Profilography is a neologism describing a technique of drawing through sequential contours or profiles. It derives a three-dimensional form or space through the accumulation of adjacent 2D profile lines. Applied to temporally derived data, such as frames from a film, the extrusion made from the extrapolation of in-between frame data becomes a physical manifestation of motion. Slicing through the extrusion (parallel to the film plane) with increasing depth yields a morphing between frames.
Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th century photographic studies of animal locomotion launched a proto-cinema used to freeze fast and complex motion in the natural world. A typical sequence used twelve cameras at regular intervals to capture one cycle of a horse’s gallop. By cinema standards, this is quite sparse. There is a lot of data missing between each frame. By tracing the Muybridge frames, and working them in the computer through a series of digital operations such as lofting, network surfacing, and extrusions, the in-between data materializes in a solid model tracing the full motion of the horse’s run. Taking a slice through any point will yield a new frame in Muybridge’s sequence. Since the model is contiguous, there are an infinite number of frames that can be generated from the original twelve.
To physically manifest the digital effects, the digital model is separated into smaller portions based on the dimensional limits of a starch 3D printer. The starch parts are removed from the machine, cleaned, and hand-dipped in hot wax. Wax gates, or channels, are melted into place to provide a path for the molten bronze. The wax assembly is dipped into a slurry mix of ceramic, silica and binder, waiting for each coat to dry before applying the subsequent layer. After the final coat has dried, they are flash- burned in a 1700-degree kiln and all the 3D printer starch and hand- applied wax burns out, leaving a hollow ceramic shell. The shells are heated to 1650 degrees, molten bronze (2150 degrees) is poured and the molds are left to cool. Once cool, the molds are shattered, excess bronze is cut away, the pieces are welded together into the final form, sandblasted and a patina is applied to make the final surface finish.
Related: Profilograph (after Dürer)