May 8, 2016 | By Tess

While we see 3D printing being increasingly used in manufacturing sectors like the automotive, aerospace, and even healthcare industries, it is equally interesting to see its trajectory in more artistic fields, even as a medium. A number of artists have begun to use 3D printing as a means of not only creating art, but also exploring the increasingly relevant relationship between the physical human world, and the ever growing digital world. As a technology that bridges the two worlds, 3D printing has offered creative minds a fitting way to investigate and experiment.

Danish designers Flemming Tvede Hansen, Henrik Leander Evers, and Martin Tamke are three such artists, as they have worked with 3D printing ceramic technologies to explore interactive digital design. Their project, Sensitive Ceramics, was done as a research project for the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, and explores the “relationship between crafting materiality and digital representation”.

Essentially, the project is made up of a number of 3D printed ceramic rings, each with a different inner composition and design, which have been hung up as intricate wall decorations. The pieces, which are stunning to look at, also have several steps behind them which shed light onto their significance. As a big part of the research also had to do with how the human body is involved and even exploited in the use of digital technologies and fabrications, the designers chose to incorporate it into the artistic process. The first step of the project involved setting up a Kinect 3D scanner and having someone move their arms and hands in front of it. With the movements recorded through the Kinect, they were then uploaded into an interactive 3D system developed with Rhino and Grasshopper. Through this 3D system, the hand motions appeared on screen as a pattern of circles, with varying sizes and designs determined by the speed and position of the hand.

With the 3D models for the circles generated through the specially created 3D program, each of the 3D patterns was sent to a RapMan 3D printer where they were additively manufactured out of porcelain. After 3D printing, the porcelain rings were glazed and fired at 1280 degrees, after which they were mounted onto a board, specially laser cut in the same composition as the one generated from the hand movements.

Presented, the 3D printed porcelain compositions are undeniably impressive, and though the presence of the human hand in their production is somewhat obscured by the use of 3D printing technologies, it is in fact an essential part of the project’s creation. As the designers behind the project conclude, “The final shown experiments are not to be seen as final results, but as representative examples of experimentations that reflects the dynamic and unique possibilities in the cross border between digital and ceramic crafting.”

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Application

 

 

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