No CTRL-Z in the real world

Artist Ali Eslami is rooted in engineering and creating virtual realities. Ali’s Mondriaan residency revolved around making 5 objects that play a part in his virtual world ESHRAQ. At Make, it was time to make the switch from digital to physical, without a CTRL-Z to undo. Read along to discover Ali’s process and cherished errors.

Written by Pleuni van Keulen
Photography by Ruud Hermans

Mystical versus concrete 
Thematically, Ali’s work ESHRAQ is mystical and abstract – inspired by Persian philosopher Suhrawardi. Quite the contrast with the concrete materials and workshop at Make. But harmonising these worlds was interesting. “I like the dynamics of this contrast,” he says. “Running around in the workshop with all the materials, it’s sometimes messy, and you have to make lots of decisions. Also, working with the materials can be heartbreaking, as things often don’t go as planned.” There’s no simple undoing your last move with CTRL-Z in the workshop, Ali acknowledges. “When working digitally, you search and someone on the internet – or AI – surely has a solution. But working with metal and glass, making mistakes, makes you take steps back, think and redo. Physical materials demand you to, you just have to try it yourself and experience it. Even the experts don’t always know what the outcome will be.”  

Embracing errors 
Something many artists experience at Make, is the power of the unplanned. Ali is no different, and in fact, embraces this. Ali: “It’s something I’m seeking in my material language. When I design something digitally, it is so ‘perfect’ and almost flawless. When there are flaws and errors, I tend to emphasize those, because they bring charm and authenticity. They make the audience connect with the work, otherwise the work becomes too generic in my opinion. I think that’s also a problem when you become too highly skilled in digital production. Your work becomes too perfect and it becomes harder to connect with the viewer. Your skills start to work against you and sometimes you have to unlearn a bit and at the same time learn to cherish mistakes and errors. And this is much more pronounced in the physical process, compared to the digital.” 

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No reproduction of mistakes 
One of Ali’s cherished ‘mistakes’ is on the XYZ gizmo. Ali: “I casted it in bronze and I was planning on polishing it. But when Rino (metal advisor, red.) welded it, I was so amazed by the effect of it. The welding created this heat effect on the metal. It has a great, beautiful gradient from dark into purple and orange and then shiny. So, I kept that. Because if I’d grind and polish it, I would never be able to reproduce it. A very unexpected result. That’s what I love about material practice. It’s full of surprises and goes beyond your imagination, especially when you’re doing things for the first time, like I did with metal and glass.” It can also be a bit intimidating, Ali says. The residency, however, gave him the right focus. “I could really kind of compartmentalise and just work with the material and experiment.”  

The relief of opening a mould 
There’s a great joy in working with metal, although it’s quite laborious, according to Ali. “In my case, the joy really comes when you demould, when you open the mould after it’s poured and casted. Up until that point it’s all about labour, with many steps and days up to the point where you pour it in like 2 minutes. And then it’s just there!” When the result is there, Ali started to forget all the work that went into it. “The postproduction of my objects I did with a lot of joy and curiosity. So yeah, the beginning – with all the hard work without seeing result – can be very intimidating. But when you can see and feel your object, it’s such a good moment!” Besides metal, Ali also worked with glass and in our CAD/CAM lab, as he tends to work cross media, and his residency at Make was no different. 

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CAD/CAM lab as a natural habitat 
He designed and printed his moulds in the CAD/CAM lab, worked with metal and experimented with glass. The latter turned out to be challenging, he says. “It’s much more unforgiving compared to metal. A very small mistake can ruin your whole glass object, it’s very tricky and needs much more patience. So, I’m trying to learn that!” Most of his time, he spent in the CAD/CAM lab. Ali: “I felt like my skills in 3D and digital application really complemented my process. All my objects are 3D designed and I 3D printed and laser cut them, to make the moulds. I felt like, okay I’m not a beginner here! It’s a lot of engineering as well, because of the limitations of the print size. So, you have to design your objects in parts to make them fit together.”   

Foundry sand as an end material 
Ali took an interesting turn with an unexpected material: foundry sand that’s been used for making metal moulds. Ali: “In my work there’s a lot of references to sand. Looking back, that’s also why I was excited to work with glass, because in the end that’s silica and sand. So, I wanted to do something with the foundry sand. In the workshop, there’s this in–between process where you break the mould and throw it out once the metal or glass is cast. I experimented with it and tried to combine it with 3D printing. And I managed to find a way to create sand sculptures, made of foundry sand. I had to reinforce them with 3D prints too, because the sand is quite brittle. But I actually found this also aesthetically interesting, because the reinforcement sometimes comes to the surface. It’s like a visible spine.”  

Objects with ancient aesthetics 
Ali’s project ESHRAQ is based on the work of Persian philosopher Suhrawardi. Underlying question is: if he had a computer, what would he build? So, let’s reverse that. What would Ali build if he didn’t have a computer? Ali: “A hard question! Especially after this residency, I’m quite drawn into objects with these ancient aesthetics with a mythical quality to them. That aesthetic is of course inspired by my Iranian roots and the visual culture I grew up with. So if I didn’t have a computer, I would build mysterious devices with some technological kind of quality, that’s kind of hard to understand how it works. Which is actually the case for lots of ancient objects that are being excavated, we don’t know what these things do.” 

Unfinished business 
Ali used almost all techniques at Make, except for one: graphics. What is up with that? Ali: “I would’ve liked to, if I had more time. I was curious to make some kind of glass light boxes on which I would want to print, like painting on glass in a way. So, that’s my unfinished business. I’ll be back!”  

Check Ali’s blog to discover how he went from simulation to cinema – the foundation of the physical objects he made at Make Eindhoven.