While at 3D Print Week in New York this year, the 3DPI team got the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people and many of them weren’t even exhibiting or speaking at the event. In terms of technological innovation, the most exciting may have been Andres Bienzobas, for his full-color 3D printing technology. But, in terms of artistic innovation, I was definitely taken in by one young artist named Brian Sandilands, who showed us, on his iPhone, a variety of 3D printed pieces that he’d recently exhibited as part of a larger installation titled “The 3D Printed Gun Show”.
Brian tells me, “As an artist, I make work that depicts the confrontation of technology and culture. My aspiration is to feel out and make evident the structures of power at work that define this confrontation.” Naturally, then, guns were the perfect symbol for the artist to explore. “Viewed purely as an icon, the firearm articulates and makes evident structures of power,” He continues, “There are those that control the firearm and those that it gets aimed at. Power and powerlessness becomes evident.”
The 3D Printed Gun Show depicts guns and gun symbols transformed and juxtaposed in a variety of ways. From the pistol whose barrel morphs into a fist to a sculpture that merges the registered trademark symbol with a handgun and the human brain, Brian’s work definitely provides commentary on the nature of power. The idea for the project emerged a few years back, even before 3D printed guns existed. At the time, he was relying on CAD models from sites like Turbo Squid. Brian explains, “This project was rooted in some conceptual work that I made back in 2011 and 2012. In that work, I would use 3D modeling software to manipulate 3D models of firearms that were downloaded for free off the internet. I would make collages these models and their manipulations and render them to convey a concept I was working through.”
The artist tells me that, in order to fabricate all but one of the sculptures, he relied on the MakerBot Replicator 2 at the Center for New Art at William Paterson University, where he is currently a graduate student. Though, now, Brian says that his current go-to printers are the Ultimaker 2 and the MakerGear M2, also housed at the Center for New Art. Of his process, he says, “I would situate registered trademark symbols at the end of firearms. It was my way of saying that to use this symbol and claim ownership over something, especially a logo, was an aggressive act. I rendered a Beretta with Italian fonts. A Winchester Rifle and a Colt .45 with Mesquite old Western Style fonts. I was interested in how construction of culture and nationalities employ this dynamic of branding designs. Another project from that early time I called h(i) German Design. I combined an Austrian Glock with the Swiss typeface Helvetica. I was playing with how Pan German identity could be formed with design and products.”
Brian elaborates on the nature of his Winchester piece, “With the Winchester Rifle, I placed that registered trademark on the end with an old western font and wanted it to be depicted as a cattle brand. I was interested in how these could become functional physical tools and, through action like branding or imprinting, make visible the active and passive parties in structures of power. I was also working through some identity issues with it as well – thinking about how the mythology of the American West was constructed and sold in postwar America.”
All of the work started to coalesce about the time that Cody Wilson emerged on the scene with his Liberator pistol and Brian began to explore the nature of the open source movement as it related to 3D printed guns. He explains, “My work took me in different directions. Then all of a sudden came Cody Wilson and the debate over 3D printed firearms.” It was at that point that his work started to draw attention, “My practice came under attack. When people found out I was working with a 3D printer at this time, there would be gasps and attempts to inform me that people are making guns with those machines. My response usually was, ‘How many people do you know that can get a 2D printer to work?'”
“The downloading of 3D models to make art and all the open source ideology that comes along with that was lost as this technology was at peak hype and laced with the fear of the gun control debate,” he continues. “What gets lost in that conversation is the debate over open source vs. proprietary platforms and basic fabricational logic: one could make a better firearm for cheaper with items from hardware store than with a 3D printer.”
Brian tells me, “I knew things were changing when I logged on to turbo squid and all of a sudden there was a disclaimer before you used the site. It is from that standing point that I moved forward with this work. I decided it was time to make these concepts physical and get what I needed say out there. Some of this work is darkly humorous and absurd, as I feel the debates over 3D printed guns are.”
With his show, this past April, Brian not only displayed his visual work throughout the Power Art Annex Gallery in Wayne, New Jersey, but had performance pieces included in the show, as well. In the picture below, you’ll see Brian defending his work in a critique, “up against the gun if you will, standing on a security guard shirt.”
There was also a conceptual piece called InSecurity, in which a character playing a security guard, dressed to look like a stereotypical teenage girl (“as opposed to the standard macho upholder of the rules”) sat at a guard station. Brian says, “She showed up for 10 minutes, read the National Inquirer for the whole time, and then left.”
This isn’t the only project that Brian’s working on, though. He and his colleagues at the Center for New Art are also involved in what sounds to be pretty exciting work that involves 3D fabrication, giant robots, and large blocks of marble. You can use your imagination to determine what that means exactly. Or wait for a follow-up on the work of Brian’s mentor, Michael Rees.
