Aug.9, 2013

Partnered with artist Jeff de Boer, PrintToPeer, a Calgary-based software startup company is building "Linked", the world's first collaborative 3D-printed sculpture.

Founded by James Thorne, Tom Bielecki and Kaz Walker, PrintToPeer is an award-winning statup aiming to make 3D printing accessible through a web-based printer remote control and monitoring app. Their cloud-based platform will be released this fall and currently the PrintToPeer team is offering private beta invitations, but with one condition that only people who participate in their "Linked" sculpture will get an invitation to the private beta.

For their launch, PrintToPeer has created project "Linked". Makers, hobbyists, hackers, and artists from around the world are asked to personalize an interconnecting medallion design, and ship their contribution to Calgary. Contributors are encouraged to show off their logo, equipment, materials, and 3D modelling skill, and are invited to submit as many different designs as they like.

Unique medallions 3D printed across the world will be assembled into a hanging mesh, which will form a mosaic as the intersection of art and engineering.

Artist de Boer has developed the concept from his experience with chainmail, and has designed a common linkage system to hold the pieces together. Guest artists will be invited to arrange the links into mosaics and different physical arrangements.

"In the end, each link will be unique, creating a vast gallery of colors and images. The links' wide range of colors will act like pixels and can be arranged by a guest artist to create an overall image.

"This sculpture can be arranged over and over by different guest artists, each time generating a unique overall image. The sculpture comes together in an additive way, not unlike the process of 3D printing itself." says de Boer.

"We're able to take our artist's vision and allow anyone in the world with this technology to be the sculptor. We're excited to demonstrate the endless possibilities and limitless creativity of the community," says PrintToPeer co-founder, Tom Bielecki.

Here's how to get involved:

PrintToPeer has built an online platform here. Once signed up, printer owners are given an automatically customized piece of the sculpture, which they can further modify with any image. More technically inclined participants can also download a plain medallion, and use computer-aided design software to customize it themselves.

Printer owners are asked to ship their contributions by September 7th. Linked will be assembled during Beakerhead (September 11-15th), a city-wide festival in Calgary which celebrates the convergence of art, science, and engineering. The completed sculpture will be on display at the Calgary Maker Faire (September 14th), a festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. This will take place at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) in Calgary.

 

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

 

 

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