Wrapped in the Cloud - Art of Conrad Sly

Sky Blanket

Sky Blanket - Wrapped in the CloudIn 2018 I was contracted to aid in the exploration of creating a photogrammetry capture of the one of Meghan O’Brien’s amazing woven blankets. We pursued this work to learn about what the possibilities can be when it comes to taking the blanket back out of gallery circulation, to be used in ceremonial dances, while leaving the gallery with a rendition of the piece in digital form. We had a lot of really excellent conversations about what that means, and what kinds of artistic practices come out of it. These conversations ultimately led to the scanning of the blanket, and I created of an animation that was made to be projected on the gallery wall where the blanket used to hang. The animation brings some new context into what it means to mediate the ceremonial blanket. As it the animation cycles through various rendering channels, it brings to mind the programmatic conditions that connect the earliest computers and looms. The animation was used in exhbitions curated by Jaimie Isaac.

I guided the photogrammetry process to make sure it was as accurate as possible. We used Reality Capture with a roughly 200 photo data set, that yielded an incredibly detailed 40,000,000 triangle scan. I processed this data and created a PBR material, research the refraction index of goat’s wool in the process and created a customized fresnel curve on a VRay material, to make sure it was as accurately rendered as possible.

An essay by Kate Hennesey about the work was later published in an exhibition catalogue.

Our collaboration on related works is ongoing.