Glyph Satellite
Quote from CohentheWriter on 20. September 2022, 19:35Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x4c729d90b94aD9d8f2C596f90DBc59aB99dfc932&token=1&page=5
Source Link: https://superrare.com/0x4c729d90b94ad9d8f2c596f90dbc59ab99dfc932/glyph-satellite-1
Date Minted: February 5, 2022
Artist Description: Abstract digital sculpture created in Blender. Featured in “Electronic Sonata: I. Allegro” (Audiovisual Pairings: Album 2-6, MKT2 64,458).
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
I haven’t seen symbology used like this in a long time. In physical composition, STVDIO NOUVEAU’s artistry initially seems comparable to artist Eceertrey’s; after all, 3D sculptures are at the heart of what they do, and there is certainly a shared stylistic sensibility. But Eceertrey’s many monstrous sculptures are eclectic and bear few similar attributes to each other. That, and his works are as much about augmenting the physical world around them as they are about existing for their own merits. STVDIO NOUVEAU’s work takes an entirely different approach to 3D sculpture, returning again and again to similar images and symbols, items with similar attributes, and often enough placing them in empty, voidlike spaces where their intricacies dominate. This, or they occupy fantasy landscapes where they take on characteristic of mythical objects, magical devices or ancient runestones or things of that sort. Realism is outside STVDIO NOUVEAU’s purview. Instead, we gaze at the objects before us with nowhere else to turn, examining their points and edges, their concavities, and their secrets because, well, we’re offered nothing else. Sometimes, these sculptures can appear quite menacing. As freeform explorations of shape, they communicate to each of us the inherent associations we make with certain geometries: A certain kind of pointed tip might appear threatening, or a series of pipelike appendages that remind us of military drones. Glyph Satellite almost threatens to take the esoteric nature of those associations and make them superficial. Not just because the name of the piece itself redirects us away from the full abstraction which would be present without it, but because the subliminal nature of the items are odd and abstract and almost runic, all thing codified in the aesthetics themselves. For here are added and unique elements of abstraction. And here are expressly-written symbols —glyphs— as well. We are at once being expressly told what this piece is within the context of STVDIO NOUVEAU’s works, and challenged to find an alternative way in. We doubt the easy answer. It is not in STVDIO NOUVEAU’s style to provide us one.
In an oeuvre filled with unspecific titles like Meta Crystal and Aerial Shards and Transmuted Frame, it’s rare that we receive information as specific as this one: Glyph Satellite. Immediately, our minds are filled with dissolute images, that of space exploration and moonwalks and the outer cosmos, but also that of magic and brimstone and wizards and faeries. Before even seeing the piece itself, we are buffeted with possible implications, but then when we finally do see the piece —more on that in a moment— it doesn’t really conform to any of our previous assumptions. We imagine space travel, but can this thing fly through space? It’s got a central body painted in shining hues of mottled gold and black, shaped like a blunted diamond more than a sleek and hyper-advanced vehicle. Its six club-like appendages seem either in opposition to space travel itself, or they exist for a purpose all but the most engineering-savvy among us can imagine. And then the entire thing is wrapped in a jagged black wiring, like barbed wire, as if the satellite itself has flown through a restricted landscape and dragged away with it the remnants of a security system. Yeah, it certainly doesn’t look like any satellite that I’ve ever seen, so maybe it’s leaning into its other cryptographic identifier: glyph. Although even then, Glyph Satellite doesn’t generally display the glowing, crystalline, Tolkien-esque attributes I find myself associating with a word like “glyph.” The only other piece in STVDIO NOUVEAU’s collected works that has a similar word in its title is Glyph Drones, which bears almost no aesthetics in common with Glyph Satellite, other than the odd markings on their underbellies too. Still, it would require familiarity with STVDIO NOUVEAU’s style to know that the way they use such words is different than mainstream usage. And so the adept STVDIO NOUVEAU collector or enthusiast will be spared the associations that I find coming at me —a novice— pell-mell.
Often, when I find abstract works, the contextual circumstances around the artwork —things like title or description— seem to try and expand on that abstraction. The name of a piece might be nonsense or a made-up word. I’m thinking specifically of Clionate by WintEagle. Other Artist Descriptions might do what STVDIO NOUVEAU does here and list only technical specs. But STVDIO NOUVEAU achieves the same effect as those other abstractionists through different means, by pointing us in a certain direction and letting us exhaust the number of associations we might otherwise make. Staring at the piece, floating in a vacuum of association-less-ness, we become like the satellite itself, and good luck to us trying to read the “glyphs” on its back.
I can’t help but think that such context has great power over an observer’s relationship to an abstract piece, and that if this artwork were called “Royal Scepter” or “Stone of God” or something like that, I would be approaching it in an entirely different way aesthetically, trying to find relationships to an entirely different set of iconographies. But the rub is that I would end up at the same place: Trying to impart meaning onto a meaningless object, and finding myself floating once again, aware now how arbitrary all our associations are, the scaffolding of my thoughts now somewhat exposed.
