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Crumpled Diorama
Artist: Rangga Purnama Aji
Rangga Purnama Aji is an Indonesian artist, composer, live coder, and digital-video artist. Deeply involved in music and visuals through experimental and live coding practices, His works ranged from generative visuals/video art, animation, sound art, live coding visual/music, and electronic/acoustic music composition. In his artistic perception, He's fascinated by the concept of in-between and transient, empirical references, contemplation of life, human relations, essential conceptual frameworks, absurdity, automation, and Javanese/Sundanese mysticism.
A memento from an attempt to virtually transform plastic bags into something that is between a synthetic and a natural thing.
This is the original .glb artwork file from a virtual space installation piece called "Crumpled Cave", part of a metaverse exhibition called "Mad World" in Loop Art Critique.
Inspired by a personal reflection on the aftermath of a plastic bag being held and squeezed, the bag then moved as if trying to return to its original shape, despite being crumpled, and created a crackling sound. I imagined the plastic's movement indicating a possible assumption that this plastic has a natural nature that might be very common in today's situation. Is it possible that plastic is similar to plants, fungi, or rocks that experience accumulated movement and disruption to form by itself and its surroundings?
The piece was created by gathering found plastic bags and then used to form a temporary sculpture by crumpling them and arranging them as one arbitrary structure. The sculpture was then AI-assisted, manually scanned through several attempts with different angles, until one that was the most preferred was chosen and exported as a digital 3D object. The final output gave the impression of a stone cave inside its cavity and a crumpled plastic texture on its outside surface.
Link to the "Crumpled Cave" space:
https://verse.loop.onland.io/hhoQouZ/crumpled-cave
2025
This artwork was exhibited in the ▒▒▒dreamRAM▒▒▒::newfangled verses exhibition, from December 5, 2025 through April 30, 2026 at mowna.org. 70% of the sale will pay the artist for their work, with the remaining 30% funding the museum.
