14,000 POINTS
(SELF PORTRAIT)
MDF, acrylic paint
14,000 Points is the first of three self-portraits in a series that began as an exploration into variations of greyscale in Photoshop.
14,000 Points, for example, is comprised of just 12 greyscale “colours”, each conveyed physically by drilling different sized holes through paint, exposing the underlying medium to varying degrees.
The piece really does consist of exactly 14,000 CNC drills (in a 140 x 100 matrix).
The grid of points was painstakingly grouped into 12 layers in Rhino, based on an underlying 12 colour background bitmap.
With the inclusion of Grasshopper in Rhino 6.0, this task, which took several evenings in 2007, could be done in a fraction of a second with a clever script.
This piece somehow found its way onto the design blog mocoloco.
My beloved Phoenix GS510HDR 3-axis CNC panel router,
on which these pieces were created.
ABOVE: I milled three self-portraits in a series I called RGB (after the colours of the pieces, and as a nod to the digital nature of their inception).
They use three different techniques to trick the eye into seeing an image:
RED: Points of colour of varying sizes that lead to differing shades of grey.
GREEN: Vertical and horizontal lines, that the eye reads as differing shades, giving life to a simple two-colour image.
BLUE: A single spiralling line of colour, varying in width, that gives the impression of shades of grey. I was stunned to see how true to the original photograph this technique proved to be. You can quite clearly see the chain on my neck that I am wearing.
The series is pictured hanging in the Art Gallery of Alberta.
The pieces were hung, without my direction, in the order R G B.