This 3D model is a digital sculpture by artist Alexandra Crouwers. The sculpture, Tools (v003), incorporates a Neolithic chert axe from North Africa. Works inspired by a 3D model of an Acheulean handaxe, Tools (v002), can be viewed here, and Tools (v001) can be viewed here.
Tools is an ongoing set of works that empathically visualise the continuity of human existence across time and space. It is a way to emphasise and participate in ‘the history of things’: reuniting ideas and objects across artefacts, works of art, tools and expressions that form a ‘visible portrait of the collective identity’ in the words of art historian George Kubler. Tools (v003) is a digital, interactive sculpture: the 3D scanned assembly brings together various objects that are part of the artist’s studio: a 6,000-year-old Neolithic stone tool, a cassowary bone dagger from New Guinea, bark covered with spruce bark beetle tracks, a decorated animal rib of unknown origin, and a computer mouse with a camouflage print – its cable tying it all together.
Alexandra Crouwers is a visual artist and artistic researcher. Her work explores the expanding possibilities of digital technologies as a means of formulating responses to global ecosystemic crises, and to (re)establish connections between our species and nonhuman entities. At the heart of her practice are speculative narratives that feed experimental short (3d animated) films, but also include woven tapestries, artistic information panels, audio works, and performative lectures. Crouwers’ works have been shown at Museum M (Leuven, BE), Technische Sammlungen (Dresden, DE), Museum Ludwig (Budapest, HU), and the SMAK Museum (Ghent, BE). Film screenings include Transmediale (Berlin, DE), Impakt (Utrecht, NL), Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK), Uppsala Short Film Festival (SE), and the Portable Film Festival (Sydney/Melbourne, AUS). She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.