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Visual Display of Quantitative Information
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Meaning, Space, Data, Truth
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ZZ Smile (Zerlina's Smile)

This video is also available on YouTube and Vimeo

-- Edward Tufte


Ways of seeing

Landscape sculpture installation art is obviously best seen in person in real spaceland--an experience limited to those who show up.

The dynamic range of human eyes exceeds that of video and still photography. Those eyes see in three-space, those eyes can walk around, those eyes reside in the same 3D+time space of the artwork.

However, video and still photography provide different experiences of artwork.

Time-lapse video (as in all 3 segments of ZZ Smile) provide a new experience of the artwork by compressing hours of slow and subtle color changes into an intense and perceptive few minutes. And still photographs, particularly from diverse viewpoints, provide high-resolution contemplative detail. (I always photograph the pre-construction models for larger pieces to see the pieces better.) Stills also decontextualize artworks.

Part of project 5 (my new book/film/whatever) is to show how a pluralism of methods reveals different aspects of real-land objects. The general philosophy is "To see, do whatever it takes." Various methods for obtaining visual experiences are not competitors, or necessarily to be judged as better or worse--but rather as colleagues in providing diverse visual readings of real-world objects and events.

I also think of my artworks as image generators that provide a multiplicity of visual experiences under varying light, observer positions, contexts. Thus my remark at the end of the video about the resemblance of ZZ Smile images to beautiful pencil outline drawing filled in soft and subtle water-color tones.

The paradox of Project 5 (and the universal problem of representation) is that it must describe real-land seeing experiences using the flatlands of movies, paper, computer screens--except for those who show up at the artworks.

-- Edward Tufte


Response to ZZ Smile

-- Edward Tufte






-- Edward Tufte




Threads relevant to sculpture:
Ace and Porta do multimedia
Airspaces
Bird Series
Aluminum and stainless steel; many, many pieces moving in the air.
Bouquet sculpture series--and Walking, Seeing, Constructing
Beginning of Bouquet series (now 7); along with theoretical statement beginning the volume 5 project.
Buddha with Bird Nest: sculpture
Complex sculptural shapes
Dear Leader I: landscape sculpture May 2006
Narrative piece about some mysterious porcelain objects in a stainless steel perspective box.
Dog sculpture (Porta the Portuguese Water Dog)
ET Modern
ET museum/gallery in the Chelsea Art District in New York 2010-2013.
ET show at George Champion Modern Shop
ET gallery show in Woodbury, Connecticut.
Escaping Flatland sculptures
Ten large stainless steel pieces in the landscape generate many views and painted color fields as the sun moves across the sky and the season changes.
Feynman Diagrams, Edward Tufte sculptures and exhibits
The Conceptual and Cognitive Art of Feynman Diagrams. Art show + 16 page essay.
Flame Theater
Georgia O'Keeffe and Escaping Flatland
Hogpen Hill #1: sculpture installed August 2006
First major piece (24 feet light, stainless steel) installed in new 122 acre sculpture park underway in Woodbury, Connecticut.
Ironstone artworks, torqued steel
Magritte's Smile
Masks Quartet, 2011
bronze casting
Megaliths, Continuous and Silent, Stuctures of Unknown Significance
Stone+air artworks. Scuplture, megaliths
Millstone sculpture series
Massive industrial pieces sorting out circles and light. Redesigning and repurposing scrap from nuclear power plant.
Multiplicity in visual experiences (ET presentation for a museum show)

Nine reviews of ET's Aldrich Museum sculpture show
ET museum show in Connecticut 2009-2010
Open-Ended
Paradox sculptures
Petals 1-3
Aluminum hyperbolic paraboloids in the landscape reflect light and shadow. The pieces move with the contour of the land.
Philosophical Diamond Signs
Philosophical alerts, imperatives, and thoughts about the path past and future.
Rocket Science
~32 feet (10 m) high and ~72 feet (22 m) long, and is constructed from ~48,000 pounds (22,000 kg) of rusting scrap steel
Rocket Science #2 (Lunar Lander)
Rocket Science 3: Airstream Interplanetary Explorer
Sculpture Forgings
Steel forging mounted on wood base. Blacksmithing video.
Sculpture: Negative space studies
Three table pieces; strong positive elements create active negative volumes (the air) to torque. Movies.
Seeing Around: New ET essay published
Skewed Machine
Spring Arcs, an ET landscape sculpture
Four solid stainless steel arcs in the landscape. Long thread, many photographs on meaning, construction, viewing of the piece.
Stainless steel images: anisotropic calligraphy
Big series of engraved 3D anisomorphic images that move with light.
Steel sculptures
Rough, thick, rusting steel, with surface images in the steel's patina.
Table sculptures
About a dozen major table pieces in wood, steel, stainless steel.
The Drawing Center fax show: ET exhibits
The Twigs: Landscape artworks made from steel and air
The beautiful Twig. Steel, 32 feet high, with accompanying thread on reading the piece and the complexities of modeling large 3D objects.
Theater Museum artworks
Tong Bird of Paradise
Towers: a new memorial for 9/11
Visual complexities of light, shadow, perpsective. Perforated stainless steel.


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