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JONATHAN YEO: I didn't go to art school.
But I love faces, and I was always interested in portraits.
Faces are always inherently interesting.
They've got a power to them.
It's an amazing genre to be in because everyone knows it.
They have expectations of what it should be.
And as a platform for experimenting,
it's sort of unique.
In recent years, I've experimented more and more
with different approaches, different media.
Just recently, I've actually, I suppose, become
a sculptor thanks to this rather extraordinary bit
of technology.
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BRYAN ALLEN: Technology and art are implicitly combined.
There's a huge history of artists pushing technology
in new ways, and technology actually playing catch-up
to artists.
So for this project, we engaged really
early on with Jonathan Yeo, exploring
ways in which we can use virtual reality, specifically, Tilt
Brush, to create new methods of art.
JONATHAN YEO: It's really hard to communicate
the power of painting in three dimensions.
One of the extraordinary things about Tilt Brush
and working in virtual reality generally
is you can make these sweeping gestures
that you would see if you were doing an expressive painting.
By coincidence, I also had a 3D scan done of myself,
and it turned out that the 3D models could be imported
into the virtual reality.
From that, I was able to draw a self-portrait head.
The fact that you can freeze these movements--
it's sculptural, but it doesn't have
to obey the laws of physics.
One of the strange things is the second you take the mask off,
it's completely gone.
That got me into thinking about how to use
it to make a real sculpture.
BRYAN ALLEN: My role as a design technologist
is to really dive deep into both creative and technical projects
to help find new solutions, new aesthetics, and possibilities.
When artists are exposed to a new technology,
they can see something completely different in it.
So for this project, we started playing around
with how would this look if we were to be able to 3D print
these drawings?
There's this amazing opportunity to rethink
the way that this tool is used and really
push it in a new direction.
JONATHAN YEO: The process of creating something
in the real world was much more complicated
than I ever realized.
BRYAN ALLEN: One of the biggest challenges
is something looks great in VR, that doesn't necessarily
mean it looks great in the real world.
We worked really, really hard to develop a toolset
and processes to translate that virtual object
through this pipeline into a physical work of art.
JONATHAN YEO: What's the difference
in material of these two?
BRYAN ALLEN: We'd try something, say,
hey, what does this look like?
Oftentimes, he would have ideas, say, oh,
can this be a little bit tweaked?
Can this be smaller?
Can this be thicker?
JONATHAN YEO: So there's a lot of backwards and forwards
and trying things and getting it nearly right
and then changing it.
None of us had done anything like this before.
Nobody had done anything like this before.
There's a freedom there.
There's nothing to measure it against.
BRYAN ALLEN: So after the iteration on the creative side,
we took the original asset and broke it up
into 37 individual pieces that were optimized for printing.
We then took those pieces to the Foundry and the UK Pangolin
where they were able to reassemble them and begin
the process of creating the bronze.
JONATHAN YEO: In casting it in bronze,
I wanted to underline the point that this virtual reality
software, which is new and dazzling,
but sort of ephemeral and is-- substantially,
it's-- literally is not there--
could be used for something which
is so associated with weighty permanence as bronze sculpture.
What's extraordinary to me is that the end result has still
retained the lightness you feel when you're making it.
It doesn't feel heavy or blocky or like
anything that would have been made in any other way.
BRYAN ALLEN: It's amazing to work with an artist that really
wants to dive into something that's never been done before,
who embraces the experimental nature of the project.
That's what's really exciting is when design, engineering,
and art come together.
JONATHAN YEO: It's very healthy for people
outside your world, whatever it is, to come in and say, well,
why don't you try that?
It's that interaction where you discover
new and extraordinary things.
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