The objects in the collection are undergoing a twofold process of scaling. First, the everyday objects are downscaled by the toy-producing industry. Then, the downscaled objects are upscaled by Silvia Sukopova. The doubling of the process manifests the modifications of the object itself and thus brings our attention to the creative aspects of scaling. 

Within the project, scaling appears to be a matter of resolution and spatial relations. Through the downscaling a part of the object’s spatial definition is lost. Translating the compressed data into a physical object means dealing with a material unable to downscale its behavior and properties. Deformations appear. The sharp edges are being rounded. Meticulous details melt into indeterminate forms, while the plastic filaments are unable to follow the refined curves of the downscaled object. At the end of the process of downscaling we face a new object differing not only in scale but equally in form.

The deformed miniature object is then upscaled by Silvia Sukopova. Its reduced spatial resolution is being recalculated by software. The loss of data resulting from the downscaling is being compensated by the computer. New voxels are generated in order to define the surfaces of the new object. The role of the digital craftsmanship in the process is being manifested. A third, novel object emerges from the upscaling of the miniatures.

The scaled universe deepens our perception and transforms our understanding of digital production technologies. It allows exploration of events in ways that would be impossible without downscaling. However, the cost for this freedom was the need to improvise, to do a bit of bricolage, as the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss words it. The criterium for Sukopova’s decisions is honesty with the materials and technologies. The work becomes a feast of glitches and imperfections 3D representation and production technologies, orchestrated into an appealing collection of uncanny objects. The creative decisions are breaking the conventions of 3D printing by revealing the inner supports of the 3D printed objects or by combining materials. The objects are not trying to conceal the seals between individually printed segments of the large-scale objects. The production process is, thus, not something strenuously erased from the objects. On the contrary, its specificities play a pivotal role in the design process, where they co-define its outcomes. The digital technologies are used with a strong emphasis on physical objects and their materiality. The objects pass through digital tools in order to be rematerialized. This approach emphasizes Sukopova’s approach to digital craftsmanship.

The miniature and the upscaled model being crafted using digital tools, they are not merely scaled copies of objects. What we observe is “an actual experiment on the object,” as Claude Lévi-Strauss words his emphasis on the importance of the understanding of how scaled objects are made. Their producer finds solutions to problems encountered in the process of scaling. Since the solutions are always multiple, the author makes decisions and these inform the result. The viewer understands the possibility of permutations, they can imagine them and while contemplating the object, they picture the other possible versions. The possibilities excluded from the resulting model offer alternative perspectives on the resulting work.

Lévi-Strauss sums it up by saying that: “the intrinsic virtue of the scale model is that it compensates for the loss of sensory dimensions by the acquisition of intelligible dimensions.” The intelligible dimensions are what is at stake in Silvia Sukopova’s work. Their author engages us in speculation on the possibilities within the objects. She decides not to modify the objects resulting from digital upscaling by compensating their imperfections. In this way, the designer points our attention to the process of scaling as a creative or generative act. The computer synthesizes the data lost in the process of downscaling. The author organizes the data into intelligible material artefacts.

In this way, Sukopova’s digital craftsmanship equally touches upon the issue of thinking through objects. To use the objects means producing mechanisms through which we can understand how glitches and distortions are reproduced and cascade across different scales. It is both a question of technologies, of modes of reproduction across various media, and it is also a question of synthetic truths and synthetic forms of questioning. The material object at the center of these works is also a way of investigating the fundamental processes of production in general.

Text by Jozef Eduard Masarik