August 6, 2014 • 50 mins
Do 3D printers have a place in art? We look at the process of creating a 3D printed object and whether artistry is involved.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says into the
blue again after the money's gone. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm
(00:20):
Lauren Balca, and I'm Joe Reform. So, uh, you know,
I think it's been about fifteen minutes since we talked
about three D printers. So guess what we're gonna do
today talk about three D printers, but in a different
way than we ever have before. Right, We're not just
talking about how they could be transformative for multiple industries.
We're really focusing in on this episode, right, right, we
(00:42):
wanted to talk about three D printers and art. So
this week's video is about the future of art generally.
And one of the most interesting ways that the future
of technology is already influencing and we'll continue to influence
the future of art is digital fabrication in general and
three D printing specifically. Right, So, now we have this
(01:05):
ability to have a machine to uh, to create three
dimensional objects layer by layer, something that makes it, you know,
relatively simple to build relatively complex objects. It's something where
you know, with the additive manufacturing approach. We often say
this is different from subtractive manufacturing, where you have to
(01:25):
cut away or carve away material until you get what
you want. Well, that's the basis for things like sculpture.
Right where you're you're taking, for at least some forms
of sculpture, where you're taking some raw material and cutting
away stuff until you are left with whatever the artist
has envisioned within that that block. Oh stuff. And if
you're taking this other approach where you're building from the
(01:48):
ground up, where's the place? And art doesn't have a
place in art. That's the fact that it's a three
D printer make mean that it shouldn't be an art. Ever,
I would argue that that the three D printers and
art tool and that I mean the same same way
that you're still using your learned skill and talent and
imagination in order to create a sculpture in the traditional way.
(02:09):
Oh you are some sort of free thinking radical. Yeah,
hold on, let me play the the angry person who
wants things to be how they've always been. Okay, I
want things to be how they've always been. Jists are
supposed to you know, when you make a sculpture you're
supposed to hit a piece of rock with a piece
of metal until you can see a face in it,
(02:31):
and then you're supposed to wait a few thousand years
until it has no arms and it's maybe it's head
breaks off, or maybe people decide to remove certain parts
because it no longer fits their aesthetic and they think
that the naughty bits have got to go. Yeah, that
could be one thing. Yeah, that that's how it should be.
I don't like the idea of using machines and computers
(02:52):
to make art. It just seems wrong because technology has
never been part of art in the past, has it. Well, Joe,
that's an fairly different podcast. Let's focus specifically on three
D printers, shall we. Okay, Well, come on, how can
you got to sell me on this idea. How can
something that's made by a machine still be a human
work of art? Well, a human is still designing the artwork.
(03:14):
The machine didn't come up with the way that this
thing looks all by itself. You still have to tell
it what to print out. I mean, so it's it's
just instead of instead of taking away all the parts
of the block of granite that don't look like David,
you're really just adding in all the parts that do
look like David. Yeah. So, so, Joe, let me ask
you a question. Okay, Uh, if I were to hand
(03:37):
you a a tight manuscript, are printed manuscript of a
novel I had written, would you argue that the printer
in fact was the device that wrote that piece of work?
Are you asking me? Are you asking the angry guy
who wants things to be how they've always been? Well, okay, yeah,
even the angry guy who wants things to be how
(03:59):
they've always been is institute e printing by now and
sees that as a perfectly valid way of producing a
work of fiction. Say so. In other words, this three
D printer, while it's creating a three dimensional object, it is,
like you were saying, Lauren, it is a manifestation of
a design that a human has created. It still requires
artistry and skill to create these virtual models that eventually
(04:23):
get printed into three dimensions, skill which perhaps not angry Joe,
but regular Joe is certainly aware of from recent times
of trying to play around with a three D printer
and getting it to do your well, oh yeah, it's
maybe not as easy as you would guess, right, And
that's just printing. You know, some some fairly basic shapes
that you have altered in tiny ways. Imagine creating an
(04:45):
entire shape from scratch that you are just you have
envisioned what this thing is going to look like once
it is eventually completed, and then making sure you're working
within the parameters of the three D printers abilities you know, capacity. Yeah,
some three D printers don't have very high resolution, so
that means you're limited in the shapes you can make,
(05:07):
uh without having some sort of jagged edge to them. Now, granted,
you could also incorporate jagged edges into your design. That
might be part of the effect you're going for. Okay,
So in any case, the creativity is still coming from
the person. Three D printer is just a tool. It's
sort of like a chisel, except it's a very advanced chisel.
It's actually kind of an anti chisel because you don't
(05:28):
have to cut anything away. Well exactly. Yeah. Um, so okay,
maybe let's say I'm the angry guy who wants it
to be how it's always been, and you've convinced me
this far, I say, okay, okay, maybe it could be
just as good as as a regular sculpture, you know,
a chisel the old school way. Are there anyways that
three D printing or that computer aided fabrication might actually
(05:50):
allow us to do things that you couldn't do before.
I came up with this example just off the top
of my head, and really the more I think about,
the more I really would love to see someone implement this.
I personally, I think it has been awesome. And maybe
maybe it's even possible that I have seen this thing
and I just don't remember it, and that therefore it
(06:11):
feels like I've come up with an idea. But really
I'm just remembering what someone else has already done. It's
completely possible, it happens. I've seen a version of it.
But go ahead and explain what you were thinking, so
that what I was thinking of was you take first
a piece of software. You design a piece of software
that can interpret sounds, and based upon those sounds create shapes.
(06:33):
And so just imagine that any sort of hard consonant
sound creates a geometric flat edge or or a corner,
that kind of thing. So do you have the sort
of the ninety degree angles stuff like that. Then more
vowel sounds or soft sounds create sort of curved surfaces,
(06:54):
and then just imagine being able to speak a sentence,
perhaps a fifteen second long or thirty s long amount
of speech into a recorder, which actually is quite a
bit a good Shakespeare quote. Yeah, and then this this
software would then interpret those sounds and create the shakes
based upon what the what sounds it caught, and then
(07:17):
send that to a three D printer, so you get
a physical manifestation of what it is you said based
upon the algorithms that inform the software. Right. The thing
that I was thinking of was, well, a sound wave jewelry,
which is a thing that made some Internet headlines within
the past say six months or so. Um, where you
can record like a word or a sentence and have
(07:39):
it printed or or etched onto a piece of jewelry,
like like a ring or something like that, so you
can you can say I love you and have that
printed onto your wedding band. That's really cool and uh
and and also just yeah, I know, right, um. Or
the kind of stuff that they're doing with some of
the particle accelerator data art where they're looking at the
way that things are bouncing around and they're sort of
(08:01):
letting algorithms spin that out into these very beautiful I
haven't seen it done with three D printing, but but
very beautiful two dimensional uh, pieces of art, pieces of
So the neat thing is that just with you can,
just with a little imagination, you can create something that
would allow this sort of two dimensional manifestation become a
three dimensional manifestation. Now, obviously all of that is dependent
(08:25):
upon the artist who decides how to design that algorithm.
Right the algorithms, oh sure the algorithm didn't create itself,
and artists somewhere along the line has said, this is
what you do. Yeah, when when X happens, do why?
And then you just make sure those rules are followed
properly and uh, then you get the artwork printed out.
(08:46):
It means that everyone would have unique pieces of art.
Even if two people said the same sentence, you know
that the way they say certain words is going to
be interpreted in different ways from with a machine. Unless
they sound identical, you're going to get to at least
subtly different pieces of artwork from it. Which to me, this, this,
to me is an amazing idea that I wish I
(09:08):
could implement, but I have very little in the way
of artistic ability. Well, I love in general the idea
of taking data and turning that into a new physical
form of some kind. They are all kinds of ways
to I guess you would say visualize, but you could also,
I don't know what the word is audioize any kind
you can take data and turn that into a format
(09:30):
that we can sense. Yeah, we talked a little bit
about that in our feature of music episodes a while back,
and and some of the visualization projects that people are
doing with again with some of the particle accelerator data
or stuff like that. Yeah, but that so this could
allow you to do this in three dimensions. Um, So
I want to come back to my angry guy who
(09:51):
wants it to be how it's always been. Okay, what
else does angry guy have to say? Well, he's been
convinced of a couple of things that may maybe it's
it is just a legitimate tool. Three D print is
maybe it can even do some things that a chisel
can't do. Um, but what about the fact that after
I print one copy of this sculpture I've designed on
a computer, I can just press print again, make another one,
(10:13):
and then make another one, make another one, and there's
really no priority, you know. Yeah, that's a yeah, as in,
you can't say that this print out version was the
original and all others are a copy, when in fact,
if you think about it, the original, the quote unquote
original print out is itself a physical copy, a physical
(10:34):
copy of a digital representation. Right, so when you go
to buy a painting, obviously the original one that the
painter painted is way more than a print of that. Well,
and not only that, but that the virtual file, the
file that the printing is based off of, is itself replicatable.
You can reproduce of it. You can copy a digital
(10:57):
file infinite number of times to distribute it. So you
can't even go back to saying, oh, this one file
is the original and therefore it's the thing that has value.
This is tricky, right unless you have either done something
specific like and like included the reproducibility as part of
the artistic expression, which is completely valid. Sure, sure create
(11:21):
something that is in self a statement about reproducibility. Absolutely,
or perhaps there's there may be cases where the artist
ends up creating a virtual model, sends it to print.
Once it's done printing, the artist might destroy that original
file and then you really do have one copy, one original. Yeah. Oh,
that's a scary, scary thing to contemplate doing. I think
(11:44):
it would all depend upon the artist and what the
artist wanted to say clearly, but I I would want
to say to angry Joe here that reproducibility is and
always has been a huge part of and an issue
in art. I mean, way before three D printing ever existed, Okay,
I mean, like for for ages, when students are first
(12:06):
learning how to art, that they sometimes copy or more
modern le trace work from established artists, and and technology
for creating replicas of art go back way to ancient
times like coin stamps, yeah, or or molds for pottery
or bronze, uh millennium or so. After that, we started
creating wood cuttings that allowed for creating multiple prints of
(12:27):
single images, and and later um etched or engraved metal
surfaces to improve the resolution of that kind of printing technology.
