Project Title
TBD (Sleeping Homeless Sculptures)

Please give a short description of your project, including the final form that it will take.
This project will result in larger-than-life "3D prints" (i.e., sculptures) of anonymized sleeping homeless people in LA's Skid Row.

Please tell us about your project in longer detail, including the final form that it will take.
Nobody, NOBODY, should ever sleep in the street because they have no alternative. Sleeping in the street was institutionalized in LA's Skid Row in 2006 when the city's "anti-camping" ordinance was suspended due to lack of adequate number of beds for the homeless.

The goal of this project is to document sleeping homeless people as a reminder to future generations that it should never happen again, while producing something with intensely ambiguous emotional resonance. The proposed medium is traditional sculpture but made via photography - by shooting several images from different angles, then using state-of-the-art techniques to make 3D models, then to "print" the models using a large-scale 3D printer.

The result will be both abstract and photo-realistic. The photographic images will be anonymized but otherwise have realistic detail. The medium has no color, no sound, and no motion. Only front and side points-of-view will be photographed, so the finished sculptures will appear incomplete, not unlike Michelangelo's "Prisoners" series. And like Prisoners, the 3D prints will be approximately 25% larger than life.

This project almost happened in 2008. I spent several weeks taking pre-dawn walks around Skid Row and interacting with folks waking up (they need to stop "camping" by 6:30am). I had exchanges with local artist and organizer John Malpede. But the technology at the time was simply too obtrusive: it required a large laser scanner on top of a slowly moving vehicle.

Confronting the difficult ethical issues is a central challenge of the project.

Project Update
The most challenging aspect of the proposed project is around the ethics of production, and I've now had several discussions and have heard several suggestions. I will commit to experienced, on-the-ground community experts to sign off on "best practice,” most likely John Malpede and the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a Creative Capital recipient and early advisor.

The technology required for the proposed project continues to get better and more accessible. Autodesk recently launched "123D Catch", a free service which "take[s] ordinary photos and turn[s] them into extraordinary 3D models." http://www.123dapp.com/catch

Place your work in context so that we may better evaluate it.
I've spent much of the past three decades developing field cinematography techniques for interactive and immersive experiences, and during this time became increasingly politicized. My work, which began documenting tony places like Aspen (1978), Paris (1985), and SF's Golden Gate (1987), moved toward more community-oriented projects in Karlsruhe (1989) and Banff (1993), to UNESCO World Heritage "In Danger" sites (1995), to post-911 work with "camera zapping" (2002), to ways to democratize imagery inside Google Earth (2008). I've also had the honor of being mentored by some champions of community engagement in the arts and media, including artist and writer Gyorgy Kepes, geographer Bernard Nietschmann, filmmaker Ricky Leacock, and (particularly) ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax.

How does your project take an original and imaginative approach to content and form?
Much of my academic media work has been toward understanding verisimilitude and artifact, e.g., I've published papers on "Realness and Interactivity," "Elements of Realspace Imagining," "Presence and Abstraction," and "Sensory Anomalies." For this project, I intend to be mindful of what to represent and what not to represent. I want form, highly detailed and oversized. I don’t want color (mostly grungy) or the smells or the dangers of actually being there. I want audiences to feel ok taking a deep, close look.

What kind of impact-artistic, intellectual, communal, civic, social, etc.-do you hope your project will have?
I hope to:
- take a snapshot of something that needs to be remembered;
- produce something both beautiful (all sleeping people look serene) and disturbing;
- explore the new media of "shape cameras" and "photo sculptures";
- stimulate dialogue about public representation, documentation, and control (think Google Streetview).

How might your proposed project act as a catalyst for your artistic and professional growth? In what ways is it a pivotal moment in your practice?
This project is predictably progressive for me in terms of developing new media tools, understanding "place representation," and providing a bit of excitement, danger, and fun. But the bigger, deeper challenges are ethical. Can and should sleeping homeless people be documented? What are the limits of inconspicuous recording? (What would Dorothea Lange do?) How to compensate? As we move into a world with cameras everywhere and with the line between public and private increasingly blurred, I'm good spending some time confronting my own demons on this and see what comes out.

Who are the specific audiences/communities that you hope to engage with this project?
I'm aiming for a general audience.

What would be ideal venues for your work?
These sculptures are non-electronic, non-digital, and have no moving parts, so shipping and installation are logistically straightforward. (The actual physical medium is TBD and will depend on budget, 3D printing/milling equipment, and in-kind donation. But warning: they may be heavy.) It could be a wonderful contribution to permanently install an edition onsite, on the street, in or near Skid Row.

Given Creative Capital's comprehensive system of support, how would you envision our non-monetary services and resources helping you realize your goals for this project as well as those for your larger artistic and professional growth? (100 words)
This project involves working with several disparate communities, especially outside the usual art/new media ones. (I was pleased to see John Malpede and LAPD receive a CC grant!) I'm looking forward to increasing my "cultural translation skills" by interacting with the diversity of the CC community.

Budget
Total Project Budget: $25,000

Biography
Michael Naimark was 2011 visiting faculty at the MIT Media Lab, on leave from the USC School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media Division. He has also held faculty appointments at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, the Art Center College of Design, CalArts, and the San Francisco Art Institute; and artist residencies at the Exploratorium, the ZKM, IAMAS, and the Banff Centre. Naimark has directed projects with support from UNESCO, National Geographic, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ars Electronica, and the Paris Metro; and from Atari, Disney, Apple, Panavision, Lucasfilm, Interval, and Google.
http://www.naimark.net/bio.html

Work Sample #1: Displacements http://www.naimark.net/projects/displacements.html

Work Sample #2: Viewfinder http://www.naimark.net/projects/viewfinder.html