Emerging Topologies is an upcoming exhibition exploring how contemporary technologies are changing our relationship with the architectural space we inhabit. The exhibition is the culmination of artist Josh Harle's four year doctoral research, informed by degrees in Computer Science, Philosophy, and Sculpture, and completed between the School of Design, COFA, and the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales. The artist's practice utilises exotic production techniques and bespoke software tools that map, scan, and visualise the city in contingent, poetic ways using 3D fabrication, laser etching, cloud processing, and structural reconstruction from images.
The artist explores the shifting landscape of a city experienced through mobile mapping technology, sketching out his own improbable paths through the shadows. The works tell tales: compiling esoteric maps of journeys through strange cities, and taking playful, winding trips across the smudged face of the GPS screen.
The research thesis will also serve as the catalogue for the exhibition, and the artist is selling printed and DRM-free ebook versions to help with the cost of the exhibition.
Opening: Tues, May 21, 5-7pm
Where: Kudos Gallery 6 Napier St, Paddington, NSW
Hours: Wed to Fri, 11am – 6pm, Sat, 11am – 4pm
The Collective Conscious is a self-assembling group of artists and scientists, based in Whistler, Canada, who believe that one brain is never enough and that the cross-pollination of ideas is where the heart of innovation and creativity lies. They are painters, illustrators, 3D modellers, interior designers, motion graphics designers and software developers but, as they say, "most of all we are just big nerds".
Illustrator Victoria Farrand and 3D modeller Thomas Wood collaborated to create 'The Unexpected', a series of drawings and 3D printed models.
After an overwhelming response to the Nautilus project we featured last week, including a re-tweet by Wired's Chris Anderson, we asked Alexander to share the whole story of how that incredible project came to be. This is an amazing example of a project that combines traditional hand craft and 3D printing to create something that couldn't be made any other way...
The story of the Nautilus begins thusly: I was driving my 6 year old daughter to school one morning, about two or three months before her birthday, and I asked her what kind of toy she might like for her birthday. I usually start to ask her this question well in advance of her birthday because she very rarely says she wants anything. We had been previously watching the 1954 film "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" based on Jules Vern's book, and my daughter had fallen in love with the main characters. I should say that she fell in love with some of the characters, because she absolutely loved Captain Nemo and hated Ned Land like poison. So when I asked her what she might want or her birthday, I was not completely surprised to hear her say, "I would like the Nautilus," but nor did I take the request too seriously. After all there wasn't really a toy Nautilus that would be very appropriate for a six year old, excepting some terrible small plastic models made by slave labor in China. So I told my daughter that although she might like a Nautilus submarine, there wasn't one to own. She did not appreciate that answer.
After telling my daughter that I intended to build the Nautilus for her as her birthday present I got to work. Without going into detail here about all the various stages of the project and the endless challenges I faced - the challenges were many and multifaceted, and would easily require thirty pages to lay out - I brought the Nautilus to its first stage of conclusion on 17 December 2012, after six months and more than 500 hours of work. I gave up counting the actual monetary cost at a certain point since doing so was causing me, mentally, to avoid working on the project. I am sure the current cost - excluding all labor - is over $3000.00, but I would not be surprised if it were a lot more than that by the time it is finished. The second stage of work, in which I am currently involved, is the further decoration/renovation of the ship, which I fully expect will drastically change the look and feel of the dollhouse for the better. I see this stage as lasting another two years.
With respect to Glenn and 3D objects, the story is quite interesting. One of the first design challenges I had in building the Nautilus was what to do about the iconographic Bullaugen (large portholes) in the salon of the ship, the diving ring and the diving helmets. With regard to the former, at first I tried to find large size O rings from a variety of machine manufactures to serve as the Bullaugen, but I was unable to find anything suitable, since the size, the type of material and weight were factors: I needed something that was 6-8" in diameter, light weight (so that it could be mounted and would not put too much stress on either the bonds holding it, or the deck of the ship under it), and capable of being decorated. But during my failed search for O rings, I came upon a site, Custommade.com, that introduced people working on projects to people that could help them with those projects. It was here that I met Glenn, who is also an active Shapeways community member.