And then you know lithography or photography, which we're both developed.
Her photography developed yeah, not only made the pun but
in the notes yeah her uh yeah, no sorry, those
(12:53):
those are both developed in the late seventeen and or
early eighteen hundreds and uh and then motion fell motion
photography in the late eighteen hundreds, and each of these
technologies as they were created, brought the possibility for for
remote viewers to at least in some part experience seeing
works of art that they might otherwise never have access to.
(13:15):
Um and and also opened up new avenues for artists
to make money, which I think we can all agree
on as being a pretty rad thing. Um but unfortunately
also did open the door to to forgeries, which kind
of suck and uh and according to some theory, also
diluted the cultural value of viewing a k A participating
in an original work of art like Angry Joe. Is
(13:39):
kind of implying, by the way, if this, if this
is a topic that is of some kind of interest
to you, this theoretical debate, I do highly recommend an
essay called the Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction, which was written in nineteen thirty six. I
told you people have been worried about this for a
while by a German theorist by the name of Walter Benjamin.
(14:00):
Um was was during that dawn of what we know
as the mass media today, and a lot of people
in the arts were kind of freaking out about it,
this concept of being able to reproduce through photography or film,
the experience of seeing something, and he argued that reproductions
completely removed the the aura or the authenticity of an
(14:22):
original work of art, furthermore, turn viewers from participants in
art into passive consumers, and furthermore, allows kind of negative
stuff like politics or war to be aestheticized in place
of art. Um And Okay, so so that's all a
little bit dire and also perhaps off topic from what
(14:42):
we are talking about. But but I really wanted to
just demonstrate that this has all been worried about before,
all right, And and even though these kind of technological
advances did change the way that we interact with art
and perhaps even the way that we participate in art,
it did not in fact result in, OMG, the end
of all art as we know it, right right, right.
(15:04):
I I don't think the real me agrees with angry
means objection about the reproducibility. I don't necessarily see reproducibility
as a big stumbling block, maybe because I don't necessarily
believe in the aura of an original piece of art. Oh,
it's it's it's an interesting theory, and I do think
(15:24):
that the experience of going and seeing um a Picasso
or the Mona Lisa, or a pyramid is a different
experience than seeing a copy of any of those things
are seeing it on a photograph or in film. But
like like viewing viewing an original painting as opposed to
viewing a print or viewing someone else's copy of that
(15:45):
original painting, even if it looks like it is faithfully
reproduced it you can you know there is something interesting
about that. If you were to ask someone, especially if
they knowingly are viewing a copy, you know, how does
this make you feel as opposed to knowing that the
original of this is in some other museum far away?
(16:06):
You know, there's something psychological there. It doesn't necessarily have
to be imbued in the object itself, but there is
something inside us that makes that different. Yeah. Yeah, I
think it does have to do with I mean, I'm
not saying we literally believe in magic, but there is
some kind of idea of contiguous magic that you know,
it's like oh, this, uh, you know, piece of paper
(16:28):
was really signed by your favorite celebrities, This was touched
by that person, this was interacted some of their atoms
are on that piece of paper. I mean, like, for example,
just recently this this is also kind of a tangent,
but just recently I went to Ireland and saw the
Book of Kells, one of the one of the oldest
illuminated manuscripts in Europe and uh, particularly I mean in Ireland,
(16:50):
and and it brought tears to my eyes to see
this thing. I gonna keep in mind, I was also
a medievalist in college, so it was very much near
and dear to my heart. And I've seen countless replicas
of this and and you know, representations of the artwork
that's in that book, but it didn't have that emotional
impact that seeing the real thing did. Oh sure, But
(17:13):
I would not say that the fact that those reproductions
can be produced period uh is taking anything away from
the original. Absolutely, I agree with that, absolutely, I think
that uh. And in the sense of a three D
printed piece of artwork, I don't even know that if
I even if I knew, hey, the artist could just
(17:34):
hit print and make another one of these, I don't
necessarily think that would take away my admiration for the
skill it took and the artistry it took to design it.
In the first place. Okay, But so all of this
theoretical discussion aside, three D printing art is a real thing. Um,
that is really happening. So let's talk about how that works.
(17:55):
I would imagine, I have not done this myself, that
you can use a three D scanner in order to make,
for example, a reproduction of an artwork. Okay, so now
you're not just a free thinking radical, You're a freethinking
radical who wants to make forgeries of actual art. I
got you pinned here, Lauren. I see where this is going.
But now you're correct. You can use three D scanners
(18:17):
to to replicate things like like existing pieces of artwork,
and not just replicate right to create your own. I mean,
you know, if you were three D scanning UM and
arm in order to incorporate that into some kind of
very weird Clive Barker kind of kind of like, let's
say that you wanted to produce a replica in some
(18:37):
form of Venus de Milo, but in a place of
normal human arms, which would have been there but have
since I've been lost to us terminator arms or I
was gonna say tentacles, but sure terminating clause. Oh crab clause.
Oh yeah, Oh that'd be so great. You can totally
do that. I would love it. Okay, at home, you
might be thinking, what what what I've heard about three
(18:59):
D printing? What's deal with three D scanning? Well, three
D scanners are out there. There a technology that's uh
the sort of the counterpart to a three D printer,
the inverse, if you will. So a three D printer
takes a digital shape and it makes it physical. A
three D scanner samples of physical shape and makes it digital.
So it's sort of like a camera, except what a
(19:21):
camera does is gets a two D picture. A three
D scanner uses a variety of different ways to get
a three D picture. Now, what are the different ways
that a three D scanner could sample a physical object?
My favorite, of course has to be leasers. So, uh yeah,
laser You use the laser line passing it over an object.
(19:44):
This laser line has a sort of a laser and
a camera sensor together, and the camera sensor what it's
doing is it's recording three D points in space. Essentially,
any point where the laser makes contact with a physical
object that becomes a reference point for the virtual object
that will be produced in a computer model. So these
(20:05):
lasers are placed around the outside of the object and
scan in moor d on. Yeah, and you might have
a device that allows you to to just lower a
physical array of lasers that scan the whole thing at once,
or you might have to rotate the object, or rotate
the laser around the object and get several scans in
order to get a full picture, a three dimensional picture
(20:27):
of this object. There are a lot of different implementations
of this laser line, patch and spherical are all examples
of methods to use lasers to to scan a physical object.
But basically you're doing the same thing over and over again.
You're creating these these floating three D points in space
that represent the surface of whatever the object is. Tends
(20:47):
to be a pretty quick way to make a scan.
It's also really good for stuff that's free form and flowy,
kind of organic, you know. The more rounded shapes of
three D scanning is great for that kind of stuff.
So there's another one that you're probably not going to
see popping up in the art world much. This is
going to be more in industrial use, but it's worth
mentioning because it is a way of three D scanning
(21:09):
which would be CT scanning, which uses X rays. Yeah,
this is what you would often get in a medical setting,
like if you go in for computerized tomography, that's what
it stands for. UM. You will go into a room
and they will penetrate your soft, fleshy outer layers with
X rays, which they don't penetrate the hard tissue, so
(21:32):
things like bone tissue they're not going to penetrate. So
you know, you've probably seen you may have actually had
a CT scan or you've probably seen at least a
depiction of one. UH. These are the ones that have
like the doughnut, the rounded UH chamber that can move
either move over a patient or the patient is actually
on a platform that moves through this. The point being
(21:54):
here that they use X rays, which you don't want
to be exposed to for very long. Now for patients,
the X ray does you get in a typical scan
is pretty low, so the risk of any adverse health
effects is also very low. Oh, sure, they have the
operators stand in other rooms because the sheer number of
these things that they would be exposed to over the
(22:16):
course of a day or a week or a lifetime
in the field would in fact be dangerous yes, so
you would you know, if you were wanting to use
CT scanning for three D scanning purposes, it would obviously
be something that you would need the right facility to
use that without putting yourself at a risk. Right, So
this might be more often in an industrial setting, say
to like analyze the structural performance of a part or
(22:37):
a prototype or something like that. It's probably not something
you're going to use in your house to scan your
kid and then make your little action figure of your
kid for your kid. Right now, Joe, I understand that
there's possibly a way of scanning something in three dimensions
using just kind of a simple camera approach. Not just
possibly there there are ways your mouth. Yeah, optical scanning,
(22:59):
uh all, I guess lasers would probably also be optical. Show,
but this would be standard optical scanning with a camera
camera based scanning for real. Yes, uh I My guess
is that this is fairly buggy, but I've never used
it myself, so maybe it would surprise me, but it
is real. You can use a camera on your phone
(23:19):
in combination with the specialized app, Like there's one app
called one to three D Catch, and what you do
is you take photographs from many angles around the object
in question, and so you like go in a circle
around and take photographs from all the different angles. The
app analyzes the photos and then creates a three D model.
In fact, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MET, actually
(23:44):
encourages you to use this method to make digital copies
of their holdings and modify them with your own three
D printing projects. So, in other words, kind of like
how a a DJ might remix various pieces of music
to create something new, you could remake x actual existing
pieces of art. Yeah. Well, I guess the one exception
(24:04):
would be in the exhibits that are specifically labeled like
no photography. But I read I read a little statement
from somebody at the MET saying like, oh yeah, this
is great wherever it's permitted in the museum. Scan them
up and go go home, print them out, do what
you want, and so crab clause clause's And it actually
(24:25):
really cool. Also is that the Met put a bunch
of their pre rendered scans of these exhibits up on
the thingy Verse. It's a site that hosts downloadable three
D designs that you can get yourself. You just go up,
download them, send them to your three D printer. Yeah,
this is, by the way, not that different from the
way the connect scans things. I'll talk about a connect
(24:46):
hack a little bit later, but there are three D
scanners that specifically use infra red light and cameras in
order to make a three dimensional scan. Same basic ideas
what we're talking about here, except instead of using the
visible light that you know you're typical camera relies upon,
it's using infrared light, which is not visible to we
puny mortal humans, but some other animals can see it
(25:08):
pretty well. Anyway, It's the same basic premise as what
is being talked about here, It is just using a
different type of light, a different wavelength. How about digitizing,
So this is cool. So we've talked about using light
and lasers and and X rays. All of these are
electromagnetic means of looking at an object and and getting
(25:29):
a three dimensional model virtual model. Digitizing is using contact.
