in the object itself, can we overlook the tackiness of young adult plastic. So where are we headed? As our class becomes for fluid with Tinkercad, and our theoretical ideas progress, we are headed in the direction of modern sculpture and biographical objects.