Twin Artists Create '3D Drawing Machine' (VIDEO)

As twin artists, Ryan and Trevor Oakes are familiar with taking a singular experience and realizing it can be split it in two. Their lives have always been doubled over; but, with their 3D Drawing Machine, the Oakes twins tell us: so have yours. Although we look out into the world and see an 'unbroken view of space,' we are really seeing a double image because of our two eyes. The brain then interprets these two images together, and thus 3D perspective as we know it is born.

The Oakes twins have created a machine that separates the images projected from each eye so the user can scan the world with one eye and draw it with the other, as if tracing onto reality. The results are remarkably realistic drawings which seem to appear effortlessly. The twins' exploration of perspective makes strides in twin fields science and art, and although the works the 3D Drawing Machine facilitates are remarkable feats of realism, the true artistic endeavor are not the products but the vehicle itself.

Watch the clip to see the twins explain their brainchild.

(Via thisiscolossal.)

INCREDIBLE 3D DRAWING MACHINE from David Battistella on Vimeo.

Comments

[CUEArt]

03:10 PM on 09/24/2011

The Oakes Twins: Curated by Lawrence Weschler is on view at CUE Art Foundation (511 W. 25th Street), now through October 29, 2011.

[Brautigan]

03:23 AM on 09/16/2011

Meh I could do that in my sleep.

Because I'd have to be dreaming.

[brux]

12:07 AM on 09/16/2011

this may be very cool and the greatest thing since algebra, but the video is really really annoying.

[Darwin48]

08:52 AM on 09/15/2011

But...America asks....can they throw a football?

[Andre Fabre]

10:31 AM on 09/15/2011

And throwing a football is important because...?

[artist-53]

10:50 AM on 09/15/2011

Darwin, Now that was very funny..... I appreciate your sense of realism and humor as well as your statement regarding the state of Art Culture in America and it's low level of importance to many.

[czs5056]

08:47 AM on 09/15/2011

it's not a 3-D drawing. it is still a 2-D one because the surface they are drawing it on is still only 2-D like the surface of a sphere. to see what i mean take an orange or any sphere like a ball, or really anything and a pen. Then draw a line on the surface of your sphere until you reach the other side. You will notice that you had to travel on its surface continually without the ability to travel through the sphere meaning that the sphere surface is only 2-D.

[Memphis65]

09:45 AM on 09/15/2011

Huh? The whole point of 3-d is that the image has depth rather than flatness. Any single line around an orange may be 2-D, but when you put together all of the lines around an orange you get 3-D.

[TheMediaWrangler]

10:01 AM on 09/15/2011

True. Also, it is a drawing apparatus and technique, not a machine. The apparatus is really just a specialized easel that allows stereoscopic "tracing" of a real subject. You can do the same thing by holding one hand (or paper sheet) 10" in front of one eye and tracing what the other eye sees onto it with your other hand. But still very cool and innovative.

[nfatt1]

08:45 AM on 09/15/2011

Corporate America is searching China for a factory to build the machine.

[artist-53]

08:31 AM on 09/15/2011

This certainly is by far the most interesting piece I've seen in the arts section thus far.

Only because it makes total sense to me.

Not only as an artist, but an artist that actually does view the world with 2 independent eyes, or vision. Though prisms in my eyeglasses help to bring the view into one constant image, they really don't work that great.When I saw the part in video of the hand becoming a double , and then drawing it, that is so normal for me. (due to an inoperable cyst in the visual aspect of my brain,I've been told)
Each one of my eyes also provides different color depth or richness independently. Depending on which eye am using.
However, this put a smile on face knowing that others actually are studying it.

Great article!!!! It sort of validates my own vision as my norm.. :-)

[anti politricks]

09:43 AM on 09/15/2011

i loved it as well! and was kind of disappointed by the bashing comments. glad to see someone else also thought it was awesome!

[Andre Fabre]

10:33 AM on 09/15/2011

Very interesting. Liked it as well.

[iblogleft]

05:22 AM on 09/15/2011

This is really cool.

[olivesforbreakfast]

05:17 AM on 09/15/2011

Better information about perspective frame:

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/223.htm

[olivesforbreakfast]

05:14 AM on 09/15/2011

The Oakes Twins join a long line of inventors of tools for transferring image to paper or canvas.

The camera lucida was an important tool used by some of the most respected artists of the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida

David Hockney's book on the subject is a bit padded but fascinating anyway. Most interesting, perhaps, is that skill levels - and results - varied tremendously according to each artist. While all achieve some measure of realism, some renderings are artful while others are tepid and even boring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Knowledge:_Rediscovering_the_Lost_Techniques_of_the_Old_Masters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Knowledge:_Rediscovering_the_Lost_Techniques_of_the_Old_Masters#Optical_glass

Some artists use opaque projectors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opaque_projector

Still others, like van Gogh, have used perspective frames - wooden frames with a grid of strings stretched over nails. Some frames have more strings than others. This one sketched by van Gogh in a letter is a simple version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opaque_projector

This new tool by the Oakes Twins is fascinating. As they said, it's interesting that no one has thought of it before. I wonder if they have plans to make it commercially available.

[Mark Redd]

05:13 AM on 09/15/2011

Brilliant! Very innovative.

[Bobolini]

04:00 AM on 09/15/2011

This guy walks up to me in a museum... "my little daughter could do that!" So I say - Well good then she should, because the guy who did this got a couple of hundred thousand for it. People are all big shots until they give it a try themselves.

This thing is brilliant and the "much to do about nothing" is happening between the ears of people who think it is hype.

[Enock Zamora]

02:13 AM on 09/15/2011

Many people can write with their hand. Many people can draw like they are writing. Many people can write math & music with their hand into the symmetry of life. Many can draw the ten heavens threw their hand. Many people just dream of it, while others live it.

[Phong Le]

01:17 AM on 09/15/2011

Tracing.

[planetjeffy]

01:25 AM on 09/15/2011

no...it is done freehand

[Phong Le]

01:31 AM on 09/15/2011

The machine allows them to project the pencil over their view of the the world. So they are simply tracing.

[artist-53]

10:43 AM on 09/15/2011

Tracing? As I sit at a canvas and draw out a sketch of an image I am looking at, be it a building, a face or a blade of grass, is it not also tracing in a sense. The only thing that is missing is the tracing paper placed over the image I am painting.

Artists that create true to life images of areas, places, objects, faces, and replicate them , what do you call that?

Our eyes are tracing in a sense as we view each line of any image and replicate it using various mediums.

Are you an artist as well?

[Phong Le]

07:38 PM on 09/15/2011

Tracing is when you have the image project onto or through the paper/canvas so you know exactly where to place your pencil. If an artist can draw or paint an image exactly as he sees it, then he is very talented in a way. But if he has to use a camera obscura, a projector, or the stereoscopic contraption to to show him exactly where to place the pencil, then he is less talented in the same way. That doesn't mean the final work is not art.

By the way, the eye does not trace. It sees. The hand traces.

[CaroleK1970]

12:20 AM on 09/15/2011

cool