You're actually using something that's that's making contact with the
physical object itself and running a probe over this object
in order to get very precise readings of what that object,
how it shaped, so that you can create an incredibly
(25:51):
precise three dimensional model of it. Now, this tends to
be really good for geometric shapes that have a lot
of flat surfaces, hard angles, that kind of thing. It's
less good for stuff that happens to have organic free
form shapes. I imagine that would be just the onus
of the probe operator to yeah, to being able to
(26:12):
to fallow around contours. It's it's it's harder to do.
You know, a flat surface is easier to define with
a digitizer than something that is lumpy or has these
these curves surfaces to it, So, uh, you probably would
want to use lasers or some other methodology for that.
But for anything that has got you know, flat surfaces
(26:34):
geometric shapes, this is a really really precise means, and
depending upon what kind of of object you're scanning and
what purpose you're scanning it for, you may actually use
a combination of these approaches to build your virtual model.
So you may do a pass with a digitizer as
well as passes with lasers in order to create as
(26:55):
as uh as faithful virtual replica as you possibly can
for whatever thing you're trying to to replicate. Um. So,
there are actually a lot of these scanners out there
on the market today, but a lot of them are
very expensive. Well, how expensive is very expensive? Well? I
found a list online of of a lot of the
(27:19):
models that are sold. Good number of them were more
than twenty dollars. That's a little dear, it's a little
outside of my price range. Certainly for the hobbyist artist.
That's ah. But there are cheaper ones out there. Um in,
I believe like maker bot is working on one. They've
they've got the maker Bot digitizers. Then of course there
(27:42):
are hacks you can do to turn objects like the
Xbox three sixty connect this into a scanner. This is
really cool, tell us about this. So yeah, like I
was saying that the connect it relies upon infrared sensors
and cameras. Right, So you've got an emitter that shoots
out infrared and in for a grid. Think of it
like think of an overlay that is just a grid
(28:05):
of infrared light and any physical object that encounters that
deforms that grid. And so by by measuring that deformation,
the connect can determine what sort of object is standing
there and when it's moving. This is what allows you
to have that kind of movement based gameplay, and in
fact in three dimensions, right, exactly. So, I mean it's
(28:27):
just like if you were to make a grid of
strings and you then move that grid of strings against
a physical object, that would deform that grid, and you
could see how that was deformed, and that would define
the three dimensional object there, right, same sort of things
that we're just talking about. Light, uh, and it's light
that you cannot see. Um So anyway, imagine that you
(28:47):
have this little grid and then you think, well, what
if I just created some software that could leverage this
in a different way, not just for a way of
of recognizing a user or being able to interpret users
movement as commands for a game, but to actually scan
the user or any other physical object. Well that there
(29:10):
are a lot of people who have done this, including
a kid who uploaded his approach on instructibles and he
just used stuff that was already out there and kind
of created a guide of how you could do this yourself.
And it was great because I watched this video this
kid made, and I mean the kid had to be, uh,
you know, pretty young, maybe thirteen fourteen years old something
(29:30):
along those lines, and he walks through step by step
explaining exactly what you need to do, how you can
set up your connect um. Again, this is a three
sixty connect. The Xbox one connect is more locked down,
it is less hacker friendly, but the three sixty one
had a lot of use that people have have leveraged
(29:50):
for various things, everything from digital puppetry to three D scanners.
And he demonstrate exactly how to do this, what drivers
you needed to download, how to connect to your connect
to a PC so that you can upload the right software,
and how you could then use it to capture three
dimensional images. He even used himself as a model, sat down,
(30:11):
did two full rotations to try and get as accurate
a model as possible, and then even said, these these
patchy parts we can fix in editing. So even after
you are done, even if it's not a perfect three
dimensional model, you can fix that in editing software. So
it's really cool. It was, and it was again one
of those things that anyone could follow, and the kid
(30:32):
made it very understandable, very easy for you to to
do yourself. If you have a three connect at home,
but if you wanted something a little bit little more
off the shelf, less d I Y, there's an option
for that too. Write There are plenty of them. The
one that I have in our notes specifically is three
D systems since scanner s E N S E scanner
(30:55):
and this one is another infrared scanner, so it's using
the same basic technology as a connect but this case
it's meant as a three dimensional scanner specifically, and it's
a little handheld unit. It kind of looks like something
that you would see off Star Trek, you know, like
you would want to scan the environment, some kind of
little wand sort of thing. Almost. Yeah, I'm sure I
could find this out if I looked it up, but
(31:15):
I don't even know how that would work. If it's handheld.
I would think that the scanner would need to be stationary,
not at all. That's the That's the interesting thing is
that you can actually have this handheld scanner and you
you wave it across whatever physical object you're trying to scan,
and the software itself can interpret those three dimensional points
and build that model. And this would even allow you
(31:38):
to scan fairly large objects like a motorcycle, and it
wouldn't even have to be something on a small scale. Um,
it does help if the object you're scanning is very
very very still, so scanning a person would be a
little more problematic. Than say scanning a table or a
chair or a motorcycle. But it is pretty nifty, not
(31:59):
cost about three and um, it's something that is proprietary
to the Cuba Fi three D printer. It's it's meant
to work with one of those. So that means that
you're kind of locked down into what equipment you can
use to to make this useful for three D printing purposes.
(32:20):
But it's still pretty cool. Yeah, Okay, So let's try
to imagine this whole process. Uh so you want to
get a Venus de Milo with a Jonathan Strickland head
and crab claw arms. Who wouldn't who wouldn't want that
in their living room? Or you know? Four? What what
does the whole process look like? So I guess you
(32:40):
take your handheld scanner to the museum. Where where is
the Venus Demilo right now? Right now? I don't know.
She could be anywhere. Yes, she she could be lurking
around the corner. You're gonna look that up for us, Joe,
hold on, Yeah, I'm gonna find out. Okay, it looks
like it's the love Okay, Okay, that's good, assuming that
she's not actually a weeping angel. Right. So assuming one
(33:02):
that she's not a weeping angel, and that two you
are allowed to carry said handheld three three dimensional scanner
into the louver and then into her wing and exactly.
But let's let's assume you've got the full clearance to
do this. So you would go to the Venus de
milo Uh sculpture and you would scan it thoroughly so
that you've got a nice virtual model of it. Right.
(33:24):
Then you would also need a three dimensional model of
you know, my head. Yeah, so we'd scan your head,
and we we'd scan some crab clause. Right. If you
didn't want to create the virtual model of crab clause yourself,
then you would scan some crab clause, delicious crab clause.
You would pull all of these together in some form
of computer aided design program, right, so you'd hook it
(33:45):
up to your computer. And we've talked about CAD programs before,
but basically they're they're sort of for the three D
world what Photoshop is to the two D world. They
let you manipulate three D objects in a in a
digital space, and you can do all kinds of reshaping
and right neat little tricks. You would need to obviously
scale all three elements properly so that you could fit
(34:06):
them together for your three dimensional model, right, because if
you had tiny little crab claws on the Venus de
Milo that would be ludicrous, or or a ginormous Jonathan
head that would be disturbing. It's improperly scaled, that would
be horrible. You don't you don't want to have a
super deformed Jonathan head Venus de Milo crab claw armed creations.
(34:29):
So we get done with the final thing. We we've
combined them all into one file, and then basically you're
about done. You just well, you might need to go
through one more step, which is, uh, what's going to
have to happen with some three D printers is you're
translating this object file like a dot O b J
or a dot STL. This is the object file you
(34:51):
edit into a file that is a direct set of
instructions for your printer, perhaps a proprietary one I would
imagine some of the printers deal with I think. So
it would really depend upon what scanner you were using,
what what computers. Yeah, so there are some suites where
you're going to be using a specific scanner, which in
(35:13):
turn is going to determine what software you use, which
in which also works with a specific type of printer,
and if everything is working within that same ecosystem, it's
relatively simple to go from scan to virtual model to print.
Some others might mean that you have to do some
conversion along the way, either from whatever file your scanner
(35:34):
is creating or whatever file your virtual software is creating
to whatever files your printer will accept. Then there may
be more work on your end depending upon that, But
that's it. There you go after after four or five
adhesion failures. Of course, assuming that all goes as it should. Yeah,
(35:57):
then you have your beautiful designed, your your venus district
lond with crab claws, and the art world has forever changed.
I mean, you have revolutionized a generation. You might be
staring at this creation thinking what hath I wrought? And
you may have a kind of a metaphysical um you know,
(36:21):
dilemma on your hands about do I allow any other
human to lay eyes upon this and risk them to
lose sanity in the great Cathulu Mythos version. But but
in a fun way, you know, in a in a
gay culture way. Yeah, it might be one of those
ways where you you have that and you think well,
this needs to be shared to the rest of the
world so that we can all wallow old rich horror
(36:43):
that we have produced. Yeah. Yeah, but so I wanna
I want to I want to bring this discussion back
for completely non nefarious purposes to forgeries. Oh boy, So
we talked about reproducibility, and now we've introduced scanning. I
wonder what you could do with the idea of of
(37:05):
scanning of works of art and endless reproducibility. Okay, I
have not heard any news stories of forgery artists creating
and selling three D scanned and printed copies on the
illegal black market, right well, with some things that might
be really hard to do because with like say a
large marble sculpture or something like that, your three D
(37:26):
printer can't make that right now, nothing yet. I don't know,
is there a marble printer out there? It would be really, really,
really hard to do. Yeah. Um, but but similar technology
for some types of art does exist already on a
commercial front, So probably it's really only a matter of
(37:48):
time before we've got some kind of update to the
Thomas Crown affair that involves right there, there's they're multiple
incarnations of the Thomas Kroniffair. You don't have to necessarily
grab one. I'm thinking of that horrible pierced Braska. Please proceed. Alright,
(38:09):
So already on the market for the discerning but not
a billionaire art collector. Fuci Film has created a process
that will let you own a copy of a Van
Go that's like accurate down to the original frame, the
three dimensional brush strokes, the paint textures, and the scrawled
notes on the back of the canvas. They're they're calling
(38:29):
this process really biography. And each reproduction created with this
process costs thirty four thousand dollars or so um. But
that's still cheaper than you know, Van Go so grand.
