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- UPDATE: This made my day.
My main function: analyze geospatial data on the computer. The data show images looking down at Earth and Mars and are interesting to look at: lava flows, sand dunes, river channels, mountains. These are valuable to science, but the patterns and abstractness have artistic value. Many people recognize this and celebrate this by contributing to The Art of Planetary Science Exhibition in Tucson, AZ. There were many submissions from almost a hundred artists, and I’m happy to be one this year in 2018. I carved a HiRISE DTM, my first completed 3D carve of topography. I’m happy with the way it turned out!
Description of Piece: A place on Mars in miniature Fissure and Channel Southeast of Olympus Mons. Carved by a homemade computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine; surface tone painted by hand. Image data were provided by The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera in orbit around Mars, which were processed into a digital terrain model by the HiRISE Science Team.
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- The location of the data is from a location (square mark) east of Olympus Mons, Mars.
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- Perspective digital rendering of the HiRISE visible image data showing the fissure and channels.
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- Perspective digital rendering of the HiRISE DTM data.
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- This is the table top of my CNC machine. On the right is a practice carve, aka, attempt No. 1.
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- Carving in progress. You can’t see the spindle and milling bit because of the dust shoe. A 4″ hose is connected to a blower, pulling dust off the piece as it carves.
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- This is the completed carve after roughing (1/4″ square end mill, 1500 mmpm, 3 mm doc) and finishing (1/16″ ball end mill, 1500 mmpm, 0.254 doc, 0.33 mm stepover). I would definitely do it differently next time as I made many mistakes. Even though a machine is doing the carving, there are still plenty of “artistic” choice to make.
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- Because of the scale of the model, topography is subtle. The large cut in the middle is actually about 500 meters wide. On the model, it’s only about 1.5 cm.
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- Finished it with a black border, a typical view when viewing satellite data on a computer. Hand painted the surface. Ready for this weekend’s exhibition.
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- Just another view. I was experimenting with the piece upside down. (The bottom is North.)
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