Podcasts

An Interview with Paul  Effinger – Foundry of the Future Art and Technology 0005

Paul Effinger is a digital sculptor who is exploring different methods of bronze casting other than the lost wax method of bronze casting.  He is exploring z corp printing in a cellulose powder, infiltrates and others.

Effinger worked 13 years in the gaming industry creating for published titles as lead Character Artists and Animator and contributed to many others as an independent contractor. He strives to see some of his creations into physical forms and loves the feel of bronze. This has caused him to explore in different areas of 3d printing and investment casting.  The processes and pitfalls of 3d printing are featured in chapter 7 of the Mudbox book.
( Paul is featured in my 2015 book 3D Technology In Fine Art and Craft: Exploring 3D Printing, Scanning, Sculpting, and Milling.

LISTEN NOW from your browser

* Listen to the podcast from our podcast player on the nav bar at Digital Sculpting.net
* The direct link to this podcast segment- should you want to put it on your website or blog

____________________________________________________________________

We have been working hard all weekend to set up a new community at digitalsculpting.net. It will be a portal of information, tutorials, galleries etc on digital sculpting and the technology surrounding it. I encourage everyone to join. It is huge and will continue to grow, with people and information.  You can create your own profile, blog, gallery etc.

As part of this information community we are starting a new podcast titled,
Art and Technology
“A fire side chat where innovation, creativity, technology and science meet.”

We are just waiting for our introduction by Jazz Legend Harry Sheppard, and then our podcasts will be up. I expect that to be next week sometime. In the mean time, here is a little about our first guest, Robert Michael Smith.

Robert Michael Smith

• A pioneer in digital technology and sculpting
• A traditional sculptor. * Was founding web director of the International Sculpture Center
• Sat on the board of Directors of the International Sculpture Center*
• 1993-2003 Bord member for the Manhattan chapter of SIGGRAPH
• President Emeritus of the Sculptors Guild, founding board member of the Digital Stone Project
• Professor NYIT Fine arts
• Featured in the Digital Stone Exhibition Sponsored by Autodesk

A complete bio follows:

Robert Michael Smith is a digital sculptor and Associate Professor of art and technology at New York Institute of Technology Fine Arts Department. Smith is also NYIT Middle East Fine Arts Computer Graphics Coordinator for Global Exchange Programs at Amman, Jordan; Kingdom of Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Recently Smith has established a collaborative digital art gallery at Beijing, China.

Smith has been an active pioneer of digital sculpture, 3D visualization/animation, Web design, virtual sculptures for the Web, virtual actors for computer gaming, as well as a significant art and technology educator. During 1999-2003 Smith was a Board Director for Manhattan chapter of SIGGRAPH. Smith was the Web Director of www.sculpture.org during 1997-2003 and a Board Director of the International Sculpture Center during 2003 -2005. Smith is President Emeritus of the Sculptors Guild, and a founding Board Director of Digital Stone Project.

Smith previously taught throughout New York City at Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, The New School for Social Research, Parsons School of Art & Design, The Sculpture Center, as well as University of the Arts at Philadelphia, University of North Dakota, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and San Jose State University. Smith has also been a guest lecturer at numerous universities, international conference

s, and featured in several international articles and books including two chapters, “Digital Imaging” and “Digital Sculpture” in the recent Thames & Hudson publication “Art of the Digital Age”, by Bruce Wands.

Smith’s sculptures and digital art have been exhibited at prestigious New York City, NY venues including:
Sculpture Center; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Asian American Arts Center; Blum Helman Warehouse; and
The Corning Gallery at Steuben; The Rubelle & Norman Schafler Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY; as well as National venues including: Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA; Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA; Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ; Rockland Center for the Arts, Nyack, NY; FermiLab, Batavia, IL; Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA; Downey Museum of Art, Downey, CA; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI; Sculpture Tour, University of Tennessee / Knoxville; Nave Museum, Victoria, TX; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND; Muskegon Museum, Muskegon, MI; Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX; Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; University of Alabama Art Gallery, Birmingham, AL; The Alexandria Museum, Alexandria, LA ;The Plain’s Art Museum, Moorhead, MN; The Rourke Art Gallery, Moorhead, MN; Hillwood Art Museum, Brookville, NY; Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX; Robert Fullerton Art Museum,
San Bernadino, CA; The Alexandria Museum.