I mean, that's that's like nothing, that's nothing in the
in the world of an original, verified Van Go. How
(38:53):
much does a van cost? I'm going to how much
does go for? Oh? No, com Now we're talking millions
of dollars for an original van Go. Now let me
ask you this, Lauren. If I were to buy such
a reproduction, would it be convincing enough for me to
(39:13):
to go around claiming, oh, this is the original Van Go?
It would not. It would not fool an expert. It
would probably fool your friends. Well, my friends are dumb. Okay,
so that's not saying a lot. Well, I mean they
have to be friends with me. You gotta have you
gotta aim low. Well, that is pretty cool, the idea
that you can use these techniques not just to reproduce
the two dimensional aspect of painting, but literally the brushstrokes
(39:36):
the texture of it right right. Um. The Vango Museum
in Amsterdam has been helping to fund the project and
therefore has a three year contract out on the technology
with Fujifilm. But but after that it will hypothetically open
up to other museums or possibly the public, I mean
the you know, the really well funded public. The fact
that the van Go Museum is partnering with this should
(39:59):
tell you a it's not a legitimate uh threat for
like a truly convincing not legitimately illegitimate. Well, I mean
it's not a threat. How about you put that way?
Otherwise it's not a threat. They don't consider it. They're
not worried about this becoming such a thing that I
(40:20):
mean partially because it is such a process that they
really have to work very directly. I mean, if you
were going to break into a museum and three ds.
It's not as simple as just waving a wand over. Yeah, now,
it is pretty amazing how how incredibly accurate a very
thorough laser scan can be. But then when you think
about it, it's light, you know, it's light. Light is
(40:41):
made up of these tiny little particles, tiny little wavelengths,
and uh, and it can happen really really fast. I'm
always amazed this kind of a tangent, but I'm always
amazed at how quickly light can ascertain something like a
a scan of a barcode, for example. How it happens
so quickly, and you think, wow, that lea's fast than
you're thinking, Oh wait, I'm working with light speed of light,
(41:04):
so it really shouldn't surprise me that it goes quickly.
A lot of these classic works are also behind cases
or I mean it's it would be you would have
to might be large early people who are to remove
you forcibly. Yeah, lots of security systems, um. But the
FUJIFILM isn't even the only people who are working on this.
(41:24):
A group within Cannon has also been collaborating with Dutch
researcher Tim Zaman to do essentially the same thing. So
some artists and designers are creating restorations and fa similies
of even older works using three D printing plus a
few other techniques to kind of stitch everything together. There's
this one design company called Factum art or art or
(41:46):
I don't know Italian. I think, I think, I think
it would be okay, excellent Um that's working on a
life size copy of of King Tut's tomb with the
hope of eventually taking tourist pressure off of the original.
That's also, yeah, because with things like archaeological sites, oh yeah,
every time you walk through it, you're ruining little bits
of it. So I would I would absolutely love to
(42:09):
go through a a faithful reproduction of reproduction, something that's
like a faithful reproduction of any historical site where I
can feel like I can move through it and have
the experience of what it would have been like to
go through that space, and also know that I am
not simultaneously destroying it. Yeah, destroying it even on just
(42:31):
a minute level. Because I think about walking through Shakespeare's
House at Strafford upon Avon and and and loving that experience,
but then thinking, yeah, just the fact that I'm here
means that this building has suffered a little ware and tear. Now, granted,
pretty much every part of that building has been replaced
at some point or another, but that's a totally different
(42:51):
philosophical discussion, which we've talked about in another podcast, or
at least we've alluded to, so we won't go into
that here. So, so that kind of thing is becoming
a physical possibility. And furthermore, that same group is working
with Sir john Son's Museum in London to fabricate pieces
based on an eighteenth century artist's etchings of ancient Roman artifacts.
(43:14):
These things only exist at the current moment in two
dimensional etchings, and they're creating actual sculptures based on what
this dude was drawing. Okay, so it's is a three
dimensional representation of a two dimensional representation of a three
dimensional object. That that's pretty awesome, And like, at that point,
is it? Is it a forgery? Is an entirely new art?
(43:36):
Like what are they even doing? It's a copy of
a copy of an original of a that's yeah, I mean,
that's that's an interesting it's a brand new question. It's
brand new category exciting stuff that wouldn't have been possible
without this kind of level of technology. Okay, so my
angry art fan who wants things to be how they've
always been. He's very convinced at this point, except he
(43:58):
has one last reservation. Okay, he's like, does anybody else
in the art world take digitally fabricated artwork? Seriously? I mean,
is there any place in the world where this has
actually been shown in a museum or short answer, yes, yeah,
there are actually quite a few museums I have shown
some three D printed stuff or have incorporated three D
(44:20):
printing directly into installations. Let us talk about some of those,
shall we? All right, how about this exhibit out of hand?
The sounds interesting? Yeah, The MAD the Museum of Arts
and Design in Manhattan, and it was an exhibit featuring
not just three D printed objects, but generally digital fabrication,
and three D printing was one of the aspects of that. Right.
(44:41):
They also included a lecture series about the various methods
that art as used so that people could learn more
about digital fabrication. But a lot of their artworks are
really cool, and I mean I legitimately I look at
that and say I want to see that just as
much as I want to see traditional artworks. Oh sure,
and it was some terrific functional pieces as well, right,
(45:03):
like they had like furniture or they even had flatwear
likewere like strange kling on silverware. Yeah, it kind of
made me think of something that you had see in
a science fiction film where you know, you're the the
human is sat down at the dinner table along all
the aliens and it's like, I don't know if that's
a salad fork or an eviscerating knife. I kind of
(45:25):
kind of thing yea, or or or press thess to
which um which I think that we talked a little
bit about way when we first started the show, the
beautiful things that artists are doing to create wonderful original
pross theses for customers. Yeah, so it doesn't really make
all that much sense for us to just try to
describe how they look on here. But you should go
(45:46):
look this up. It's the exhibit is called out of
Hand at the Mad Museum website. You should look it up.
They've got pictures of a lot of their things from
this exhibit. It's really cool. You'll try to remember to
to blog about it or post on so Shellson of
the links to this staff and there are other examples
that have been featured in some some museums of note. Right. Yeah,
one example I found was called Fractal Dot mg X
(46:10):
and this was at the MET. We talked about the
matter earlier, um, but it was it was designed. It
was a three D printed object based on fractal patterns,
which are fractals are are representations of mathematical sets. And uh,
this was a table that married the art and beauty
of fractals with the practicality of furniture. So you had
(46:33):
to you know, you couldn't just make a bunch of
three D printed fractals without making some sort of of
aesthetic changes so that you can make it a functional
piece of furniture. Is not currently on display at the MET,
but it is in their collection. Uh. And they've also
have hosted three D hackathons, which they allow visiting artists
to come in and create digital fabrication exhibits and and
(46:58):
also to to just communicate with the public about what
it is they do and how it's done. Um. I've
seen some great pictures of people just being able to
walk through into an enormous room just filled with three
D printers. So imagine that that lovely little smell we
get whenever we print a thing here in the office,
just filling an entire room because there's thirty of these
(47:18):
things that's going to be the good stuff right there. Uh.
And then there's also I mean, it's not really like
an official museum or anything, but there are a lot
of festivals like maker Fair, uh that have lots of
folks using three D printers in creative and artistic ways.
And you know maker Fair, you think of it, it's
it's usually I think of it as a sense of
(47:38):
of hackers who have built interesting stuff that does something
really cool. But in a lot of cases it is
really a work of art. It's not meant to necessarily
be something that's practical, or in some cases it's both
practical and art. You don't have to be one or
the other. Oh sure. And I think that there's a
perception within the community or within the greater Western culture
(47:59):
that that kind of stuff is a craft rather than
an art, and certainly not a fine art. But I
think that one of the beautiful things about all of
this technology and bringing all of this technology into the
kind of normal consumer level of price range, is that
it allows any normal person who has the drive to
do so, to create art and and that's and share
(48:22):
it with people. Furthermore, I mean, imagine people who have
these amazing visions of art, but not necessarily the capability
of bringing it into reality through the traditional means that
it opens up a world that we would never be
able to experience because we would never be able to
see that person's vision writer, or the access to the
(48:43):
kind of education that some of the great masters would
have had, or you know. Yeah, So, I mean it's
really we're really excited about three D printers in their
place and art and uh, don't don't be the grumpy
old man. Uh that Joe was portray angry Joe was
the angry Joe was. Yeah, be the be, the be
the very mellow accepting man that Joe is. Now. In
(49:06):
another podcast coming up this week, we're also going to
talk about another aspect of the angry old man and art,
who more generally just thinks that art should be low
tex So if you're interested in that topic, check us
out again. Yeah, well, we'll definitely be chatting about that
and having a lot of angry old man type of arguments.
(49:26):
I might even throw in my own version of the
angry old Joe, which is really just Jonathan. Yeahs. So, guys,
if you have any suggestions for future episodes of forward Thinking,
maybe there's something that you've always wondered about about you know,
what is this going to be like in the future,
and you want to hear our take on it, or
you just maybe you want us to to really dive
(49:49):
into some specific topic. Let us know, send us a
message on Facebook or Twitter, or Google Plus or handle
at all three is f w thinking. We look forward
to hearing from you and will pop to you again
really soon. For more on this topic and the future
of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to you
(50:21):
by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says into the
blue again after the money's gone. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm
(00:20):
Lauren Balca, and I'm Joe Reform. So, uh, you know,
I think it's been about fifteen minutes since we talked
about three D printers. So guess what we're gonna do
today talk about three D printers, but in a different
way than we ever have before. Right, We're not just
talking about how they could be transformative for multiple industries.
