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When Our Hands Were Not Enough
At some point in human history, our hands were not enough. Humanity shaped stone into a tool, creating an Extension of the hand that allowed us to do what out bodies alone could not.
For this piece, I did not try to physically transform the Flint into a futuristic version of itself, Instead,.. I carried its fundamental meaning into the future: (The Human Recognition Of Our Limitations... and Our Instinct To Create Tools That Extend Our Capabilities).
In like a 100yrs to come, that Idea becomes a tool for RESTORATION... allowing humanity to reconnect & restore damaged/disturbed matter rather than simply replacing it.
The Original Reference: Tool, Paleolithic-to-Neolithic, ca.
90,000-5,000 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The original work and its imagined future evolution are shown together, not as a transformation of its appearance, but of its meaning & purpose.
Its workflow will be displayed in my response below.
And finally, here is my 3rd & final Entry @FLORA
View the Workflow: https://app.flora.ai/join-project/8fad8334-1b55-4d8d-8091-050269da8e4b
Please resubmit making sure all submission requirements are met to be considered for the prize!
Adding the original Met references for completeness:
When Our Hands Were Not Enough
At some point in human history, our hands were not enough. Humanity shaped stone into a tool, creating an Extension of the hand that allowed us to do what out bodies alone could not.
For this piece, I did not try to physically transform the Flint...
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I SWEAR I DIDN’T SMOKE ANYTHING BEFORE COMING UP WITH THIS STORY
I simply saw this sculpture and the entire plot appeared in my head by itself.
What if Marsyas wasn’t screaming because of Apollo? What if some guy just ruined a family photoshoot, got caught by the flash at the worst possible moment?
So yes… this is my completely serious explanation of how a Baroque masterpiece was born.
Please watch the video until the end!! I really tried, made the whole thing in FLORA and literally didn’t sleep all night 😭
Inspired by Balthasar Permoser’s Marsyas, ca. 1680–85.
Original artwork:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/211486
It was really fun to watch.
My piece is inspired by the Damascus Room at the Met: a winter guest room built in 1707 in Ottoman Damascus, carved from poplar wood and covered in gesso relief, gold leaf and forty stanzas of poetry. It was removed from its house in the early 1930s, shipped to New York in 1934, and sat in crates for about forty years before being installed at the Met. I retold its whole life as a 30 second animated film in the style of the art of its own era, an Ottoman miniature manuscript, ending with the visitors who stand in it today. The narrator quotes a real line from the room's walls.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/452102
NAYMLAP: The Piercing Vision
An entry for The Met x FLORA Museum Challenge
A thousand years ago, a Sicán ruler on Peru's north coast was buried wearing a mask of hammered gold and cinnabar red its winged eyes marked with the Sicán Deity's "piercing vision," believed to guide the dead into ancestorhood.
For this project, I reimagined that same mask as a piece of wearable fashion: sculptural gold sunglasses that carry over its exact material language — the hammered gold, the cinnabar and verdigris patina, the winged eye silhouette, and even its original gold danglers built for the living instead of the dead.
The full process is documented on FLORA:
— Concept exploration (15+ directions branching off the original mask)
— Symmetry and detail refinement
— A custom studio environment ("the Gold Chamber") built entirely from the mask's own palette
— A full campaign shoot inside that space
Original artwork reference: Lambayeque (Sicán) Funerary Mask, 900–1100 CE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 1974.271.35. (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/309959 )
Full canvas: app.flora.ai/js78eg2ydn0xc0v57t7nmfn4j58dqek9
