Model (2014)

This 3D printed sculpture and accompanying video explores the traditional relationships of artist, model and viewer with new technology.

Ideas often discussed in art concerning the role of the view, the model and the audience are brought up to date in the use of new technologies. Smith is interested in the relationships that take place when a subject is photographed. In this work the artist employs a stranger to sit and be scanned digitally, filmed by a camera and viewed by both the filmmaker and the audience where the audience is the last in a long chain of viewings. 

There is an unease in the work, a feeling of both tenderness and awkwardness which arises from the act of being looked at and inspected so closely as if an object. The sculptural element is a 3D print of the scan which is being created in the film. The broken forms, which are not easily recognisable as the human figure, emphasise the limitations of digital methods of recording the subject.

This sculpture and film together present the very different outcomes of viewing, encouraging us to consider our relationships with the ways in which we see the world.