We're really focusing in on this episode, right, right, we
(00:42):
wanted to talk about three D printers and art. So
this week's video is about the future of art generally.
And one of the most interesting ways that the future
of technology is already influencing and we'll continue to influence
the future of art is digital fabrication in general and
three D printing specifically. Right, So, now we have this
(01:05):
ability to have a machine to uh, to create three
dimensional objects layer by layer, something that makes it, you know,
relatively simple to build relatively complex objects. It's something where
you know, with the additive manufacturing approach. We often say
this is different from subtractive manufacturing, where you have to
(01:25):
cut away or carve away material until you get what
you want. Well, that's the basis for things like sculpture.
Right where you're you're taking, for at least some forms
of sculpture, where you're taking some raw material and cutting
away stuff until you are left with whatever the artist
has envisioned within that that block. Oh stuff. And if
you're taking this other approach where you're building from the
(01:48):
ground up, where's the place? And art doesn't have a
place in art. That's the fact that it's a three
D printer make mean that it shouldn't be an art. Ever,
I would argue that that the three D printers and
art tool and that I mean the same same way
that you're still using your learned skill and talent and
imagination in order to create a sculpture in the traditional way.
(02:09):
Oh you are some sort of free thinking radical. Yeah,
hold on, let me play the the angry person who
wants things to be how they've always been. Okay, I
want things to be how they've always been. Jists are
supposed to you know, when you make a sculpture you're
supposed to hit a piece of rock with a piece
of metal until you can see a face in it,
(02:31):
and then you're supposed to wait a few thousand years
until it has no arms and it's maybe it's head
breaks off, or maybe people decide to remove certain parts
because it no longer fits their aesthetic and they think
that the naughty bits have got to go. Yeah, that
could be one thing. Yeah, that that's how it should be.
I don't like the idea of using machines and computers
(02:52):
to make art. It just seems wrong because technology has
never been part of art in the past, has it. Well, Joe,
that's an fairly different podcast. Let's focus specifically on three
D printers, shall we. Okay, Well, come on, how can
you got to sell me on this idea. How can
something that's made by a machine still be a human
work of art? Well, a human is still designing the artwork.
(03:14):
The machine didn't come up with the way that this
thing looks all by itself. You still have to tell
it what to print out. I mean, so it's it's
just instead of instead of taking away all the parts
of the block of granite that don't look like David,
you're really just adding in all the parts that do
look like David. Yeah. So, so, Joe, let me ask
you a question. Okay, Uh, if I were to hand
(03:37):
you a a tight manuscript, are printed manuscript of a
novel I had written, would you argue that the printer
in fact was the device that wrote that piece of work?
Are you asking me? Are you asking the angry guy
who wants things to be how they've always been? Well, okay, yeah,
even the angry guy who wants things to be how
(03:59):
they've always been is institute e printing by now and
sees that as a perfectly valid way of producing a
work of fiction. Say so. In other words, this three
D printer, while it's creating a three dimensional object, it is,
like you were saying, Lauren, it is a manifestation of
a design that a human has created. It still requires
artistry and skill to create these virtual models that eventually
(04:23):
get printed into three dimensions, skill which perhaps not angry Joe,
but regular Joe is certainly aware of from recent times
of trying to play around with a three D printer
and getting it to do your well, oh yeah, it's
maybe not as easy as you would guess, right, And
that's just printing. You know, some some fairly basic shapes
that you have altered in tiny ways. Imagine creating an
(04:45):
entire shape from scratch that you are just you have
envisioned what this thing is going to look like once
it is eventually completed, and then making sure you're working
within the parameters of the three D printers abilities you know, capacity. Yeah,
some three D printers don't have very high resolution, so
that means you're limited in the shapes you can make,
(05:07):
uh without having some sort of jagged edge to them. Now, granted,
you could also incorporate jagged edges into your design. That
might be part of the effect you're going for. Okay,
So in any case, the creativity is still coming from
the person. Three D printer is just a tool. It's
sort of like a chisel, except it's a very advanced chisel.
It's actually kind of an anti chisel because you don't
(05:28):
have to cut anything away. Well exactly. Yeah. Um, so okay,
maybe let's say I'm the angry guy who wants it
to be how it's always been, and you've convinced me
this far, I say, okay, okay, maybe it could be
just as good as as a regular sculpture, you know,
a chisel the old school way. Are there anyways that
three D printing or that computer aided fabrication might actually
(05:50):
allow us to do things that you couldn't do before.
I came up with this example just off the top
of my head, and really the more I think about,
the more I really would love to see someone implement this.
I personally, I think it has been awesome. And maybe
maybe it's even possible that I have seen this thing
and I just don't remember it, and that therefore it
(06:11):
feels like I've come up with an idea. But really
I'm just remembering what someone else has already done. It's
completely possible, it happens. I've seen a version of it.
But go ahead and explain what you were thinking, so
that what I was thinking of was you take first
a piece of software. You design a piece of software
that can interpret sounds, and based upon those sounds create shapes.
(06:33):
And so just imagine that any sort of hard consonant
sound creates a geometric flat edge or or a corner,
that kind of thing. So do you have the sort
of the ninety degree angles stuff like that. Then more
vowel sounds or soft sounds create sort of curved surfaces,
(06:54):
and then just imagine being able to speak a sentence,
perhaps a fifteen second long or thirty s long amount
of speech into a recorder, which actually is quite a
bit a good Shakespeare quote. Yeah, and then this this
software would then interpret those sounds and create the shakes
based upon what the what sounds it caught, and then
(07:17):
send that to a three D printer, so you get
a physical manifestation of what it is you said based
upon the algorithms that inform the software. Right. The thing
that I was thinking of was, well, a sound wave jewelry,
which is a thing that made some Internet headlines within
the past say six months or so. Um, where you
can record like a word or a sentence and have
(07:39):
it printed or or etched onto a piece of jewelry,
like like a ring or something like that, so you
can you can say I love you and have that
printed onto your wedding band. That's really cool and uh
and and also just yeah, I know, right, um. Or
the kind of stuff that they're doing with some of
the particle accelerator data art where they're looking at the
way that things are bouncing around and they're sort of
(08:01):
letting algorithms spin that out into these very beautiful I
haven't seen it done with three D printing, but but
very beautiful two dimensional uh, pieces of art, pieces of
So the neat thing is that just with you can,
just with a little imagination, you can create something that
would allow this sort of two dimensional manifestation become a
three dimensional manifestation. Now, obviously all of that is dependent
(08:25):
upon the artist who decides how to design that algorithm.
Right the algorithms, oh sure the algorithm didn't create itself,
and artists somewhere along the line has said, this is
what you do. Yeah, when when X happens, do why?
And then you just make sure those rules are followed
properly and uh, then you get the artwork printed out.
(08:46):
It means that everyone would have unique pieces of art.
Even if two people said the same sentence, you know
that the way they say certain words is going to
be interpreted in different ways from with a machine. Unless
they sound identical, you're going to get to at least
subtly different pieces of artwork from it. Which to me, this, this,
to me is an amazing idea that I wish I
(09:08):
could implement, but I have very little in the way
of artistic ability. Well, I love in general the idea
of taking data and turning that into a new physical
form of some kind. They are all kinds of ways
to I guess you would say visualize, but you could also,
I don't know what the word is audioize any kind
you can take data and turn that into a format
(09:30):
that we can sense. Yeah, we talked a little bit
about that in our feature of music episodes a while back,
and and some of the visualization projects that people are
doing with again with some of the particle accelerator data
or stuff like that. Yeah, but that so this could
allow you to do this in three dimensions. Um, So
I want to come back to my angry guy who
(09:51):
wants it to be how it's always been. Okay, what
else does angry guy have to say? Well, he's been
convinced of a couple of things that may maybe it's
it is just a legitimate tool. Three D print is
maybe it can even do some things that a chisel
can't do. Um, but what about the fact that after
I print one copy of this sculpture I've designed on
a computer, I can just press print again, make another one,
(10:13):
and then make another one, make another one, and there's
really no priority, you know. Yeah, that's a yeah, as in,
you can't say that this print out version was the
original and all others are a copy, when in fact,
if you think about it, the original, the quote unquote
original print out is itself a physical copy, a physical
(10:34):
copy of a digital representation. Right, so when you go
to buy a painting, obviously the original one that the
painter painted is way more than a print of that. Well,
and not only that, but that the virtual file, the
file that the printing is based off of, is itself replicatable.
You can reproduce of it. You can copy a digital
(10:57):
file infinite number of times to distribute it. So you
can't even go back to saying, oh, this one file
is the original and therefore it's the thing that has value.
This is tricky, right unless you have either done something
specific like and like included the reproducibility as part of
the artistic expression, which is completely valid. Sure, sure create
(11:21):
something that is in self a statement about reproducibility. Absolutely,
or perhaps there's there may be cases where the artist
ends up creating a virtual model, sends it to print.
Once it's done printing, the artist might destroy that original
file and then you really do have one copy, one original. Yeah. Oh,
that's a scary, scary thing to contemplate doing. I think
(11:44):
it would all depend upon the artist and what the
artist wanted to say clearly, but I I would want
to say to angry Joe here that reproducibility is and
always has been a huge part of and an issue
in art. I mean, way before three D printing ever existed, Okay,
I mean, like for for ages, when students are first
(12:06):
learning how to art, that they sometimes copy or more
modern le trace work from established artists, and and technology
for creating replicas of art go back way to ancient
times like coin stamps, yeah, or or molds for pottery
or bronze, uh millennium or so. After that, we started
creating wood cuttings that allowed for creating multiple prints of
(12:27):
single images, and and later um etched or engraved metal
surfaces to improve the resolution of that kind of printing technology.