I owe Glenn a great debt of thanks for his kind generosity, beautiful work and patience. Glenn agreed to design the two Bullaguen, which we would then send to Shapeways to be printed in 3D. He also agreed to design the diving ring in the dive room, and the helmets for the crew. With respect to these latter two projects, I decided in favor of 3d printing because there was simply no other objects that could be suitably modified or pressed into service that would provide the proper look and feel. No one is making dollhouse scale (1/12 scale) diving helmets, as you can imagine ("Tea anyone in the parlor? Don't forget your certified to 1000 feet brass and copper diving helm!") I did find, at one point, keychains with brass diving helm decorations, but the helms were too small for the dolls' heads, and I wanted the dolls to be able to "get dressed" for diving and going through the diving ring.
Things almost came to a screeching halt, however, in the design and manufacturing of the helmets. Here we had a variety of issues that caused us many problems and drove the unit cost far beyond what either of us had envisioned. To make a long story short, in creating the helmets we experienced design snafus (things crept into the design that neither of us actually visually caught), miscommunication (especially visualizing differing measurements and proportions), and uncertainty (how would things really fit and look on one of the dolls). The result was that the first 3D helm we printed was expensive and unusable. It was, in fact, three times too large for the dolls, and would not fit through the diving ring. The second attempt at the same helm was stopped in production by Shapeways because of unworkable geometry (a sincere and heartfelt "thank you" to the team! Ed note: You're welcome!), and had to be redesigned again. Only the third time did we finally get a product that we could use, and, by then, costs had exceeded the budget by a wide margin. Even then I had to modify Captain Nemo to be able to wear the helmet, though for the rest of the crew the helmet was a perfect fit. As a consequence of the costs I am still buying helmets one at a time!
The ship itself is entirely handmade, handpainted and hand decorated by myself. So, for example, there are somewhere between 3000 and 4000 brass 1/8" brads in the ship serving as "rivets," all of which were put in by me by hand, and which constituted THE most repulsive decorating project in the Nautilus by a wide margin. The contents of the ship are either handmade by myself or handmade by someone else, and sometimes they are joinly made. For example, the bookshelves in the ship are partly made by me out of teakwood. I then enlisted a coppersmith I found on etsy and had him manufacture the copper "spirals" that mimic the style of the shelves in the movie. After receiving those, I glued the teak shelves together, stained them by hand, glued on the copper spirals and sprayed the entire shelving with lacquer. These were installed into one bedroom and the salon.
The map cabinet in the Navigation room, as yet another example, was made entirely my myself out of mahogany that I carefully cut, shaped, drilled, stained and painted. I then bought 7mm copper o rings and glued them onto the front of each map hole in the cabient. Finally, I manufactured fifteen sea charts for it. The strange clocklike mechanisms in the Nautilus are also made by myself by hand - they were a huge and physically painful project (bending copper on a micro scale bites into the fingertips terribly). But most of the furniture and some decoration pieces are made either by individual craftspersons (books, looking glass, porcelain, rugs by L DeLaney and evminatures, to name but two of my favorites), or high end dollhouse miniature companies (especially Bespaq, and Reutters porcelain).
So here we are. They Nautilus is now in phase two, decoration and renovation. I am adding additional shelving, rugs, furniture, curiosities, books, maps, fishing nets and more over the next two years. The bottom level of the Nautilus will come in for special attention in terms of its redecoration. In my view it much be much more spectacular, given how difficult it is to see. There will be hidden treasure (ballast, as Nemo tells Ned Land), an entirely redesigned and decorated kitchen and more. And more 3D helmets are coming as well; I eventually want to have four or five for the entire crew!
I will now spend the next two years or so adding additional levels of detail...
-Alexander
What an incredible project! Congratulations Alexander, and I'm sure your daughter feels like the luckiest girl in the world!
This weeks Designer Spotlight focuses on Chris and Megan of Seedling Design. The pair is interested in mixing 3D printing with traditional materials like wood, ceramics, magnets and textiles, to create playful designs that invite wonder.
Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?
Chris Schmidt and Megan Ender are Seedling Design. We have created jewelry and art for over 10 years and currently work out of our home studio in Oakland, CA. By day Chris is an industrial designer and invents toys for companies such as Mattel, Hasbro, Fisher-Price, MGA and LeapFrog. Megan has a career in non-profit work and art education. We design bold and unique pieces that attract attention and our wish is that you enjoy, get complimented and feel especially delightful wearing our products!
What's the story behind your designs? What inspires you?
Seedling Design stems from the concept of taking a seed of an idea and seeing how we can transform it into something magical. Some concepts we’ve started off with are: Imaginary rock collections, magnetic sculptures, food as jewelry, cool geometry, tensegrity, planet inspired jewelry, self-defense rings, what would our favorite artist’s jewelry look like, textiles with 3D printing, and other mixed media pieces. Inspiration comes from our everyday lives, our childhoods, nature and our interest in geometry, science and technology. We have a list of 200 ideas that keeps growing, including ideas such as how to bring back pop-beads for kids in a modern form.
What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?
In working in the design field for 15 years, Chris has seen the growth of 3D printing and was excited to use the technology. At work Chris uses an FDM (fused deposition modeling) printer all the time, but the output is less than attractive. Any other technology was always too expensive up until we discovered Shapeways. Now we can experiment all we want at a minimal cost.
When Chris was 15, he downloaded a copy of 3D studio and began to tinker. He went through several other 3D programs such as Animation Master, Truespace, Alias and finally discovered Rhino 3D, which he’s been using for the past 15 years.
How do you promote your work?
Since we are just starting out as a part-time, just for fun company, we’re only in the beginning phases of promoting our work. We started on Etsy and we are experimenting selling our work in several local Oakland shops. Since we both have fulltime jobs, getting ourselves out there has been a slow but informative process and we hope to keep expanding our audience.
Who are your favorite designers or artists? Who in the Shapeways community has served as an inspiration to you?
Our favorite artists and designers include: Tara Donovan, Gaudi, Anish Kapoor, Alexander Calder, Buckminster Fuller, Herbert Bayer, Louise Nevelson, Olafur Eliasson, Barbara Hepworth, Gabriel Orozco, Ai Weiwei, Shepard Fairey, Eva Hess and probably 50 more. As far as 3D printing artists, we’ve always liked the work of Nervous System and Bathsheba.
Check out their colorful designs on their Shapeways shop or their website.
Want to be our next featured designer? Send me an email at natalia@shapeways.com.
In my youth, when I was backpacking around the world I spent a few months in Seattle but I never got to see the peak of the Mt. Rainier until the day that I flew out of Tacoma airport, and there above the clouds was the peak of the mountain. It is an image burnt into my memory, of a time in my life of freedom and wonder.
Of course as time passes, memory fades and one forgets or exaggerates the past, so it is always nice to have a little something to hold the memory fast in one's mind. A postcard may act as a trigger, but it is so one dimensional, and could never capture 'that view'. Now TinyMtn comes to the rescue with, tiny 3D printed mountains. Now I can have Mt. Ranier 3D printed on my desktop, and when I want to reminisce, I can drop some dry ice in a glass of water for an impromptu cloud, pull out my iPhone with an Olloclip attachment and fly it around the mountain, peering into the screen just like I peered out of the window in awe of the mountain peak, so many years ago. Thank you TinyMtn...
Shapeways community member and design for 3D printing specialist Cunicode has just launched Crayon Creatures, a simple way to take your child's drawing to 3D print thanks to Shapeways 3D printing, because sticking your child's drawing to the fridge is so 2011.
With Crayon Creatures all you need to do is scan or photograph your child's drawing and upload it to be converted into a 3D form, 3D printed and sent to your door. Each drawing is 3d modeled based exactly on the drawing, not wrapped around a default form so every 3D printed figure is as unique as your child's drawing.
You can see a few of the Crayon Creatures already created in Cunicode's Shapeways shop.
