The interview was conducted on September 30th, 2021 at Hopkins Hall, Columbus, Ohio by the interviewer, Shiwen Li, and the interviewee, William Yuan, a Columbus-based 3D animator and game designer.
Shiwen: Hello, my name is Shiwen. Today I’ll be interviewing 3D artist William Yuan about his works. Thank you for coming William.
William: You’re welcome. I’m glad to be here.
Shiwen: OK so let’s get started! For your work “Project: Untitled”, What do you hope to achieve with this piece?
William: Well, the purpose of this work is pretty self-explanatory. A human head is floating on top of the ocean with all sorts of plastic waste around it. I’m sure this scene would look pretty familiar to most people who know about how plastic pollution would affect our ocean and sea life.
Shiwen: You’re totally right. I’m listing out some statistics on your website here: Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide; Every day approximately 8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into our oceans, and the average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year.
William: Yeah, these stats are truly shocking and devastating when I first saw them during my research phase. That’s why I decided to create this piece which puts humans in the place of marine life that are affected by plastic pollution created by humans ourselves. I think by creating this role reversal, the audience would reflect upon this environmental issue on a more personal level.
Shiwen: Great! Truly astonishing work! So, what about your 3D printed sculpture “A Container”? Can you tell me more about it conceptually?
William: This piece actually connects to the previous piece we talked about in a way. So the sculpture has two major components: the hands which are 3D printed with PLA material and the stands which are acrylic sheets. Both materials are considered plastic. The symbolic meaning of the space that is created by the four plastic hands is that we live in a world where everything surrounding us is made of plastic. We are being suffocated and confined by this plastic world. The piece “A Container” exactly represents that.
Shiwen: That is very interesting how you put it that way! And could you tell me, if anything, how would you improve this piece? Or what do you wish you would’ve done differently?
William: Actually, one of the critiques I got is this sculpture is simply too small scale-wise to make the audience feel any sense of confinement and “suffocation”. And I do agree with that. I think this piece would definitely speak louder for itself if made on a much larger scale. I hope, one day, I will have the privilege and resources to build this piece on a much larger scale!
Shiwen: Yes! I think you definitely should one day!
Shiwen: And lastly, for your animated short film “
Destination”, what’s the greatest challenge your faced while making this piece?
William: The greatest challenge is lack of time. It was only a half-semester-long project. And I went a little over-ambitious during the planning phase. That resulted in the end I had to purchase 3D models online. And I had to borrow my friends’ computers to help with rendering time. In the last several days before the project was due, I barely had any sleep. But I am just glad that everything turned out super well!
NFT 