And then you know lithography or photography, which we're both developed.
Her photography developed yeah, not only made the pun but
in the notes yeah her uh yeah, no sorry, those
(12:53):
those are both developed in the late seventeen and or
early eighteen hundreds and uh and then motion fell motion
photography in the late eighteen hundreds, and each of these
technologies as they were created, brought the possibility for for
remote viewers to at least in some part experience seeing
works of art that they might otherwise never have access to.
(13:15):
Um and and also opened up new avenues for artists
to make money, which I think we can all agree
on as being a pretty rad thing. Um but unfortunately
also did open the door to to forgeries, which kind
of suck and uh and according to some theory, also
diluted the cultural value of viewing a k A participating
in an original work of art like Angry Joe. Is
(13:39):
kind of implying, by the way, if this, if this
is a topic that is of some kind of interest
to you, this theoretical debate, I do highly recommend an
essay called the Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction, which was written in nineteen thirty six. I
told you people have been worried about this for a
while by a German theorist by the name of Walter Benjamin.
(14:00):
Um was was during that dawn of what we know
as the mass media today, and a lot of people
in the arts were kind of freaking out about it,
this concept of being able to reproduce through photography or film,
the experience of seeing something, and he argued that reproductions
completely removed the the aura or the authenticity of an
(14:22):
original work of art, furthermore, turn viewers from participants in
art into passive consumers, and furthermore, allows kind of negative
stuff like politics or war to be aestheticized in place
of art. Um And Okay, so so that's all a
little bit dire and also perhaps off topic from what
(14:42):
we are talking about. But but I really wanted to
just demonstrate that this has all been worried about before,
all right, And and even though these kind of technological
advances did change the way that we interact with art
and perhaps even the way that we participate in art,
it did not in fact result in, OMG, the end
of all art as we know it, right right, right.
(15:04):
I I don't think the real me agrees with angry
means objection about the reproducibility. I don't necessarily see reproducibility
as a big stumbling block, maybe because I don't necessarily
believe in the aura of an original piece of art. Oh,
it's it's it's an interesting theory, and I do think
(15:24):
that the experience of going and seeing um a Picasso
or the Mona Lisa, or a pyramid is a different
experience than seeing a copy of any of those things
are seeing it on a photograph or in film. But
like like viewing viewing an original painting as opposed to
viewing a print or viewing someone else's copy of that
(15:45):
original painting, even if it looks like it is faithfully
reproduced it you can you know there is something interesting
about that. If you were to ask someone, especially if
they knowingly are viewing a copy, you know, how does
this make you feel as opposed to knowing that the
original of this is in some other museum far away?
(16:06):
You know, there's something psychological there. It doesn't necessarily have
to be imbued in the object itself, but there is
something inside us that makes that different. Yeah. Yeah, I
think it does have to do with I mean, I'm
not saying we literally believe in magic, but there is
some kind of idea of contiguous magic that you know,
it's like oh, this, uh, you know, piece of paper
(16:28):
was really signed by your favorite celebrities, This was touched
by that person, this was interacted some of their atoms
are on that piece of paper. I mean, like, for example,
just recently this this is also kind of a tangent,
but just recently I went to Ireland and saw the
Book of Kells, one of the one of the oldest
illuminated manuscripts in Europe and uh, particularly I mean in Ireland,
(16:50):
and and it brought tears to my eyes to see
this thing. I gonna keep in mind, I was also
a medievalist in college, so it was very much near
and dear to my heart. And I've seen countless replicas
of this and and you know, representations of the artwork
that's in that book, but it didn't have that emotional
impact that seeing the real thing did. Oh sure, But
(17:13):
I would not say that the fact that those reproductions
can be produced period uh is taking anything away from
the original. Absolutely, I agree with that, absolutely, I think
that uh. And in the sense of a three D
printed piece of artwork, I don't even know that if
I even if I knew, hey, the artist could just
(17:34):
hit print and make another one of these, I don't
necessarily think that would take away my admiration for the
skill it took and the artistry it took to design it.
In the first place. Okay, But so all of this
theoretical discussion aside, three D printing art is a real thing. Um,
that is really happening. So let's talk about how that works.
(17:55):
I would imagine, I have not done this myself, that
you can use a three D scanner in order to make,
for example, a reproduction of an artwork. Okay, so now
you're not just a free thinking radical, You're a freethinking
radical who wants to make forgeries of actual art. I
got you pinned here, Lauren. I see where this is going.
But now you're correct. You can use three D scanners
(18:17):
to to replicate things like like existing pieces of artwork,
and not just replicate right to create your own. I mean,
you know, if you were three D scanning UM and
arm in order to incorporate that into some kind of
very weird Clive Barker kind of kind of like, let's
say that you wanted to produce a replica in some
(18:37):
form of Venus de Milo, but in a place of
normal human arms, which would have been there but have
since I've been lost to us terminator arms or I
was gonna say tentacles, but sure terminating clause. Oh crab clause.
Oh yeah, Oh that'd be so great. You can totally
do that. I would love it. Okay, at home, you
might be thinking, what what what I've heard about three
(18:59):
D printing? What's deal with three D scanning? Well, three
D scanners are out there. There a technology that's uh
the sort of the counterpart to a three D printer,
the inverse, if you will. So a three D printer
takes a digital shape and it makes it physical. A
three D scanner samples of physical shape and makes it digital.
So it's sort of like a camera, except what a
(19:21):
camera does is gets a two D picture. A three
D scanner uses a variety of different ways to get
a three D picture. Now, what are the different ways
that a three D scanner could sample a physical object?
My favorite, of course has to be leasers. So, uh yeah,
laser You use the laser line passing it over an object.
(19:44):
This laser line has a sort of a laser and
a camera sensor together, and the camera sensor what it's
doing is it's recording three D points in space. Essentially,
any point where the laser makes contact with a physical
object that becomes a reference point for the virtual object
that will be produced in a computer model. So these
(20:05):
lasers are placed around the outside of the object and
scan in moor d on. Yeah, and you might have
a device that allows you to to just lower a
physical array of lasers that scan the whole thing at once,
or you might have to rotate the object, or rotate
the laser around the object and get several scans in
order to get a full picture, a three dimensional picture
(20:27):
of this object. There are a lot of different implementations
of this laser line, patch and spherical are all examples
of methods to use lasers to to scan a physical object.
But basically you're doing the same thing over and over again.
You're creating these these floating three D points in space
that represent the surface of whatever the object is. Tends
(20:47):
to be a pretty quick way to make a scan.
It's also really good for stuff that's free form and flowy,
kind of organic, you know. The more rounded shapes of
three D scanning is great for that kind of stuff.
So there's another one that you're probably not going to
see popping up in the art world much. This is
going to be more in industrial use, but it's worth
mentioning because it is a way of three D scanning
(21:09):
which would be CT scanning, which uses X rays. Yeah,
this is what you would often get in a medical setting,
like if you go in for computerized tomography, that's what
it stands for. UM. You will go into a room
and they will penetrate your soft, fleshy outer layers with
X rays, which they don't penetrate the hard tissue, so
(21:32):
things like bone tissue they're not going to penetrate. So
you know, you've probably seen you may have actually had
a CT scan or you've probably seen at least a
depiction of one. UH. These are the ones that have
like the doughnut, the rounded UH chamber that can move
either move over a patient or the patient is actually
on a platform that moves through this. The point being
(21:54):
here that they use X rays, which you don't want
to be exposed to for very long. Now for patients,
the X ray does you get in a typical scan
is pretty low, so the risk of any adverse health
effects is also very low. Oh, sure, they have the
operators stand in other rooms because the sheer number of
these things that they would be exposed to over the
(22:16):
course of a day or a week or a lifetime
in the field would in fact be dangerous yes, so
you would you know, if you were wanting to use
CT scanning for three D scanning purposes, it would obviously
be something that you would need the right facility to
use that without putting yourself at a risk. Right, So
this might be more often in an industrial setting, say
to like analyze the structural performance of a part or
(22:37):
a prototype or something like that. It's probably not something
you're going to use in your house to scan your
kid and then make your little action figure of your
kid for your kid. Right now, Joe, I understand that
there's possibly a way of scanning something in three dimensions
using just kind of a simple camera approach. Not just
possibly there there are ways your mouth. Yeah, optical scanning,
(22:59):
uh all, I guess lasers would probably also be optical. Show,
but this would be standard optical scanning with a camera
camera based scanning for real. Yes, uh I My guess
is that this is fairly buggy, but I've never used
it myself, so maybe it would surprise me, but it
is real. You can use a camera on your phone
(23:19):
in combination with the specialized app, Like there's one app
called one to three D Catch, and what you do
is you take photographs from many angles around the object
in question, and so you like go in a circle
around and take photographs from all the different angles. The
app analyzes the photos and then creates a three D model.
In fact, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MET, actually
(23:44):
encourages you to use this method to make digital copies
of their holdings and modify them with your own three
D printing projects. So, in other words, kind of like
how a a DJ might remix various pieces of music
to create something new, you could remake x actual existing
pieces of art. Yeah. Well, I guess the one exception
(24:04):
would be in the exhibits that are specifically labeled like
no photography. But I read I read a little statement
from somebody at the MET saying like, oh yeah, this
is great wherever it's permitted in the museum. Scan them
up and go go home, print them out, do what
you want, and so crab clause clause's And it actually
(24:25):
really cool. Also is that the Met put a bunch
of their pre rendered scans of these exhibits up on
the thingy Verse. It's a site that hosts downloadable three
D designs that you can get yourself. You just go up,
download them, send them to your three D printer. Yeah,
this is, by the way, not that different from the
way the connect scans things. I'll talk about a connect
(24:46):
hack a little bit later, but there are three D
scanners that specifically use infra red light and cameras in
order to make a three dimensional scan. Same basic ideas
what we're talking about here, except instead of using the
visible light that you know you're typical camera relies upon,
it's using infrared light, which is not visible to we
puny mortal humans, but some other animals can see it
(25:08):
pretty well. Anyway, It's the same basic premise as what
is being talked about here, It is just using a
different type of light, a different wavelength. How about digitizing,
So this is cool. So we've talked about using light
and lasers and and X rays. All of these are
electromagnetic means of looking at an object and and getting
(25:29):
a three dimensional model virtual model. Digitizing is using contact.
