CHAPTER 5 — Visual Elements II: Volume

15 minute read

Figure 5.1 | Sol LeWitt, Incomplete Open Cube 7/31, 1974.

If enough planes act together in a specific, closed configuration, the appearance of Volume or Massis created. The presence of mass creates a byproduct, the Void or Space surrounding the mass. The 3D Mass-Void relationship is akin to the 2D figure-ground relationship encountered with shape.

Beyond Kandinsky: Volume

Related terms: Mass-Void | Space

Figure 5.2 | Paul Klee, dimensional diagram, 1925:[1] 1) top to bottom 2) left to right 3) front to back

Bauhaus Basic Course instructors tended to be painters. Kandinsky sets up a dimensional logic for purely 2D relationships, while Klee, who sometimes toys with pictorial abstraction, extends that logic into 3D illusionist references in 2D pictorial space (Figure 5.2). Such references are important when considering digitally rendered still images, but our discussion will extrapolate into dimensions that Kandinsky and Klee, as painters, only encountered pictorially. The Bauhaus aesthetic was rife with Mondernist concepts of lightness and material standards from manufacturing, thus sculpture and architecture at the Bauhaus tended to shun a sense of mass. With the Proun Room, El Lissitzky (Figure 5.3), a Russian Suprematist artist who was highly influential on the Bauhaus, attempted to take the almost exclusively 2D theorizing of early Modernism into a 3D context infused with this dematerializing, spatially ambiguous lightness.

A direct sense of volume based on mass, rather than implied by planar relationships, can be seen in the work of Bauhaus protegé Max Bill, who in many of his sculptures returned mass (and void) to the Modernist vocabulary (Figure 5.4), but for an earlier iteration of mass we can turn to the playful work of Alma Siedhoff-Buscher and her Bauspiel blocks (Figure 5.5). This deceptively complex toy embodies characteristic Bauhaus concerns... note especially the way in which the various block forms are derived from one mass, evocative of a slicing or Boolean intersection function (see Chapter X).

	Figure 5.3 above left | El Lissitzky, Proun Room, 1923   Figure 5.4 above | Max Bill, Part of the work Familie von fünf halben Kugeln, 1966   Figure 5.5 left | Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, Bauspiel, 1923, produced by Naef Spiele AG since 1977

The dimensional property of Volume is the defined by an occupation of space. It is the path of a plane in motion, perpendicular to its surface; It is a plane with depth. This kind of plane is extruded, pushed through space like Play-Doh in a Fun Factory (Figure 30), a common action analogy found in digital modeling.

Figure 5.6 | Play-Doh Fun Factory demonstrates Extrusion, turning 2D shape into 3D mass

But planes can also be folded, twisted, bent and closed to become a volume, an enclosed space. Volumes can define Mass (a body occupying space) or Void (a space defined by adjacent masses or planes). Objects, bodies and buildings are examples of physical manifestations of volume. Like planes, volumes can embody many materials and material properties. Like the global space they occupy, volumes can contain a local coordinate system, sometimes referred to as UVW coordinates. Analogous to the XYZ coordinates in the global Cartesian system we’ll see in Chapter X, the local system is used to generate texture and material, a topic we'll explore in greater detail.

Mass and Void

A Mass and a Void are not equal, even if they displace each other in equal size or proportion. The quality of presence (exhibited by mass) and absence (exhibited by void) changes radically... observe the variety among these essays on the primary form of the cube in Figures 5.7-5.15 below. What qualitative attributes make the cube appear to be defined by mass, by void, or by some ambiguous hybrid of the two?

TOP ROW: Figure 5.7 left | Tony Smith, Die, model 1962, fabricated 1968, cor-ten steel  Figure 5.8 center | William Cromar, cast, 1993, calcium carbonate held by electrostatic charge Figure 5.9 right | Joseph Kosuth, Box, Cube, Empty, Clear, Glass – a Description, 1965, glass   MIDDLE ROW: Figure 5.10 left | Tara Donovan, Untitled (Pins), 2003, pins held by electrostatic charge and gravity Figure 5.11 center | Sol LeWitt, Incomplete Open Cube 6/13, 1974, painted steel Figure 5.12 right | Isamu Noguchi, Red Cube, 1968, painted steel   BOTTOM ROW: Figure 5.13 left | Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube, 1963-2008, glass and water Figure 5.14 center | James Turrell, Afrum-Proto, 1996, light projection Figure 5.15 right | Robert Morris, Untitled, 1965, plate glass mirror

Mass and Void relationships occur in the context of Relief and Freestanding sculptural works. We'll briefly discuss these, and their relevance to your 3D modeling efforts, by examples below.

Relief

Relief work is sculpture that is intended to be seen frontally, like a painting. It can be classified among three categories: Sunken Relief, Bas Relief, and High Relief, illustrated in Figures 5.16-5.18.

Figure 5.16 | Akhenaten, circa 1340 BCE       SUNKEN RELIEF A relief characterized by shallow mass-void carving under the primary manipulated surface. Often associated with Egyptian work, it can be found where strong sunlight can cast shadows, and is common in carved environmental lettering in architecture.	Figure 5.17 | Ben Nicholson, Painted Relief (Plover's Egg Blue), 1940. Nicholson's work, usually white on white, began exhibiting color during World War II. BAS RELIEF The French word bas, meaning low, gives us to understand bas relief as a shallow carving emerging out of the primary surface. Distinguishing bas relief from high relief is the explicit attachment of all elements back to the carved surface. Bas relief can be seen on most coins.	Figure 5.18 | Robert Longo, Corporate Wars, 1982. His signature writhing figures and reference to Classical battle sculpture lampoon corporate life. HIGH RELIEF Protruding limbs, open forms and detail more characteristic of freestanding sculpture are the hallmarks of high relief. Although still intended to be seen frontally, much articulation can occur "in-the-round" and facing the primary surface.

