About this 3D model

*Life is a bitch and Death is her sister, Sleep is their cousin, what a fuckin' family picture.* —Lil Wayne, *6 Foot 7 Foot* *** This is my laser scan of the [Skulpturhalle Basel's](http://www.skulpturhalle.ch/) cast of the British Museum's 1st-2nd century AD bronze head of *[Hypnos, the god of sleep](http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/b/bronze_head_of_hypnos.aspx)*. In 1909, when he was on his way back from a tour of Syria, T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") passed through Naples and [wrote](http://www.amazon.com/reader/0393026841?_encoding=UTF8&query=hypnos) a friend "The bronzes in the Naples museum are beyond words." He paid a Neapolitan bronze foundry eight francs for a flawed freehand copy of the Hypnos head now in the British Museum. Lawrence loved his Hypnos copy, writing "nothing, not even the dawn--can disturb me in my curtains: only the slow crumblings of the coals in the fire: they get so red & throw such splendid glimmerings on the Hypnos." Elsewhere [he wrote](http://www.telstudies.org/writings/letters/1915-16/160316_family.shtml) "I would rather possess a fine piece of sculpture than anything in the world." There's no record of what happened to Lawrence's Hypnos copy, but a friend of mine has good reason to believe he owns it. So I've been in a friendly competition to get an interesting copy of my own. Now I have one, and so can you. —Cosmo Wenman [@CosmoWenman](http://www.twitter.com/CosmoWenman) [cosmowenman.com](http://www.cosmowenman.com) cosmo.wenman@gmail.com *** I captured this work as part of my project, *Through A Scanner, Skulpturhalle.* You can see the rest of the results at [thingiverse.com/thing:83781](http://thingiverse.com/thing:83781) *** *Kopf des Hypnos* Skulpturhalle Basel accession number 236 *Bronzekopie nach einer Statue des Schlafgottes, die ihn eilend und aus einem Horn den Mohnsaft ausgiessend darstellte. Um 290 v. Chr. London, British Museum.* Cast molded from the British Museum's *Bronze head of Hypnos.* Scanned with a [FARO](http://www.faro.com) Edge Arm with V5 Laser Line Probe at 0.25mm line space with 0.035mm precision, September, 2013. Mesh holes in laser shadow regions were repaired with [Meshmixer](http://www.meshmixer.com/) and [Blender]( http://www.blender.org/). Decimated with [Project Memento](https://beta.autodesk.com/callout/?callid=D69655022B4F42C880513D4E3085C7D0). Oriented, sectioned, and prepared for printing with [Blender]( http://www.blender.org/). 373mm wide 5.1 million triangles before editing. *** The video ([youtu.be/IAB3AawWVKo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAB3AawWVKo)) shown above shows my capture, printing, and finishing of an earlier, lower quality capture I made of *Hypnos* under less than ideal conditions. *** The image with the woman in *calaveras* makeup is from the video for Lil Wayne's *[6 foot 7 foot](http://bit.ly/1pmb0Rw).* *** Thanks to the [Skulpturhalle Basel]( http://www.skulpturhalle.ch/) museum. Thanks to [FARO](http://www.faro.com) and FARO's Daniel Mazzolini and Thomas Weinert for making laser scanning equipment available to me. Thanks to Chris Bartschat and Florian Fünfschilling for their expertise and for operating the laser. And thanks to Autodesk’s [Reality Capture](https://recap360.autodesk.com) division, who sponsored this project.