You're actually using something that's that's making contact with the
physical object itself and running a probe over this object
in order to get very precise readings of what that object,
how it shaped, so that you can create an incredibly
(25:51):
precise three dimensional model of it. Now, this tends to
be really good for geometric shapes that have a lot
of flat surfaces, hard angles, that kind of thing. It's
less good for stuff that happens to have organic free
form shapes. I imagine that would be just the onus
of the probe operator to yeah, to being able to
(26:12):
to fallow around contours. It's it's it's harder to do.
You know, a flat surface is easier to define with
a digitizer than something that is lumpy or has these
these curves surfaces to it, So, uh, you probably would
want to use lasers or some other methodology for that.
But for anything that has got you know, flat surfaces
(26:34):
geometric shapes, this is a really really precise means, and
depending upon what kind of of object you're scanning and
what purpose you're scanning it for, you may actually use
a combination of these approaches to build your virtual model.
So you may do a pass with a digitizer as
well as passes with lasers in order to create as
(26:55):
as uh as faithful virtual replica as you possibly can
for whatever thing you're trying to to replicate. Um. So,
there are actually a lot of these scanners out there
on the market today, but a lot of them are
very expensive. Well, how expensive is very expensive? Well? I
found a list online of of a lot of the
(27:19):
models that are sold. Good number of them were more
than twenty dollars. That's a little dear, it's a little
outside of my price range. Certainly for the hobbyist artist.
That's ah. But there are cheaper ones out there. Um in,
I believe like maker bot is working on one. They've
they've got the maker Bot digitizers. Then of course there
(27:42):
are hacks you can do to turn objects like the
Xbox three sixty connect this into a scanner. This is
really cool, tell us about this. So yeah, like I
was saying that the connect it relies upon infrared sensors
and cameras. Right, So you've got an emitter that shoots
out infrared and in for a grid. Think of it
like think of an overlay that is just a grid
(28:05):
of infrared light and any physical object that encounters that
deforms that grid. And so by by measuring that deformation,
the connect can determine what sort of object is standing
there and when it's moving. This is what allows you
to have that kind of movement based gameplay, and in
fact in three dimensions, right, exactly. So, I mean it's
(28:27):
just like if you were to make a grid of
strings and you then move that grid of strings against
a physical object, that would deform that grid, and you
could see how that was deformed, and that would define
the three dimensional object there, right, same sort of things
that we're just talking about. Light, uh, and it's light
that you cannot see. Um So anyway, imagine that you
(28:47):
have this little grid and then you think, well, what
if I just created some software that could leverage this
in a different way, not just for a way of
of recognizing a user or being able to interpret users
movement as commands for a game, but to actually scan
the user or any other physical object. Well that there
(29:10):
are a lot of people who have done this, including
a kid who uploaded his approach on instructibles and he
just used stuff that was already out there and kind
of created a guide of how you could do this yourself.
And it was great because I watched this video this
kid made, and I mean the kid had to be, uh,
you know, pretty young, maybe thirteen fourteen years old something
(29:30):
along those lines, and he walks through step by step
explaining exactly what you need to do, how you can
set up your connect um. Again, this is a three
sixty connect. The Xbox one connect is more locked down,
it is less hacker friendly, but the three sixty one
had a lot of use that people have have leveraged
(29:50):
for various things, everything from digital puppetry to three D scanners.
And he demonstrate exactly how to do this, what drivers
you needed to download, how to connect to your connect
to a PC so that you can upload the right software,
and how you could then use it to capture three
dimensional images. He even used himself as a model, sat down,
(30:11):
did two full rotations to try and get as accurate
a model as possible, and then even said, these these
patchy parts we can fix in editing. So even after
you are done, even if it's not a perfect three
dimensional model, you can fix that in editing software. So
it's really cool. It was, and it was again one
of those things that anyone could follow, and the kid
(30:32):
made it very understandable, very easy for you to to
do yourself. If you have a three connect at home,
but if you wanted something a little bit little more
off the shelf, less d I Y, there's an option
for that too. Write There are plenty of them. The
one that I have in our notes specifically is three
D systems since scanner s E N S E scanner
(30:55):
and this one is another infrared scanner, so it's using
the same basic technology as a connect but this case
it's meant as a three dimensional scanner specifically, and it's
a little handheld unit. It kind of looks like something
that you would see off Star Trek, you know, like
you would want to scan the environment, some kind of
little wand sort of thing. Almost. Yeah, I'm sure I
could find this out if I looked it up, but
(31:15):
I don't even know how that would work. If it's handheld.
I would think that the scanner would need to be stationary,
not at all. That's the That's the interesting thing is
that you can actually have this handheld scanner and you
you wave it across whatever physical object you're trying to scan,
and the software itself can interpret those three dimensional points
and build that model. And this would even allow you
(31:38):
to scan fairly large objects like a motorcycle, and it
wouldn't even have to be something on a small scale. Um,
it does help if the object you're scanning is very
very very still, so scanning a person would be a
little more problematic. Than say scanning a table or a
chair or a motorcycle. But it is pretty nifty, not
(31:59):
cost about three and um, it's something that is proprietary
to the Cuba Fi three D printer. It's it's meant
to work with one of those. So that means that
you're kind of locked down into what equipment you can
use to to make this useful for three D printing purposes.
(32:20):
But it's still pretty cool. Yeah, Okay, So let's try
to imagine this whole process. Uh so you want to
get a Venus de Milo with a Jonathan Strickland head
and crab claw arms. Who wouldn't who wouldn't want that
in their living room? Or you know? Four? What what
does the whole process look like? So I guess you
(32:40):
take your handheld scanner to the museum. Where where is
the Venus Demilo right now? Right now? I don't know.
She could be anywhere. Yes, she she could be lurking
around the corner. You're gonna look that up for us, Joe,
hold on, Yeah, I'm gonna find out. Okay, it looks
like it's the love Okay, Okay, that's good, assuming that
she's not actually a weeping angel. Right. So assuming one
(33:02):
that she's not a weeping angel, and that two you
are allowed to carry said handheld three three dimensional scanner
into the louver and then into her wing and exactly.
But let's let's assume you've got the full clearance to
do this. So you would go to the Venus de
milo Uh sculpture and you would scan it thoroughly so
that you've got a nice virtual model of it. Right.
(33:24):
Then you would also need a three dimensional model of
you know, my head. Yeah, so we'd scan your head,
and we we'd scan some crab clause. Right. If you
didn't want to create the virtual model of crab clause yourself,
then you would scan some crab clause, delicious crab clause.
You would pull all of these together in some form
of computer aided design program, right, so you'd hook it
(33:45):
up to your computer. And we've talked about CAD programs before,
but basically they're they're sort of for the three D
world what Photoshop is to the two D world. They
let you manipulate three D objects in a in a
digital space, and you can do all kinds of reshaping
and right neat little tricks. You would need to obviously
scale all three elements properly so that you could fit
(34:06):
them together for your three dimensional model, right, because if
you had tiny little crab claws on the Venus de
Milo that would be ludicrous, or or a ginormous Jonathan
head that would be disturbing. It's improperly scaled, that would
be horrible. You don't you don't want to have a
super deformed Jonathan head Venus de Milo crab claw armed creations.
(34:29):
So we get done with the final thing. We we've
combined them all into one file, and then basically you're
about done. You just well, you might need to go
through one more step, which is, uh, what's going to
have to happen with some three D printers is you're
translating this object file like a dot O b J
or a dot STL. This is the object file you
(34:51):
edit into a file that is a direct set of
instructions for your printer, perhaps a proprietary one I would
imagine some of the printers deal with I think. So
it would really depend upon what scanner you were using,
what what computers. Yeah, so there are some suites where
you're going to be using a specific scanner, which in
(35:13):
turn is going to determine what software you use, which
in which also works with a specific type of printer,
and if everything is working within that same ecosystem, it's
relatively simple to go from scan to virtual model to print.
Some others might mean that you have to do some
conversion along the way, either from whatever file your scanner
(35:34):
is creating or whatever file your virtual software is creating
to whatever files your printer will accept. Then there may
be more work on your end depending upon that, But
that's it. There you go after after four or five
adhesion failures. Of course, assuming that all goes as it should. Yeah,
(35:57):
then you have your beautiful designed, your your venus district
lond with crab claws, and the art world has forever changed.
I mean, you have revolutionized a generation. You might be
staring at this creation thinking what hath I wrought? And
you may have a kind of a metaphysical um you know,
(36:21):
dilemma on your hands about do I allow any other
human to lay eyes upon this and risk them to
lose sanity in the great Cathulu Mythos version. But but
in a fun way, you know, in a in a
gay culture way. Yeah, it might be one of those
ways where you you have that and you think well,
this needs to be shared to the rest of the
world so that we can all wallow old rich horror
(36:43):
that we have produced. Yeah. Yeah, but so I wanna
I want to I want to bring this discussion back
for completely non nefarious purposes to forgeries. Oh boy, So
we talked about reproducibility, and now we've introduced scanning. I
wonder what you could do with the idea of of
(37:05):
scanning of works of art and endless reproducibility. Okay, I
have not heard any news stories of forgery artists creating
and selling three D scanned and printed copies on the
illegal black market, right well, with some things that might
be really hard to do because with like say a
large marble sculpture or something like that, your three D
(37:26):
printer can't make that right now, nothing yet. I don't know,
is there a marble printer out there? It would be really, really,
really hard to do. Yeah. Um, but but similar technology
for some types of art does exist already on a
commercial front, So probably it's really only a matter of
(37:48):
time before we've got some kind of update to the
Thomas Crown affair that involves right there, there's they're multiple
incarnations of the Thomas Kroniffair. You don't have to necessarily
grab one. I'm thinking of that horrible pierced Braska. Please proceed. Alright,
(38:09):
So already on the market for the discerning but not
a billionaire art collector. Fuci Film has created a process
that will let you own a copy of a Van
Go that's like accurate down to the original frame, the
three dimensional brush strokes, the paint textures, and the scrawled
notes on the back of the canvas. They're they're calling
(38:29):
this process really biography. And each reproduction created with this
process costs thirty four thousand dollars or so um. But
that's still cheaper than you know, Van Go so grand.
