The National Portrait unveiled
I can finally share the completed art project that I’ve been working on with Douglas Coupland and Simons for the past 4 years.
The National Portrait (aka 3DCanada) was unveiled in Ottawa last week at the Ottawa Art Gallery.
Some stats about our process:
- 1,700 total number of heads scanned
- 1,000 total number of heads in this installation of the piece
- 70 kilometers of biodegradable plastic filament (PLA) used
- 11 months to print all the pieces of the sculpture on the same 15 3D printers (Tinkerine DittoPros) that travelled around the country during the scanning phase
About half way through our fabrication stage, we documented the processes used which you can see here:
Here’s some of my photos of the finished piece and opening night:
The installation process:
I’m still processing the fact that this project is basically complete now. It’s easily been one of the most interesting and creative projects I’ve ever been involved in and while I’m elated that it’s finally out in the world for others to see, I’m a little sad that the journey is over. We have a fantastic team of people involved in this project and it’s always been a joy to come together and work on an aspect of the project over the years. Special thanks to everyone at Tinkerine who supported us on tour and during the fabrication stage and kept our printers running beautifully.
You can read more about the early days of the project here.
The National Portrait is on display now until August 19th at the Ottawa Art Gallery. If you were scanned during our tour of Canada, I encourage you to check out the piece and find yourself!
We’re still discussing what will happen to the piece after the Ottawa exhibition so stay tuned!
