Science, Skateboarding, and Art.

I want to talk about things while they're fresh in my mind, but they're things that are difficult to put to words.

They're emotions, feelings, vague internal concepts that I lack the language or familiarity to really put to words succinctly.

Some number of minutes or hours before writing this, I watched two videos. The first was a demonstration and simplified explanation of Computed Axial Lithography; a new approach to 3D printing technologies wholly apart from established FDM, SLA, and SLS methods currently found in workshops and the homes of enthusiasts. The second was a 12 minute long video part for professional skateboarder Andy Anderson that had just premiered, titled "Crazy Wisdom".

Seeing those videos, in that order, put me in a mental and emotional state that left me unable to watch anything else, or even do anything for a while. What follows is an exploration of my thoughts and feelings.

This is about science, skateboarding, and ultimately, this is about art.

In order to explain what I mean, I think it's important to re-establish the framing of this thought process by going back over what led to this in a bit more detail. It can be much easier to understand how someone has reached a given conclusion by retracing the path they took and seeing what details they latched onto that another may not have.

I will go over my perspectives and the details that stood out to me as relevant to this exploration. You do not need any pre-existing familiarity beyond the basics for either subject. Trust the process.

We'll start with the Computed Axial Lithography, the beginning of this journey. A video by Joel Telling, known as 3D Printing Nerd on YouTube, in which he spoke with Taylor Waddle on the process and showcased a demonstration of the system in action. The thumbnail showed what looked like one of those "holograms" that use disturbances in a clear object to create an image. As it turns out, it was the printed object suspended in the viscous print medium. The process uses focused light to solidify the substance into a structure by rotating a container of the print media and flashing it with rotated images of the desired end product, which is a gloriously crude oversimplification, but serves our purposes here well enough. Unlike the other existing methods that enthusiasts currently use, it just burns the image into existence in the medium as-is, all at once. Every other method employed by such people involves laying down consecutive layers. Imagine building a house out of bricks or rope, layer by layer. Now think about manifesting an image out of a substance...but with light and shadow. It sounds overly simple like that, but it's the best analogy I've got at the moment. Achieving it is no simple feat. The exploration of new methods, and an entirely new territory of study, however niche it may be.

It's the edge of our current understanding and ability. It's science, and it's a process.

You don't need to understand the finer details for this discussion, but if it piques your curiosity, it's worth looking into. From here, we pivot as a thumbnail catches my eye afterwards.

Andy Anderson: Crazy Wisdom.

I knew the video was coming out soon. I hadn't realized the date had arrived.

Twelve minutes of someone exploring what's possible with a skateboard, the world around them, and their imagination.

There's a performance aspect to skateboarding. It's a physical activity. Some call it an extreme sport, though there are no points, no requisite structure, and only in exceptional situations are there crowds to cheer at all. What I have to say could easily be applied to skiing and BMX, but we're looking at things through the lens of having just watched a skateboarding video; a pastime that can be performed entirely solitary, and often is, even when surrounded by others. Every skateboarder builds upon everything that has come before. The early days were defined by a desire to surf when there were no waves, leading to the invention of the first skateboard, hacked together from scrapwood and roller skates. Decades of evolution later have seen all manner of changes, from size and shape, dedicated hardware, the addition of sandpaper as grip tape, different accessories and materials, all to improve the ability to ride, and later to perform specific actions, such as avoiding wheels hitting the board when turning, concave for stability, shape cuts to assist with tricks, and even alternate and additional materials to increase durability without posing additional hazard to people. The endless named tricks had, at one point, been first brought into reality by countless people who have pushed at the boundaries of what was thought possible. There was once a time when getting the board into the air was unthinkable without a ramp to send you there. Alan "Ollie" Gelfand and Jeff Tatum had begun launching out of vert ramps without grabbing their boards in the 1970s. Rodney Mullen debuted his flatground iteration at a competition in 1982. After his showcase later that year of the ollie kickflip, dubbed the "magic flip" by many, the foundation had been firmly laid down for what skateboarding would become, and paved the way for modern "street" skating. The things we all have come to know about skateboarding would not exist otherwise.

We stand here now, upon the backs of giants, as yet more become the giants those of the future will then stand upon, in an endless process.

In "Crazy Wisdom", Andy builds upon the foundations laid by all those before. Many of us are familiar with the videos we've seen of skateboarders performing incredible feats. What we are often not as familiar with is the process they took to achieve those feats. There are moments throughout Crazy Wisdom in which that veil is peeled back, and some of the struggles along the way are laid bare. The process becoming part of the conclusion, like seeing the broken and misshapen attempts of a sculptor's process to carving their vision out of stone.

Something I did not mention earlier was that the piece produced in the CAL video was a tiny replica of "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin, a famous sculpture in the history of the arts.

Art comes from a process of creation, ingenuity, failure, experimentation, metaphorical vision, and expression. One could argue that science is an art, and I think we need look no further than Crazy Wisdom to demonstrate that skateboarding is an art form, should one wish to explore it as such.

Because art isn't just the final product...art is a process.


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At some points when writing this, my focus was pulled away and had to get my mind back on track, which I'm sure comes through in aspects of structure and tone. I don't have the desire to go back over and edit things to a more fluid and constant tone right now, but there are fare more things than this that I could talk about, spurred on by the feelings I had and the thoughts they conjured. I think art is important in its many forms, and I think that the freedom to explore the arts is woefully impeded by the systems within which we live that relentlessly strip away our time, our health, and our financial security. There are days worth of conversations that could be had from any facet. Here and now, though, I feel like leaving things to the topic of art.

Art is important. Art is a process. Art is part of the human experience.

I do not wish to engage with the generative AI conversations at this time.

I just want to appreciate the art that is skateboarding, and the countless people who got us here.