I mean, that's that's like nothing, that's nothing in the
in the world of an original, verified Van Go. How
(38:53):
much does a van cost? I'm going to how much
does go for? Oh? No, com Now we're talking millions
of dollars for an original van Go. Now let me
ask you this, Lauren. If I were to buy such
a reproduction, would it be convincing enough for me to
(39:13):
to go around claiming, oh, this is the original Van Go?
It would not. It would not fool an expert. It
would probably fool your friends. Well, my friends are dumb. Okay,
so that's not saying a lot. Well, I mean they
have to be friends with me. You gotta have you
gotta aim low. Well, that is pretty cool, the idea
that you can use these techniques not just to reproduce
the two dimensional aspect of painting, but literally the brushstrokes
(39:36):
the texture of it right right. Um. The Vango Museum
in Amsterdam has been helping to fund the project and
therefore has a three year contract out on the technology
with Fujifilm. But but after that it will hypothetically open
up to other museums or possibly the public, I mean
the you know, the really well funded public. The fact
that the van Go Museum is partnering with this should
(39:59):
tell you a it's not a legitimate uh threat for
like a truly convincing not legitimately illegitimate. Well, I mean
it's not a threat. How about you put that way?
Otherwise it's not a threat. They don't consider it. They're
not worried about this becoming such a thing that I
(40:20):
mean partially because it is such a process that they
really have to work very directly. I mean, if you
were going to break into a museum and three ds.
It's not as simple as just waving a wand over. Yeah, now,
it is pretty amazing how how incredibly accurate a very
thorough laser scan can be. But then when you think
about it, it's light, you know, it's light. Light is
(40:41):
made up of these tiny little particles, tiny little wavelengths,
and uh, and it can happen really really fast. I'm
always amazed this kind of a tangent, but I'm always
amazed at how quickly light can ascertain something like a
a scan of a barcode, for example. How it happens
so quickly, and you think, wow, that lea's fast than
you're thinking, Oh wait, I'm working with light speed of light,
(41:04):
so it really shouldn't surprise me that it goes quickly.
A lot of these classic works are also behind cases
or I mean it's it would be you would have
to might be large early people who are to remove
you forcibly. Yeah, lots of security systems, um. But the
FUJIFILM isn't even the only people who are working on this.
(41:24):
A group within Cannon has also been collaborating with Dutch
researcher Tim Zaman to do essentially the same thing. So
some artists and designers are creating restorations and fa similies
of even older works using three D printing plus a
few other techniques to kind of stitch everything together. There's
this one design company called Factum art or art or
(41:46):
I don't know Italian. I think, I think, I think
it would be okay, excellent Um that's working on a
life size copy of of King Tut's tomb with the
hope of eventually taking tourist pressure off of the original.
That's also, yeah, because with things like archaeological sites, oh yeah,
every time you walk through it, you're ruining little bits
of it. So I would I would absolutely love to
(42:09):
go through a a faithful reproduction of reproduction, something that's
like a faithful reproduction of any historical site where I
can feel like I can move through it and have
the experience of what it would have been like to
go through that space, and also know that I am
not simultaneously destroying it. Yeah, destroying it even on just
(42:31):
a minute level. Because I think about walking through Shakespeare's
House at Strafford upon Avon and and and loving that experience,
but then thinking, yeah, just the fact that I'm here
means that this building has suffered a little ware and tear. Now, granted,
pretty much every part of that building has been replaced
at some point or another, but that's a totally different
(42:51):
philosophical discussion, which we've talked about in another podcast, or
at least we've alluded to, so we won't go into
that here. So, so that kind of thing is becoming
a physical possibility. And furthermore, that same group is working
with Sir john Son's Museum in London to fabricate pieces
based on an eighteenth century artist's etchings of ancient Roman artifacts.
(43:14):
These things only exist at the current moment in two
dimensional etchings, and they're creating actual sculptures based on what
this dude was drawing. Okay, so it's is a three
dimensional representation of a two dimensional representation of a three
dimensional object. That that's pretty awesome, And like, at that point,
is it? Is it a forgery? Is an entirely new art?
(43:36):
Like what are they even doing? It's a copy of
a copy of an original of a that's yeah, I mean,
that's that's an interesting it's a brand new question. It's
brand new category exciting stuff that wouldn't have been possible
without this kind of level of technology. Okay, so my
angry art fan who wants things to be how they've
always been. He's very convinced at this point, except he
(43:58):
has one last reservation. Okay, he's like, does anybody else
in the art world take digitally fabricated artwork? Seriously? I mean,
is there any place in the world where this has
actually been shown in a museum or short answer, yes, yeah,
there are actually quite a few museums I have shown
some three D printed stuff or have incorporated three D
(44:20):
printing directly into installations. Let us talk about some of those,
shall we? All right, how about this exhibit out of hand?
The sounds interesting? Yeah, The MAD the Museum of Arts
and Design in Manhattan, and it was an exhibit featuring
not just three D printed objects, but generally digital fabrication,
and three D printing was one of the aspects of that. Right.
(44:41):
They also included a lecture series about the various methods
that art as used so that people could learn more
about digital fabrication. But a lot of their artworks are
really cool, and I mean I legitimately I look at
that and say I want to see that just as
much as I want to see traditional artworks. Oh sure,
and it was some terrific functional pieces as well, right,
(45:03):
like they had like furniture or they even had flatwear
likewere like strange kling on silverware. Yeah, it kind of
made me think of something that you had see in
a science fiction film where you know, you're the the
human is sat down at the dinner table along all
the aliens and it's like, I don't know if that's
a salad fork or an eviscerating knife. I kind of
(45:25):
kind of thing yea, or or or press thess to
which um which I think that we talked a little
bit about way when we first started the show, the
beautiful things that artists are doing to create wonderful original
pross theses for customers. Yeah, so it doesn't really make
all that much sense for us to just try to
describe how they look on here. But you should go
(45:46):
look this up. It's the exhibit is called out of
Hand at the Mad Museum website. You should look it up.
They've got pictures of a lot of their things from
this exhibit. It's really cool. You'll try to remember to
to blog about it or post on so Shellson of
the links to this staff and there are other examples
that have been featured in some some museums of note. Right. Yeah,
one example I found was called Fractal Dot mg X
(46:10):
and this was at the MET. We talked about the
matter earlier, um, but it was it was designed. It
was a three D printed object based on fractal patterns,
which are fractals are are representations of mathematical sets. And uh,
this was a table that married the art and beauty
of fractals with the practicality of furniture. So you had
(46:33):
to you know, you couldn't just make a bunch of
three D printed fractals without making some sort of of
aesthetic changes so that you can make it a functional
piece of furniture. Is not currently on display at the MET,
but it is in their collection. Uh. And they've also
have hosted three D hackathons, which they allow visiting artists
to come in and create digital fabrication exhibits and and
(46:58):
also to to just communicate with the public about what
it is they do and how it's done. Um. I've
seen some great pictures of people just being able to
walk through into an enormous room just filled with three
D printers. So imagine that that lovely little smell we
get whenever we print a thing here in the office,
just filling an entire room because there's thirty of these
(47:18):
things that's going to be the good stuff right there. Uh.
And then there's also I mean, it's not really like
an official museum or anything, but there are a lot
of festivals like maker Fair, uh that have lots of
folks using three D printers in creative and artistic ways.
And you know maker Fair, you think of it, it's
it's usually I think of it as a sense of
(47:38):
of hackers who have built interesting stuff that does something
really cool. But in a lot of cases it is
really a work of art. It's not meant to necessarily
be something that's practical, or in some cases it's both
practical and art. You don't have to be one or
the other. Oh sure. And I think that there's a
perception within the community or within the greater Western culture
(47:59):
that that kind of stuff is a craft rather than
an art, and certainly not a fine art. But I
think that one of the beautiful things about all of
this technology and bringing all of this technology into the
kind of normal consumer level of price range, is that
it allows any normal person who has the drive to
do so, to create art and and that's and share
(48:22):
it with people. Furthermore, I mean, imagine people who have
these amazing visions of art, but not necessarily the capability
of bringing it into reality through the traditional means that
it opens up a world that we would never be
able to experience because we would never be able to
see that person's vision writer, or the access to the
(48:43):
kind of education that some of the great masters would
have had, or you know. Yeah, So, I mean it's
really we're really excited about three D printers in their
place and art and uh, don't don't be the grumpy
old man. Uh that Joe was portray angry Joe was
the angry Joe was. Yeah, be the be, the be
the very mellow accepting man that Joe is. Now. In
(49:06):
another podcast coming up this week, we're also going to
talk about another aspect of the angry old man and art,
who more generally just thinks that art should be low
tex So if you're interested in that topic, check us
out again. Yeah, well, we'll definitely be chatting about that
and having a lot of angry old man type of arguments.
(49:26):
I might even throw in my own version of the
angry old Joe, which is really just Jonathan. Yeahs. So, guys,
if you have any suggestions for future episodes of forward Thinking,
maybe there's something that you've always wondered about about you know,
what is this going to be like in the future,
and you want to hear our take on it, or
you just maybe you want us to to really dive
(49:49):
into some specific topic. Let us know, send us a
message on Facebook or Twitter, or Google Plus or handle
at all three is f w thinking. We look forward
to hearing from you and will pop to you again
really soon. For more on this topic and the future
of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to you
(50:21):
by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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