While the notion of impossible objects would seem to reference only the sculptural nature of 3D representations, this term equally connotes their post-photographic quality. Impossible objects in the 3D realm can only be perceived by the computer's documentation of them. 3D is therefore a hybrid of sculpture with two-dimensional imagery, of sculpture AND photography, and is in this sense neither fish nor fowl. 3D is "impossible" and inauthentic by definition. It is the unique qualities of the synthetic camera that gives implausible 3D objects a sense of the real.

The meta space of 3D is a non-site, in Smithson's sense¹, and as such forces certain physiological responses on the part of users, makers and viewers. Impossible objects are paradoxical in nature and could NEVER be constructed but can nevertheless be output as apparently realistic movies or still frames. Virtual images have visually schematic qualities related to illustrations or paintings, yet objects cast hyper-realistic shadows, and lighting is ambient with accurate specular highlights, reflections and refractions, giving the impression of photography. Virtual photos and films therefore evoke sensory impressions so a viewer assumes that they must have a tangible existence, although the objects depicted in them actually could not and do not. As a result, what emerges are pictures of sculptures in the tradition of Magritte: surrealistic mind models with an uncanny relation to the real that on close inspection transgress the rules of light, gravity, time and space. This makes impossible objects the "true" embodiment of the recursive systems that are the basis of computer science: systems that self-reference and build off of themselves but that can originate from ANY assumption, no matter how improbable.

1. Robert Smithson, "A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites", in Unpublished Writings in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by Jack Flam (University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2nd Edition, 1996)