Head of a horse of Selene

thingiverse

From the British Museum's Parthenon collection Scanned by Cosmo Wenman. For more photos, descriptions of my reinventions, and info, go to www.cosmowenman.com Head of a horse of Selene Acropolis, Athens, 438-432 BC From the east pediment of the Parthenon Scanned from the original marble in the British Museum August 2012 by Cosmo Wenman, using AutoDesk 123D Catch. Edited for printing using Blender and Netfabb Studio Basic. Printed life size in PLA on a MakerBot Replicator. Finshed in Epic Bronze with Alternate Reality Patinas. http://www.alternaterealitypatinas.com Model published into the public domain October 2012. I made these pieces in an attempt to show that, with the right finishes and attention to detail, 3D printers can produce objects of art worthy of public and private display. Not just miniature figurines, or toys, or practical household objects, and not just prototypes. They can do more than evoke the desired object, they can be objects of desire. But I chose these subjects in particular--elemental, archetypal museum pieces--to try to advance a different but complementary idea; that with 3D scanning and 3D printing, private collectors and museums have an unprecedented opportunity to recast themselves as living engines of cultural creation. They can digitize their three dimensional collections and project them outward into the public realm to be adapted, multiplied, and remixed. They should do this because the best place to celebrate great art is in a vibrant, lively, and anarchic popular culture. The world's back catalog of art should be set free to run wild in our visual, and now tactile, landscape, and whether it turns up lit in pixels on our screens, rematerialized in our living rooms, or embedded in our architecture or clothing, it's all to the good. And for forward-thinking, innovative institutions and collectors, and for everyone involved in this young industry, there's prestige, money, value, meaning, and beauty to be made in making it a reality. From the British Museum: "One of the best loved sculptures from the Parthenon The east pediment of the Parthenon shows the birth of the goddess Athena from the head of her father Zeus. The event was witnessed by various figures shown on either side and filling the triangular space of the gable end of the temple. In the very corners of this triangle, the time of day was set by the chariot of Helios, god of the sun, rising at dawn, and the chariot of Selene, the Moon goddess, sinking beneath the horizon. Selene's torso is in Athens, while the head of one of her team of horses is in the British Museum. This is perhaps the most famous and best loved of all the sculptures of the Parthenon. It captures the very essence of the stress felt by a beast that has spent the night drawing the chariot of the Moon across the sky. As the unseen vehicle was shown sinking low in the west, the horse pins back its ears, the jaw gapes, the nostrils flare, the eyes bulge, veins stand out and the flesh seems spare and taut over the flat plate of the cheek bone." - http://bit.ly/gy7A4S I've seen a few references which state that plaster casts of this sculpture were extremely popular in the 19th century, but I haven't found any contemporaneous sources for that claim. But I can believe it - it is extremely expressive, and stirring in person, and I hope my reproduction captures and transmits at least some of that. I find David Hockney's theories on the precocious use of lenses in Renaissance art very compelling. But living with this damned horse on my screen, and then in my house, for the last two months, it's hard to imagine how the original could have been designed two millenia ago without photography, let alone lenses. Its expression is so exacting, just an instant in time, I can't see how it could be modeled by eye from a live horse, or even a dead one. Maybe a contour gauge on a carcass with rigor mortis, but I don't see that either, not with this expressiveness and movement. I imagine a Greek guy walking around 2,000 years ago with a camera obscura with some kind of light sensitive papyrus inside, trying to raise funds to get his light enscribing machine into mass production. Alas, there was no Kickstarter back then. Or, maybe the artist and horse in bright sunlight, the artist covering his eyes. The horse's handler startles it into motion, and the artist opens his eyes for an instant, closes them again, then draws quickly with his eyes shut while the image fades in his retinas - the lens, film, and darkroom being his eyes... I dunno - either that or weeks of careful study, scores of sketches of impressions of a horse in motion, composited into this exacting model. But that doesn't sound like as much fun. [Clarification: I don't really think ancient Greeks had cameras. I was just having some fun, and if my comments are taken as expressing anything other than admiration of the original artistry, then they're being misread. Or I miswrote them. Or something. Hi BoingBoing!] (Yes, I'm aware that this is the kind of amateur analysis that is going to bust loose over the next couple years with more direct, popular access to these kinds of forms, and that it may cause many academics and curators to completely lose their minds. Just wait until the ancient aliens theorists get hold of this stuff. It's gonna be great!) Based on all the information I could find, and on my own measurements, I've sized the model at 83cm long, measured along its longest length. I believe this is 1:1 with the museum's marble, but I'd have to put a measuring tape on the original to be certain, and I'm sure that would just get me yelled at... The loose .stl file is of the entire horse head, "decimated" by 50% so its file size is more managable. One of the .zip files contains the full resolution model, which has over 1 million triangles, which may be overkill - but that's how I roll :) The other .zip file contains the hi res model broken into 29 printable blocks, many of which are pretty large prints. I printed the pieces in PLA, hollow, 4 shells thick, and with .28mm layer heights, and it took many days of continuous printing. I can't even remember how many days it took, and I can barely remember the days it took to bronze and patina it - it's all a blur. I'm working on a way to make these metalized patina finishes easily available, and easy to use. Look for Alternate Reality Patinas, http://www.AlternateRealityPatinas.com soon. Cosmo Wenman http://www.cosmowenman.com http://twitter.com/cosmowenman Instructions Because these are large pieces, the slightest warping makes for big misalignments; assembling the pieces is no small task. If I were to print it again, I would recut the model into less block-like pieces - more like shells - and print them a bit thicker. At only four walls thick, the model's larger, flatter exterior walls are very sensitive to temperature - it can't be left in direct sunlight.