We are seeing more and more applications on Shapeways that make it easy to 3D print without learning how to 3D model. At the same time as we see complex 3D modeling and scanning tools become cheaper and easier to use, we are also seeing these applications and services that allow anyone can make what they want with 3D printing, lowering the barrier to entry.
If there was a perfect tool to make 3D printing easier, what do you think it should be?
Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?
I am an artist, author, designer and yoga teacher, working at the intersections between art science and technology. These practices, often considered divergent, find a common denominator in thinking of ourselves as a part of a system. For instance a yoga posture is about our body defining a geometric form changing in time and relating to space; human movement can also be thought of as a design solution. I have been living in New York for over two decades but I was born and grew up in Rome. Living in a city where you breathe geometry in every building and street, probably had a major influence in my work.
My design work is at different scales and created with media often considered divergent: from land art to video, performance and wearable objects. My explorations are also based on different disciplines and forms of human knowledge: philosophy, cosmology, biology and physics as interpreted by the poetry of images. Geometry as the algorithmic generation of forms is the common denominator of all my practices. I am interested in forms either found in nature, a shell, a sunflower, a leaf, or created by the human imagination, such a Moebius strip or a Triple Periodic Minimal Surface. I work with forms which can be created by a process and evolve from simplicity to complexity through a set of rules; similar to a language, where a sentence is created by linking words together. Similarly I combine a set of points in curves, curves in surfaces and surfaces are then articulated through geometric transformations. I started communicating my explorations in a more systematic and rigorous way by writing and illustrating books: SpaceTecture and Form Geometry Structure: from Nature to Design. My latest effort in publishing is the Mathematical Sublime a series of enhanced e-books where interactive multimedia art becomes a remotely available published product with a global worldwide distribution.
I started working with 3D design in architecture, as my formal degree is a masters in architecture. I have been working with 3D modeling for over twenty years using several different softwares, from AutoCAD to 3dMax, often writing scripts to customize built-in functionality. More recently I have been using Bentley GenerativeComponents, a parametric associative software, where C# scripts can be used to build geometric elements as well as a sequence of transformative operations. I find GC the best design tool so far for its flexibility; the change of parameters allows me to design wearable objects of different sizes and materials specifications using the same set of operations.
What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?
Who are your favorite designers or artists?
Leonardo, Filippo Borromini, Marcel Duchamp, Buckminster Fuller, Philip Stark and Kraftwerk. On Shapeways, I like Bathesba's work a lot.
If you weren't limited by current technologies, what would you want to make using 3D printing?
A leap in scale! I would also focus on materials suitable for outdoor use, waterproof and UV resistant. I've worked on proposals for solar lighting but the cost of realization of prototypes is not yet affordable.
Creativity, in any type of expression or medium, is very important in life. For me creative expression has often represented a means of survival and healing. Being able to make physical objects out of forms which would exist only in the virtual world adds another layer to creative expression.
|
|||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|

Theo Jansen's 3D printed Strandbeest continues to evolve with an even more elaborate walking mechanism and a centipede-like walking motion. The latest evolution called 'Animaris Geneticus Ondularis' walks on twenty separate legs that move in a wave sequence. This new configuration results in a fluent walking motion, different from its twelve legged predecessors. It incorporates 122 moving parts, showcasing the complexity of mechanisms possible with 3D printed fabrication. It is also slightly larger than its predecessors. The operating principle of 'Animaris Geneticus Ondularis' is based on one of Theo Jansen's original beach walkers, the 'Animaris Ondula'.
We have seen our 3D printed ceramics used for quite a few applications that take advantage of the heat resistance and food safe properties, but this is the first smoking hot design to use those same properties for smoking tobacco. Pookas has also designed the Skull Tobacco Pipe with a Bronze Stainless Steel mouthpiece, a clever use of combined 3D printed materials.
This is a fully working tobacco pipe. The head is made 3D printed in glazed ceramics, the mouthpiece is 3D printed in antique bronze glossy.
