While the recent death of H. R. Giger left a mechanical phallic hole in all our hearts, we can carry on in the knowledge that artists like Peiqi Su are here to fill it (heyoooooo). Su’s 3D printed kinetic sculpture, The Penis Wall, is her graduate thesis for the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. It’s also a wall of of 81 uniformly 3D printed, motorized dicks. It has visual sensors that can respond to passers-by, or it can be programmed to react to real-time data like the stock market (How’s that for some metaphorical masculinity?). Su’s attraction to the penis as a subject is both intellectual and aesthetic, but she doesn’t deny there’s some humor to her work. Her personal statement:

Why Penis

When talking about the penis with friends, I found there are a thousand “understandings” in a thousand people’s “mind.” Scary, power, ego, evil, elegant, loose-control, funny, crazy… I’m astonished to find so many contradictory feelings about the penis; as well as diverse topics around it such as feminist, man-power, freedom, politics, Wall Street and more. I hope to provide a chance for people to discuss penises and things related by creating an interactive installation.

For myself, I’m also interested in the behavior of penis. It’s soft and hard, up and down, small and large, smooth and rough. It may be the most attractive and intuitive interface.

Below is a short footage of The Penis Wall interacting with with some giggling participants, but there are a lot more videos, plus info on The Penis Wall’s construction, on Su’s Vimeo channel. Check it out, for art’s sake.
 

 
I love animation, but my virulent Ludditism prevents me from enjoying the roughly 3,497,039 big-budget CGI cartoons that now come out yearly (not to mention a definite drop in writing—when did we start patronizing kids with such terrible stories and dialogue?). I’m not opposed to CGI per se (most cartoons that just look like basic cell animation are now made on computer), but the uber-slick CGI that now pervades the big animated blockbusters just looks terrible. The texture is crummy, the physics and movements are hammy—when I babysit kids watching a movie, I have to concentrate on not scowling.

Luckily, I have friends that sit through my drunken tirades about cartoons, and send stuff like this my way! This little animation experiment is actually 50 3D-printed models made with stop-motion captures. So, while it’s not CGI, it’s technically computer-generated—like claymation done by robots! More importantly, the animators actually used a low-quality 3D printing process in order to allow for variations and “flaws” between models.  Despite the high-tech production, the look is organic and warm—this little clip conveys more life than the last Disney I saw!
 

 
Via Cartoon Brew