Source Link: https://superrare.com/0x4c729d90b94ad9d8f2c596f90dbc59ab99dfc932/glyph-satellite-1
Date Minted: February 5, 2022
Artist Description: Abstract digital sculpture created in Blender. Featured in “Electronic Sonata: I. Allegro” (Audiovisual Pairings: Album 2-6, MKT2 64,458).
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
I haven’t seen symbology used like this in a long time. In physical composition, STVDIO NOUVEAU’s artistry initially seems comparable to artist Eceertrey’s; after all, 3D sculptures are at the heart of what they do, and there is certainly a shared stylistic sensibility. But Eceertrey’s many monstrous sculptures are eclectic and bear few similar attributes to each other. That, and his works are as much about augmenting the physical world around them as they are about existing for their own merits. STVDIO NOUVEAU’s work takes an entirely different approach to 3D sculpture, returning again and again to similar images and symbols, items with similar attributes, and often enough placing them in empty, voidlike spaces where their intricacies dominate. This, or they occupy fantasy landscapes where they take on characteristic of mythical objects, magical devices or ancient runestones or things of that sort. Realism is outside STVDIO NOUVEAU’s purview. Instead, we gaze at the objects before us with nowhere else to turn, examining their points and edges, their concavities, and their secrets because, well, we’re offered nothing else. Sometimes, these sculptures can appear quite menacing. As freeform explorations of shape, they communicate to each of us the inherent associations we make with certain geometries: A certain kind of pointed tip might appear threatening, or a series of pipelike appendages that remind us of military drones. Glyph Satellite almost threatens to take the esoteric nature of those associations and make them superficial. Not just because the name of the piece itself redirects us away from the full abstraction which would be present without it, but because the subliminal nature of the items are odd and abstract and almost runic, all thing codified in the aesthetics themselves. For here are added and unique elements of abstraction. And here are expressly-written symbols —glyphs— as well. We are at once being expressly told what this piece is within the context of STVDIO NOUVEAU’s works, and challenged to find an alternative way in. We doubt the easy answer. It is not in STVDIO NOUVEAU’s style to provide us one.
In an oeuvre filled with unspecific titles like Meta Crystal and Aerial Shards and Transmuted Frame, it’s rare that we receive information as specific as this one: Glyph Satellite. Immediately, our minds are filled with dissolute images, that of space exploration and moonwalks and the outer cosmos, but also that of magic and brimstone and wizards and faeries. Before even seeing the piece itself, we are buffeted with possible implications, but then when we finally do see the piece —more on that in a moment— it doesn’t really conform to any of our previous assumptions. We imagine space travel, but can this thing fly through space? It’s got a central body painted in shining hues of mottled gold and black, shaped like a blunted diamond more than a sleek and hyper-advanced vehicle. Its six club-like appendages seem either in opposition to space travel itself, or they exist for a purpose all but the most engineering-savvy among us can imagine. And then the entire thing is wrapped in a jagged black wiring, like barbed wire, as if the satellite itself has flown through a restricted landscape and dragged away with it the remnants of a security system. Yeah, it certainly doesn’t look like any satellite that I’ve ever seen, so maybe it’s leaning into its other cryptographic identifier: glyph. Although even then, Glyph Satellite doesn’t generally display the glowing, crystalline, Tolkien-esque attributes I find myself associating with a word like “glyph.” The only other piece in STVDIO NOUVEAU’s collected works that has a similar word in its title is Glyph Drones, which bears almost no aesthetics in common with Glyph Satellite, other than the odd markings on their underbellies too. Still, it would require familiarity with STVDIO NOUVEAU’s style to know that the way they use such words is different than mainstream usage. And so the adept STVDIO NOUVEAU collector or enthusiast will be spared the associations that I find coming at me —a novice— pell-mell.
Often, when I find abstract works, the contextual circumstances around the artwork —things like title or description— seem to try and expand on that abstraction. The name of a piece might be nonsense or a made-up word. I’m thinking specifically of Clionate by WintEagle. Other Artist Descriptions might do what STVDIO NOUVEAU does here and list only technical specs. But STVDIO NOUVEAU achieves the same effect as those other abstractionists through different means, by pointing us in a certain direction and letting us exhaust the number of associations we might otherwise make. Staring at the piece, floating in a vacuum of association-less-ness, we become like the satellite itself, and good luck to us trying to read the “glyphs” on its back.
I can’t help but think that such context has great power over an observer’s relationship to an abstract piece, and that if this artwork were called “Royal Scepter” or “Stone of God” or something like that, I would be approaching it in an entirely different way aesthetically, trying to find relationships to an entirely different set of iconographies. But the rub is that I would end up at the same place: Trying to impart meaning onto a meaningless object, and finding myself floating once again, aware now how arbitrary all our associations are, the scaffolding of my thoughts now somewhat exposed.