As a practical matter, it is common to see types of relief combined into hybrid forms, such as can be seen in the East Doors of the Baptistry in Florence, by Ghiberti (Figures 5.19-5.20). In Figure 5.20, can you discern where high relief stops and bas relief begins?

	Figure 5.19 left | Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise (East Doors of the Florence Baptistry), 1425-52   Figure 5.20 below | Detail, the story of Jacob and Esau, from the Gates of Paradise

The question above would be more than an academic exercise if your job was to model these doors in Maya. Strategically, you would determine that the high relief elements... here, mostly the figures... would need to be modeled. The low relief elements... mostly the environment and architecture... could be developed using a bump map instead of polygon geometries. Here, a map is a means to develop texture or relief elements on simple geometry by using a tonal-scaled bitmap image, where the lights represent one value... raised, say... and the darks represent the opposite... in this instance, deeper areas (Figure 5.21).

Work sometimes acts like a hybrid or combination between relief and the freestanding type of sculpture discussed next. Is the Donald Judd work relief (Figure 5.22)? It's flat seen just from the front, but from the side becomes animated, yet it attaches to the wall like a relief. The Rachel Whiteread work (Figure 5.23) is freestanding as we'll read about below, but how would its meaning change without the strong presence of relief found in the reversed-out room elements... doors, windows, fireplaces, moldings?

Freestanding

Freestanding work, sometimes called "in-the-round" sculpture, is meant to be experienced spatially... that is, with the viewer active and in motion to perceive all sides. In one sense, the activation of the viewer has 4D, kinetic implications. We'll explore two object-oriented volume works... Closed versus Open compositions... alongside interior-oriented volumes that border on architectural expression in the world of Installation.

Figure 5.24 | Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1908 CLOSED VOLUME As with bas relief, closed volumes create mass-void relationships where the material maintains a sense of mass and does not develop interior voids.	Figure 5.25 | Auguste Rodin, The Kiss, 1889 OPEN VOLUME Mass melts away, opening voids deep inside the work. As with high relief, elements break away from the main mass and define these voids.

Consider: how would you model these two versions of The Kiss in Maya? Brancusi's closed volume version (Figure 5.24) could be modeled out of one polygonal cube with deformations performed along edges and/or maps, analogous to the way it was carved out of one block of stone. As an open volume work, Rodin's version (Figure 5.25) would be better suited to working with composites of multiple polygonal forms.

Installation

As the scale of the work and the open void increases, a primary inversion in the perception of a 3D artwork can occur: instead of a viewer walking around an object, the object can wrap itself around the viewer as an Installation. Alongside El Lissitzky's Proun Room above (Figure 5.3), Kurt Schwitter's Hannover Merzbau (Figures 5.26-5.27) is a prototype for the installation work that was to become popular in the final quarter of the 20th Century. These works exhibit a fusion of painting, sculpture and architecture not seen since the days before the Renaissance, and indeed relieve us of the need for these creatively stifling categories.

	Figure 5.26 above left | Kurt Schwitters, archival photo of the original Hannover Merzbau, 1933   Figure 5.27 above right | Reconstruction of the Hannover Merzbau at the Sprengel Museum , 1983. Archival photographs were scientifically studied for form and color to correctly model the original work.   Figure 5.28 | Ann Hamilton, tropos, 1993-94   Figure 5.29 | Richard Serra, Band, 2006       INSTALLATION As the scale of the work and the open void increases, a primary inversion in the perception of a 3D artwork can occur: instead of a viewer walking around an object, the object can wrap itself around the viewer.

The Merzbau was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. It's obvious that modeling was used to recreate it from photographic records. What would be needed to model Ann Hamilton's tropos (Figure 52), which only exists as a record now? The work uses a human figure engaged in a repetitive act you can read about at this link, so you'd need to incorporate a kinetic element as described below. But the model would only be a partial one. Impossible to model would be the haptic and olfactory qualities that Hamilton considers part of the experience: she modifies the factory floor under the hair to undulate in a way only the feet can feel, and intermingles smells of horsehair and burning paper that are as unforgettable as they are un-model-able.

For an interesting take on the relationship between modeling and installation art, read Richard Serra's account of making a work like Band (Figure 53) at LACMA... click on the bottom link in the first Flash page. Turns out he can model the work but not the audience's experience... Serra mentions the galleries of the Dia Foundation in the interview, and they house some of the world's most compelling installations, including Serra's work. Take a look at their website here.

Convergence in the Studio 

In digital modeling, an object created through polygon modeling "acts" like a solid, while the same object created using NURBS modeling "acts" more like a thin surface. If a Boolean operation is desired, polygon modeling tends to do a better job. By analogy, one could say the plaster cast inside the balloon in Figure 5.30 is a NURBS-like physical object, whereas the plaster surrounding the balloon voids is similar to a polygon-based Boolean subtraction of spheres from a cylinder. We’ll elaborate on polygon and NURBS modeling in Chapter xx.