Following my experiment to create a 3D version of my head (or the reduction of me [human] to an object existing in a digital space), I then conducted the same experiment this time using Agisoft Photoscan to create a 3D version of my hand. Photoscan requires more precise photos to be taken at the first stage, with Clive McCarthy’s help we set this up using the following:

• Green screen background
• 3 x Photography lights – tungsten bulbs
• Nikon DSLR camera
• Wheelie chair

I moved in small increments while Clive captured 360º of my head. This was then masked using After Effects and both the original files and the mask taken into Photoscan. The software goes through the process of creating a aligning photos to create a point cloud, creating a dense cloud, creating the mesh and finally building the texture. This was ultimately a failed experiment, the final model didn’t render a 3D hand and could only show a 2D image. This perhaps needs better photos to be taken initially or a 3D scan.

However, the resulting object does have interesting qualities where it has lost some information. The object therefore takes on a new form, it is a copy of the original but also an original now in its own right.

The unwrapped texture this time is much more complex then the previous experiment:

A quick experiment to create a 3D model of my head with the help of Clive McCarthy and the 123D Catch app. The first forays into finding the point at which a human becomes an object, by transforming them into a 3D render and a mesh of triangles with a digital texture mimicking skin. The resulting object has an otherness that, with the texture applied, has signifiers to the humanity it once had. However once you remove that texture you achieve something very alien, taking the human back to a default space.

I also appreciated the effect the unwrapped texture has when all the elements are laid out flat, presenting the human texture removed from the contours of the human body abstract it from its original context. Here it can begin to take on a new context and, perhaps if you animated it in a different way, a new life.

Unwrapped texture:

A further experiment in attempts to answer my question, can a human exist as an object/can an object exist as a human? To exist is to be in a context and so if we reduce the human to an object and then introduce humanity back into that object, do we set up the context for this dualism to exist?

This experiment takes a mannequin head, a human as an object, and projects animated human facial features back over the top. An aspect of a virtual human gallery, where humanity is stored and tapped into when needed. Simple facial features were captured, eyes blinking, a hand scratching a nose and a mouth yawning, then masked using Heavy M projection mapping software and output to a projector. Does movement give these features an agency they don’t have when the object is just existing as an object? Does this give the object a life force? Or is the overall effect ‘weird’, evoking an otherness that is neither human or object?

(Very primitive) experiment in creating a material of the human body in Unreal Engine 4, then applied to a 3D chair.

This is an extension of my earlier experiments in distorting the human body into an object, in an attempt to find the point at which a human becomes an object. Reducing the human to a material, a texture to be applied to an object alters the perception of the body as a purely human attribute. Equally, giving an object the ‘skin’ of a human alters what made it an object in the first place.

Further experiments in ‘can a human exist as an object/can an object exist as a human?’. Can a human become functional? If the body is transformed into having a practical use, does that body therefore become an object? Is function purely a defining aspect of an object?

Further experiments, ‘can a human exist as an object/can an object exist as a human?’. Does giving the object a face in turn give that object humanity? By flattening out the human body into an object does this take away its warmth?

Further experiments in ‘can an object exist as a human?’ If we give an object human attributes does that make it human? Do we therefore feel warmth toward this object? Does this change the way we would interact with the object, or the object interact with the environment?

Further experiment following reading the ‘Magic Death’ chapter, that posited that new objects are a distortion of other objects. If a human body is distorted does this create a new object? Is this object no longer human?

Further experiments in attempts to answer the question ‘can humans exist as other objects?’.

The next stages of the experiments could include the production of physical objects and then applying biometrics, communication and emotions to further attempt to answer my question.

An experiment in answering the question ‘can humans exist as other objects?’. Does the manipulation of the human form into an object render it as inhuman? You can also view this answer from another angle, by applying a human form to an object is the object now human?

Is the human body the defining factor between the human and the non-human?