A pipe is definitely a matchmaker. It makes you look distinguished and sexy. Like a successful scientist, a confident playboy or an experienced sailor.Yeah, tabacco is bad for your health, so use bubbles instead! Works even better cause it gives you a great lemon flavor, but this depends on the dish soap you use. The ladies will appreciate it!
Pookas as bubble blowing playboy.
Joshua Harker has just launched Anatomica di Revolutis on Kickstarter, following up on his massively successful Crania Anatomica Filigre: Me to You project that used Shapeways 3D printing to realize his art.
My latest work entitled "Anatomica di Revolutis" is in honor of the developing 3rd Industrial Revolution. My art has been inspired, enabled, & defined by it. The resources & networks of the revolution are my tools, medium, & art gallery. I'm here to present my art within the context of how & why I make it, not on a shelf or wall in a gallery, but within the current landscape of the public psyche & part of a larger event.
ANATOMICA DI REVOLUTIS: Representing the project is a 3-piece sculpture entitled "Anatomica di Revolutis" (loosely intended to mean "Anatomy of the Revolution"). Each component is designed to assemble together to present a larger narrative about the developing 3rd Industrial Revolution. The fully assembled sculpture features all 3 pieces & symbolizes liberty & prosperity through an empowered participatory populace. It is designed to hang on a wall or other vertical surface.
Good luck to Joshua on his latest Kickstarter project.... Join the revolution.
Great video (no sound though) of giant dual-robot armed DLP Printer building some kind of monsterous resin stalagtite. It is called "Phantom Geometry" and is a masters thesis in architecture by husband and wife team, Kyle von Hasseln and Liz von Hasseln.

The project was developed in the Robot House at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI_Arc) and awarded the inaugural Gehry Prize. The work is focused on the development of a system for generating material volume from streaming data. The creators state: "This system of fabrication relies upon native real-time feed-back and feed-forward mechanisms, and is therefore interruptible and corruptible at any time. The streaming data input may be transformed or modified at any time, and such" interventions impact emerging downstream geometry."

The layers are approx 3.5mm thick, cured in about 90-180 seconds slowing to as much as 500+ seconds as the build progresses (maybe the bulb was dying?). Clear resin was chosen partly to be able to cure thick layers as well as easthetic reasons. They were able to cure 1mm of resin about as quickly as 3.5mm. Layer thickness was chosen for speed & cost considerations. The main idea was to build a large, networked object within the intersecting workspheres of the robots allowing the object to bifurcate and merge with other neighboring stalactites. The second important idea is that the data was accessible in real-time. They were able to modify the 3d geometry as it was printed as well as the 2D image of the sliced 3D geometry right before it was sent to the projector. They were able to control layer thickness on the fly and add perforations. Because of this, they foresee very cool possibilities for scripting geometry.
DUS, a Dutch architecture firm, unveiled their KamerMaker ("RoomBuilder"). It is the first mobile 3D printer with the capacity to print inhabitable pavilions. The technology is based on the Ultimaker printer (essentially RepRap) but can print as large as 2.2 x 2.2 x 3.5 meters. It is housed in a giant chrome box that looks as if aliens had plopped down & begun building homes for themselves. Although arguably not quite large enough yet to build a pavilion in a single go, it could certainly fabricate the pieces for onsite assembly. The idea is to implement a more local & adaptable design approach, reuse available materials, & offer mobile construction of emergency & temporary shelter.

see also: D_Shape
Arts collective panGenerator has created an interesting piece entitled FLOAT. It has surrounded a fish tank (that has a fish in it) with cameras. They plot the fish's movements, compile that & turn it into a 3D Printed sculpture. Exceptionally interesting shapes & patterns made by the random wandering of a fish in it's prison. Always wonderful to see information in a form we can study & appreciate. Would like to see this done with a colony of ants, a flock of starlings...or us in Times Square.

Meet Bathsheba Grossman, whose inspiring mathematical designs have influenced many 3D designers http://t.co/c00fQNMaTw
Once a month we hold our live video chat with the Shapeways community.
That moment is happening now.
Join us at shapeways.com/community/live