[HN Gopher] The Beauty of Concrete
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The Beauty of Concrete
Author : jger15
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-05-17 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worksinprogress.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (worksinprogress.co)
| simonsarris wrote:
| I have a budding rose garden that I would like to adorn with
| statuary. One problem is that I have a tight budget. A second
| problem is that if you look at garden centers you will see its
| easy to find 9000 different cast stone frogs: frogs meditating,
| frogs reading books, frogs thinking, frogs with a purse and
| shopping bags, frogs in an Adirondack chair, frogs hugging,
| reclining frog, etc. It is surprisingly difficult, however, to
| find cast stone classical or ancient sculptures outside of a few
| pastiche renditions.
|
| I find this extremely odd! I would think there would be a large
| market for beautiful cast stone things. Instead, there is
| (apparently) an extraordinary market for concrete frogs.
|
| I figured that in the era of 3D printing and widespread 3D
| models[1], it might be fairly inexpensive to make my own mold and
| pour my own casts, even if I do destructive casting techniques.
| Here again I was disappointed: To order a 3D plastic print from a
| site like ShapeWays came out to over $1300 for something fairly
| small. So that's off the table, too.
|
| I expected more democratization of ornament than there really has
| been, given the tech today. It's surprising to me that no one is
| trying to make silicone molds available of famous statues,
| generally, but I guess there's just no interest or no perceived
| demand. Or maybe there is a big market, and I've missed it,
| because I was not searching for silicone molds of frogs.
|
| [1] For instance, The British Museum has a sketchfab with free
| models: https://sketchfab.com/britishmuseum
| treflop wrote:
| Silicone is actually surprisingly expensive.
|
| I've done cast stone... poured into cast silicone... which was
| cast from 3D printer molds... which was printed from my own 3D
| models... and silicone was by far the most expensive part.
|
| It only made sense because I was casting a lot of stone molds.
| Spastche wrote:
| use latex, and if it's big enough, back it with fiberglass.
| that seems to be the common way to make molds on youtube
| pvg wrote:
| I like the idea that technology might eventually change or
| increase the variance of McMansion outdoor decor tastes.
|
| It seems reasonably within expectations that ornamental
| concrete frogs are a bigger market than ornamental naked dudes
| holding up a severed head, tough, no?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I think the reason that large (cast) stone is very expensive is
| not the creative part or the molds. It is mostly the storing
| and transportation.
|
| Storing is hard because of the space it takes and manual labour
| to move the heavy item when reorganizing.
|
| Transportation is costly for the same reasons and additionally
| it can easily damage and any damage causes it to suddenly have
| virtually zero value.
| acomjean wrote:
| In somerville MA about 10 years ago someone was selling mini
| easter-island heads as lawn statues, which I though was a great
| idea.
| Swizec wrote:
| There's a dude from Slovenia who makes cement casts of famous
| philosophers! Although I think they're more desk than garden
| sized.
|
| https://www.etsy.com/shop/jurgenstudio
| sdwr wrote:
| I think it's about whether you see the work directly, or
| through a lens of status consciousness.
|
| You are saying:
|
| - classical statues are beautiful, I like beautiful things
|
| And they are saying:
|
| - classical statues belong in palaces, and I don't own a
| palace, or want people to think that I'm reaching above my
| status
| boustrophedon wrote:
| There are several sites with instant quotes that are cheaper
| than Shapeways.
|
| PCBWay and JLCPCB both offer similarly-priced very cheap 3d
| printing and CNC services out of China. Weerg in Italy also
| offers 3d printing and CNC services and I'm probably going to
| try them out for the next thing I need printed. The only non-
| marketplace service I've seen in the US that offers instant
| quotes is i-solids in Texas, but they have quite high startup
| costs and seem to be more geared towards small-medium
| production runs.
| adolph wrote:
| There's always Lego for concrete casting:
| https://youtu.be/C3EcdyQECBY
| i1856511 wrote:
| When I looked myself in my local garden center, I actually
| found over 9,000!
| anon291 wrote:
| Just go to estate sales.
| thunderbird120 wrote:
| It's interesting to think that rather than being destroyed by
| becoming too expensive, ornamentation may have died because it
| became too cheap. A lot of ornamentation existed to show off
| wealth and status, but if everyone can have it thanks to
| improvements in production then it doesn't do that anymore.
|
| It's unfortunate that making buildings look nice seems to be
| secondary to other types of status signaling. It's hardly a new
| issue either. When the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930 it
| was criticized for being gaudy for having the nerve to actually
| try to have some style.
|
| >"Lewis Mumford, a supporter of the International Style and one
| of the foremost architectural critics of the United States at the
| time, despised the building for its "inane romanticism,
| meaningless voluptuousness, [and] void symbolism".
| dullcrisp wrote:
| I don't know, you can look at it as because gaudy, ostentatious
| displays of wealth have become impossible, we've become able to
| focus on other things (yes, including subtler displays of
| wealth).
|
| If the ornamentation had value outside of signaling, it's now
| readily available to everyone, as the article says.
|
| But I'm not sure how much I believe that. Fashion is fashion.
| I'm sure there is a hypothetical present where minimalism isn't
| valued nearly as much. But I still think that's mostly
| orthogonal to how much people care about aesthetics.
| pvg wrote:
| The Chrysler Building critique is not totally crazy (and I say
| this as a Chrysler Building stan) - it's not hard to imagine it
| having a very different public perception outside the context
| of its time and place. Not every building gets to be the cuter,
| shorter sibling of the Empire State Building, the Sam the Eagle
| of NYC skyscrapers.
| mbforbes wrote:
| I've been randomly thinking about this a lot!
|
| One hypothesis I've been kicking around: human brains like
| detail.
|
| I thought of this on a walk down a (sub)urban city street.
|
| - High detail: I first noticed the variety of plants in just the
| garden strips between the sidewalk and the street. I was trying
| to count how many there were, and I quickly lost track. Then I
| started looking at each individual plant, and the amount of
| detail is wild---the sheer intricacy and variation in all the
| parts and stages of growth. Not to mention the colors (OK, and
| smell and movement).
|
| Then, I looked at the human made objects around me:
|
| - Low detail: Flat concrete road. Flat concrete sidewalk. Flat
| stairs. All from rectangular tiles. Metal pole handrail.
|
| The houses around weren't much better---boxy shapes, low
| ornamentation.
|
| While I think it's generally accepted that nature is more
| pleasing to the senses to be around human-created objects, it
| made me wonder whether _amount of detail_ is a fundamental aspect
| of what our brains enjoy.
|
| This rumination gets activated whenever I walk by old ornate
| buildings or read an article like this.
|
| Relatedly, even low-poly games people find beautiful (Tunic comes
| to mind) have an extraordinary amount of detail when you dissect
| the textures and postprocessing effects. I'd share a video but
| I'm way off track now.
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