Scott Billings

My practice explores the mimetic relationship between the technological body and the somatic form. I work in several mediums including video, sculpture, and moving apparatuses. A subset of my practice represented in "Emergence: The Unexpected and the Unpredictable" consists of sculptural objects which reference modernist forms through industrial facture. In other words, I employ methods and materials common to industrial design practices to examine how tropes of modernism interface with our physical body.

In "Brice Marden Annexation", I used 3D CAD software to effectively add a 3rd dimension to a Brice Marden painting. Through the rapid prototyping method of SLA, the object was then printed in 3D. As such, the sculpture was not sculpted in the traditional sense. In fact, I would argue that it is not a sculpture at all but rather a representation of the design.

In "Half Life Mask", I cut pieces from several UV-decayed plastic shells of high technology devices and then reassembled them on top of my face, making a sci-fi cyborg-like replica of it. The method represents the indexical method of death masks and the connection between physiognomy and the blanketing of vulgar (inhuman) circuitry.

" His Master's Universe", a dense black sphere constructed from a stack of vinyl records, is titled in reference to the famous painting and RCA logo His Master's Voice which depicts a dog tricked by a phonograph.  The image connotes the historical moment mimicry entered the non-bodily form of technology (i.e. wires and grooves). The constructed sphere—the icon of the cosmos—suggest man's mastery of both physical form and the cryptography of information: silent sound mysteriously infused into vinyl.

Artist Work
Brice Marden Annexation
10 in x 8 in x 8 in
SLA 3D print

$1445 CDN

Artist Work
Half Life Mask
2.5 in x 7 in x 4 in
plastic

$685 CDN

Artist Work
His Master's Universe (This Too Solid Flesh)
8 in x 10 in x 10 in
10-inch 78 rpm records

$1760 CDN