Alexandria, LA; University of Oklahoma Museum of Art, Norman, OK; Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK; University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, AK; Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, Anchorage, AK; Fine Art Museum of the South, Mobile, AL; Gaston County Museum,

Dallas, NC; West Bend Gallery of Fine Arts, West Bend, WI

International exhibition venues have included: Art Cologne, Germany; Supermarket 2008, Stockholm, Sweden; Foresight Art Center, Amman, Jordan; Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, England; Museo de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico;
UTS Gallery, Sydney, Austr

alia; Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey; Snowhite Gallery, Aukland, New Zealand;
Taiwan Museum of Art, Taichung, Taiwan; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Queen’s Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, England; Galleria Arte Mod

erna, Forte di Marmi, Italy; Gallerie Graphe, Paris, France;
Conseil Général de Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nancy, France; Isla Center for the Arts, Mangilao, Guam.

During 2008 – 2009 Robert Michael Smith was a featured artist along with Bruce Beasley, Jon Isherwood and Kenneth Snelson in “Digital

Stone”, an exhibition sponsored by Autodesk that toured at contemporary art museums throughout China, including Beijing Today Art Museum, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Jinse Gallery at Chongqing, and Art Map Gallery, Wenzhou. A sculpture by each artist was purchased for the permanent collection of China National Museum of Fine Arts at Beijing.

Many are waiting patiently for the new Art and Technology podcasts.

“A  fire side chat where innovation, creativity, technology and science  meet. “

We have completed our first four interviews. I think you will find the topics very interesting.  I have a couple more scheduled for this week, however, we are awaiting our introduction from Jazz Legend Harry Sheppard and for the new website digitalsculpting.net to be complete. The new Digital Sculpting.net website is a community site that we hope to offer many resources on.  It is still in the “construction” phase.  All of the podcasts will be housed there and you will also find accompanying articles and posts on the podcast here.  Podcasts will also  be available in iTunes. More information to come.

Yesterday I conducted my new podcast that I have created as a part of my research into “Bridging the gap between the traditional sculpture studio and new technology.” It will be located on my blog and our new website ( not up yet) Digitalsculpting.net. This site should be up by May along with the podcasts. It will be a community of artists offering a vast amount of resources on this subject. It was prompted by our publisher Elsevier and the new book on Digital Sculpting with Mudbox.

My first interview was with digital sculpting pioneer Robert Michael Smith. Monday I will interview Joris Debo from Materialise. My hit list for others in this podcast of Art and Technology are both artists, those in research and those providing the technologies for artists. I’m especially interested in things that are near and dear to my heart. All aspects of technology that help to create figurative sculpture, methods that will assist in creating a new type of foundry and bronzes, clay and the history of digital art, as well as the mix of math, science and art.

I am continually reminded how much this bridge is needed, by both the vendors and by those working and passionate about creating and the technology. As Robert Michael Smith said in our interview.

“I’m glad to see people like you are picking this up and doing it on your own now. This stuff really should be financed from a single source. There should be a single hub of information. “

The others on my hit list.

• The other artists involved in the Digital Stone Exhibit.

• The Digital Stone Project Not the same as the Digital Stone Exhibit

• Carl Bass CEO of Autodesk and a sculptor and involved with the Digital Stone Exhibition

• Synappsys Digital Services along with Shan Gray on the new process Data Direct To Mold used to create The American

• Christiane Paul Who wrote these articles about digital technology and sculpture. The were written 10 years ago. This is how I was introduced to Robert Michael Smith. I would also like to interview the other artists in this group who were working in this digital sculpting 10 years ago they are:

• Dan Collins

• Kieth Brown

• Michael Reese

• Derrick Woodham

• Christian Lavigne

• Curator of Design and the Elastic Mind at MOMA Paola Antonelli

• Someone from Solheim Laboratories at the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Washington about their digitally printing of clay and glass. I would love to cover one of their other collaborators with them. Perhaps Ron Rael @UC Berekely who asks in this post “Are we the first in the world to 3d print translucent Porcelain?” It does not take long to float through this blog and find another 6-10 people that I want to interview. and I must say I want to be able to print 3d ceramics in my studio!

• I love Robert Lazarini’s work and would be thrilled to interview him!
• Adrian Bowyer about RepRap Open source.

Robert Michael Smith also gave me an extended hit list. Please, if you know anyone who is interested in being a part, and of course those wanting to sponsor the site, send them my way!