Reflections on the Power of Making Real Things

What was your favorite piece(s)?  Who is the artist?  What was the method of production?  Photograph it.

One of my favorite pieces was the “Fully Articulated 3d Printed Gown for Burlesque Icon Dita Von Teese, 2013”. It was a joint piece created by two American artists: Michael Schmidt and Francis Bitonti. Schmidt create the initial designs and sketches. Bitonti then took Schmidt’s sketches and rendered them on a CAD system. Schmidt says he was inspired by and loosely based his design on the mathematical formulas known as the Golden Ratio. His reasoning is that “it is said that its a spiral that historically has quantified ideal portions of beauty”. Once the 3d design was complete, it was sent to Shapeways for printing. Shapeways 3d printed the gown in several pieces. The process used was laser sintering. The 3000 articulated joints in the gown were rendered within the 3d printed process. The gown was printed in several pieces in white. After it was printed, the printed product was dyed black and then finished in lacquer. At this point the gown was assembled. After assembly, 12,000 Swarovski Crystals were added by hand (see my video below to see the effect).

My video of the sparkling crystals: http://youtu.be/12KRvkLb7q4

Video of the artist describing his piece: http://youtu.be/3cFdbxMhtoA

What were three observations/lessons you learned from the exhibit?

1. Software woes. When we arrived at the Museum of Arts and Design, my goal was to explore it front the top down. We were directed to the 6th floor where they were having an “open studio” session with a 3d-printing artist. There I met artist Marcy Milks. She is currently working on a project titled “The Population“. The piece, which is in progress, consists of 20,000 unique 4” sculptures. We had a great conversation about her process. As a software designer, I was particularly interested in her interaction with the software as a canvas and how the technical aspects work. It turns out that Milks deals with a lot of the same obstacles mentioned in the book Fabricated. One interesting issue is that a 3d sculpture/illustration application doesn’t exist. Milks is currently using software intended for animation. The second issue is that the way the files are interpreted present a whole never set of problems. If she 3d prints the design as is, the sculpture would be too brittle and fall apart when being handled. So, instead she first creates her design, then has to trick the software into printing an outer shell of the design. I didn’t understand exactly how this worked, but basically by telling the computer to do the wrong thing (task it wasn’t intended to do), it is able to output a more study sculpture. Essentially the sculptures are still hollow. Why not just print it solid? It’s a matter of cost. She says to print a hollow sculpture it only costs her $6 versus $20 for a solid sculpture. That wouldn’t be too much of a problem for a handful of these, but she is expecting to 3d print a minimum of 20,000 of these little guys!

2. New possibilities of approaching physical art. Another tremendous insight gained from this experience at the Museum of Arts and Design is the new real of possibility that this medium creates. In chatting with Marcy Milks, she mentioned that if she were to create 20,000 sculptures in plaster, by hand or by casting, it would take her much too long and likely lose interest. 3d printing creates an entirely new realm of possibilities. Not just in the case of scale (like Ms. Milk’s project) but also in the complexity of the artwork itself. Additive manufacturing allows for incredible detail not previously possible in mediums such as hand sculpting or injection molding.

3. Another important insight gained from this exhibit is that additive manufacturing is not a solitary one-step process. Most, if not all, of the pieces in the exhibit required significant “post production” after coming out of the 3d printers. For example, the 3d dress showcased above was printing in fragments. Those fragments were then treated with special chemicals, dyed black, and then finished with lacquer.

How does your visit to the exhibit inform what you have been learning from reading Fabricated?

1. Software issues. As I mentioned above regarding the Marcy Milks “The Population”, the software still seems to be in its infancy. The book, Fabricated, went into great detail about the problems with file formats and translating design files into print files (STL). My conversation with the artist above reinforced these issues.

2.  Low cost (3d scanning, Microsoft Kinect). One area where I feel that Fabricated left a lot to be desired is the discussion of 3d-scanning. At the last section of the exhibit, Shapeways set up an area where museum goers can be “3d scanned” and then they can order a 3d printed sculpture of themselves from their website. The set up was relatively simple. They had a rotating platform, a solid color backdrop and two photographic lamps. The scanning was done using a retail-off-the-shelf Microsoft Kinect device. This device is sold as a companion product to Microsoft Windows and it sells for less than $150.

In what ways did your visit shape your area of interest in 3D design and printing?

This exhibit truly gave me a deeper sense of appreciation for additive manufacturing. Every art piece was created using some form of 3d printing, in all its different methods (laser sintering, additive manufacturing, etc.). It’s inspiring to see artists experiment and create marvelous pieces with this infant technology. Some of these pieces could only be previously exist in the mind of an artist and thanks to the coming of age for a new technology (ability to create complex shapes, etc.) we are entering into an entirely new realm of possibility.  Below is a picture I took of a highly ornate column from the exhibit. This type of high resolution decoration would be incredibly difficult and time consuming to do by hand. The last two photos were of a small diorama in the exhibit which talked about the low cost, rapid, and innovative way of manufacturing homes in the future using additive manufacturing processes. While not as artistically dramatic as the other pieces, I found this to be incredibly inspiring.