I was at the Perlman Teaching Museum, taking tens of pictures of an Ancient Chinese pig statuette. Walking around it to do the exercise, I got to appreciate every little detail and imperfection of it: its tail, the hole behind its ear, and its face. What is more, doing this exercise I realized that I have never paid that much attention to any piece of art before. Whenever I visited museums and was faced with masterpieces by Picasso, Van Gogh or Monet, I appreciated them for a couple of minutes and proceeded to the next artwork, I never got to analyze the tiny details nor the imperfections in those works. Photogrammetry demands a lot of close looks and attention to detail, after all you want to capture very aspect of an art piece when making a 3D model of it. In addition, it showed me a new framework to appreciate art the next time I am going to a museum.
This exercise also got me interested in learning more about the piece my group is working on. Before visiting the Perlman Teaching Museum last week, I knew very little about non-western pieces of art. But reading the labels of each statuette and talking to the museum curators I learned that they were mass produced and that they played an important role in the Ancient Chinese society. After this exercise, I want to do more research about these statuettes, learn whether the pig symbolizes something special and who likely owned the statuette. Does it relate to the Chinese zodiac sign? was the statue owned by a farmer?
Finally, I believe going from a passive observer to an active modeler changed the way I see art. If I were to talk about this artwork to someone else, I would point out interesting features that would go unnoticed otherwise, I’d mention it was mass-produced and relate it to the other works on display in the museum. I would go around the statuette pointing out details and imperfections. But instead of taking pictures of it, and processing them on a piece of software, I would point out curiosities about the work and share how it related to the society who made it over a thousand years ago.
4 thoughts on “The pig experiment”
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I too have realized how little I pay attention to the artifact. This task of modeling has forced me to really focus on the little details. Those little details are really what makes up the artifact. They add so much more meaning and context to the piece, so I really never even understanding the artifacts until I started to do this process.
Thanks for sharing! Doing modeling this term has taught me how little I pay attention to details as well, and hopefully this realization will make me more aware in the future. Your point about appreciating the imperfections in even the greatest works of art is also very interesting. It’s easy to think about pieces as being fully intentional, but there are probably hundreds of little errors or imperfections in each painting or sculpture.
I definitely agree, there are a lot of little details that you have to pay more attention too when using photogrammetry to model an object. You have to be careful to capture the texture of areas that wouldn’t normally look at. For example, my group had to photograph the area under the lip (the top of) of our pot. normally you wouldn’t pay a lot of attention to this, but to construct a 3D model, you can’t ignore these details.
I agree with what you’ve said about noticing new things as you move away from the role of a passive observer to become an active modeler. Especially, I agree that as you look at a piece more closely, you begin to see the imperfections more clearly. And that makes me appreciate the piece more. Imperfection makes a piece feel more human, and imperfection doesn’t necessarily detract away from the beauty or value of a piece. I’m curious on what others think though about that line of thinking.