The Making Of

It's only natural that cats should have kittens, and plastic cat statues should therefore have their progeny too. The Coven of Catoliths gave birth to a Litter of Kittoliths.

I'm setting up a print farm of 7 of these CR-10 S5 printers. This is the first one which I am testing modifications on. This printer has a 500500500 mm build space, however the stock print bed only heats a 300300 area, so I have upgraded this with a 500500 heat mat. I also added the crossbraces since I anticipate that as the print grows tall and the load heavy that the z-axis will need all the reinforcement it can get.

I've opted to print Cathenge myself. It's a big undertaking - typically people print something the size of an action figure, but it's possible to do much larger things, and so I'm printing all 6 Catoliths. Doing the printing myself gives me the latitude to experiment with the design and the technique and that is essentially what artistic control is about.

Today I printed out a small version of "Thanata" the Catolith of Death in sparkly blue-green irridescent PLA plastic. This is the first version of the Catolith that I've modeled with decorative surface embellishment. I modeled this in the subdivision surface modeler "Sculpt" of Cimema 4D 3D software. My intention is to use these surface details as the basis for painted decoration of the big Catoliths. This small print is a useful experiment in painting technique that can be applied on a much larger scale.

The effect I'd like to achieve with the Catoliths is similar to a set of windchines. Motion detection creates the chiming of the Catoliths. Each cat has an infrared sensor mounted in its chin and facing downward. This creates a cone of interactivity wherein a visitor to Cathenge will hear the cats "intone" their respective notes. Additionally, triggering one cat will trigger notes in the other cats (ideally, this is a random or semi-random pattern).

This 3D render was included in the proposal material for Cathenge 2019. Glowing Catolith Cat Statues shown with a whip wielding Cat Priestess in the dusty haze of the playa.

This was the initial 3D printed scale model of Cathenge. Printed by Christopher Christensen. This photo shows the model on display at Burning Man Decompression SF in the fall of 2018. My painting, "Succubus", can be seen in the background.