Fragments Proximity, 2024 – Jeewi Lee x Phillip C. Reiner

"Fragments Proximity" is a set of three large-scale sculptures, each a single grain of sand, in the same material, enlarged 600 to 850 times. At this scale, what was once microscopic is now room-scale, and the floor space that the works occupy reaches from body height and beyond. The surface curves, crevices and micro-fractures carry with them the particularity and geological history of the grain. At this level of enlargement, we, the viewers, encounter surface detail that is typically only visible under electron microscopy: erosion channels, mineral boundaries, and transport abrasion. Walking around a single grain of sand becomes a spatial experience: the topography of the sculpture registers differently from each angle.

In this project, we have treated the sand not as an anonymous and ubiquitous material, but as a material that holds geological memory and place-specific associations. Sand is abundant globally, but under pressure, as demand for it increases from the construction industry and, most recently, the digital-industry. Lee works with the idea of detritus as embodied memory, and Reiner contributes parametric work based on natural phenomena that can be described by mathematical principles. Through this collaboration, we use mathematical precision to expose the structure and geological history contained within single grains.

Research:
Each of the sculptures begins with a single grain that is scanned by Zeiss X-ray microscopy (nano-CT). The process captures the surface topology and internal density of the grain at micron resolution. The data moves from the physical grain to a DICOM image stack, and then to 3D geometry via surface reconstruction. ProtoCtrl handles the mesh processing and parametric geometry required to 3D print the grain at monumental scale (600-850x). The enormity of the enlargement factor requires high polygon counts in order to maintain surface fidelity, and mesh optimization must balance topological accuracy against manufacturing constraints. In effect, our workflow addresses the Sorites paradox by fixing a single grain as the unit of reconstruction. The output is a hyper-realistic reconstruction of a grain of sand at a scale where microscopic detail becomes tangible.