ROOT 0082
by Simone C Niquille /technoflesh Studio
Year: 2017
Format: 3D Print
Size: Variable
Commissioned by AND Festival 2017.
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ROOT 0082 is a half life-sized 3D printed mesh from the CAESAR database, an anthropometric research to record human body measurements initiated by the U.S. Air Force Laboratory. The database consists of over 2,000 scanned bodies and is one of the largest of it’s kind. This has led the database to be a popular resource for academic research in need of human 3D models. Recently, Adobe purchased the character creator software ‘Fuse’, formerly a startup from Stanford University based on 3D assembly modelling research, of which a selection of the CAESAR database served as training set.
The new 3D printed artefact ROOT 0082, is an invisible puppet master in defining a new canon of the human body posing questions on the standardisation of bodies, personal data, and the representation of the human body in virtual space. The figure is posed with the motion data of 'female, carried', downloaded from a game design asset store, juxtaposing the deeply gendered representation in virtual space.
ROOT 0082 is part of ongoing research The Contents on anthropometric standards embedded in 3D capture and modelling technologies. Used for a wide spectrum of applications, from movie special effects, to forensic investigation, and biometric identification, these technologies define much of how the human body and identity is represented and perceived in digital space. Through film, artefacts and interviews, The Contents challenges parametric constructs of corporeality.
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Related Writing:
• The Fragility of Life
A conversation with Jara Rocha & Femke Snelting on parametric bodies
R&D Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2017
• SimFactory
On the interwoven history of 3D avatars, ergonomics and efficiency
e-flux Architecture, 2017
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