About this 3D model

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 t