New York City designer Melissa Ng’s Lumecluster 3D printed masks were created to help channel positive feeling and promote self esteem, especially with regard to one’s own entrepreneurial activities. And, now, those masks will be able to do so in the upcoming video “It Just Feels” by NYC-based songwriter JiHAE.
Taking a side tour from her laser-sintered, geometrically-sculpted creations of her Lumecluster brand, Ng developed a set of five full-color masks 3D printed in sandstone. We still do not know how they will be employed in the music video, which is set to air along with the release of JiHAE’s new Illusion of You album, successfully funded on Kickstarter last October and due out soon.
JiHAE is a highly experimental artist who was born in Seoul, South Korea and lived in Nigeria and Sweden before moving to New York City. Since then, the musician has worked with artists such as director Michel Gondry and musician Lenny Kravitz.
The shared focus on how each individual’s awareness or cluelessness shapes our social, environmental, and cultural realities is a defining trait in songwriter JiHAE’s work and Ng’s Lumecluster creations. Both – as JiHAE puts it – explore how the nature of our social psychology encourages us to thrive on multi-layered illusions that lead us to deny simple facts, in favor of curving logic.
While JiHAE uses traditional rock instruments to explore this aspect of human psychology through original and innovative sound, Ng uses the traditional concept of masks through the the innovation of 3D printing technologies. The words to JiHAE’s “It Just Feels” were written by none other than Leonard Cohen and the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart (who also collaborated on the music), while Ng’s works were created in Blender software and 3D printed through 3D Systems ProJet 660 system.
All these different trends and creative means of expression met and came together in New York City, where Melissa Ng is also based and where, it seems, some of the most avante guard artists are already finding new ways to express themselves though 3D printing technologies.
