When most people see a guy kick another guy, they are either repulsed or entertained. Repulsed if the action involves somebody getting hurt by a bully. Entertained if the person acting savagely to another person is 
sanctioned by a governing body as is the case with mixed martial arts or boxing.
One word that almost never comes up when people are fighting is ‘beauty’. That’s because fighting is ugly and sometimes even bodily fluids get spilled. It’s meant to be brutal and visceral. As unusual as the pairing of “beauty” and “fighting” is, one artist, Eyal Gever, was able to turn this paradigm on its head, and actually make art out of combat. Gever used 3D printing to create a large sculpture of which Leonardo DaVinci of “Vitruvian Man” would be proud of.
The sculpture is elegantly displaying a simple human action—a kick. What makes this piece of art so interesting is the fluidity of the movement that the work captures. Gever was able to create the abstract work by using video footage and homebrew 3-D motion capture software.
3D Printed Sculpture of Trace Simulation
After recording one combatant kicking another fighter, Gever used his motion capture software to animate their movements from the impact to the aftermath. The result was a colorful trail that illustrates the lighting-fast movements we don’t typically see when we watch people fight. Gever then printed this 3-D model in eye-catching gold and red.
Besides this work, Gever has created sculptures which show the physics of car crashes to create monolithic collision sculptures and other 3D simulations of catastrophic events. While it seems that Gever has a taste for the morbid, he said on his website that he’s creating this art because he sees beauty in it and thinks you should too.
“My ongoing body of works examines the relationship between the simulated events that I create and their physical manifestation. These sublime moments are borne out of simulations and translated as art,” he said. “Beauty can come from the strangest of places, in the most horrific events. My art addresses these notions of destruction and beauty, the collisions of opposites, fear and attraction, seduction and betrayal, from the most tender brutalities to the most devastating sensitivities. I oscillate between these opposites.”
3D printing technology has certainly provided artists with some incredible tools, allowing for pieces of work to be created which were unimaginable just a few short years ago. Let’s hear your opinion on Gever’s sculpture in the ‘3D printed kick’ forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out the video below showing the image capture software in action.
3D Trace Simulation
