www.3ders.org

Oct 21, 2015 | By Alec

Aside from North Korea and a few other places, the world of the 21rst century holds very little undiscovered, unreachable locations anymore. At least, so we thought until learning of a fascinating interactive installation on display at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art from mid June to the end of August the summer. Called Unclaimed, this installation has been developed by professors Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman and draws attention to the last bit of unclaimed, unreachable region in the world: the air space directly above our heads, higher than the city’s roofs but lower than the troposphere used by aircraft.

Creators Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman are both professors in the Emergent Digital Practices Program at the University of Denver, and happen to be a husband and wife team. Both are also very fascinated by that last piece of the world that is unreachable and unclaimed by nation states. ‘This is one of the last truly unclaimed territories: it is not controlled by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, not privatized, and is mostly occupied by birds, kites, and the occasional drone. In a sense, the space is shared internationally: the molecules above Denver mix up with those coming from above Buenos Aires,’ they say of the exhibition.

And to enable visitors to discover that fascinating realm, they have created a 3D printed cityscape that is completely interactive and very sensitive. By breathing over the roofs of the city, visitors can cause disturbances in the physical layer of air in the gallery. It is a truly fascinating installation, and one of the most impressive 3D printed works of art we’ve seen.

Fortunately, Chris Coleman was happy to talk to us about this remarkable creation. As he explains to 3ders.org, this installation was born out of discussions on issues of collective responsibility, shared resources and obviously the environment. ‘How can we approach these ideas from a new perspective? We got an idea while reading forums for hobby quad and hexa-copters discussing airspace rules. Once we understood how we could talk about the unclaimed airspace, we then needed to figure out how to make the piece interactive and involve the visitor physically. Secondly, we needed to make the airspace itself something tangible that you could see and hear and thus care about one's relationship to,’ he explains.

What followed was an arduous design process that, along with testing and engineering, took over four months. This was followed by production, taking almost three months to complete. ‘We had to test 10 different kinds of fans, 8 types of plastic sheeting, and 5 different types of 3D printing filament for their light qualities. We modeled 15 buildings in Blender 3D after testing many different sizes, attempting to create a sort of generic city with both suburbs and a more commercial area,’ he explains. ‘We then studied street layouts to make an interesting city and decide how many buildings to make. The last step was to share the models on Thingiverse where they have already been downloaded hundreds of times.’

In the end, they needed to 3D print about two hundred separate buildings for the installation, nine of which had tiny microphones embedded inside of them. ‘They were designed to be durable, but also print quickly and with as few supports as possible. We tested several clear and semi-clear filaments but settled on natural PLA for the warm color and good light transmission/diffusion,’ he explains. The biodegradable nature of PLA also helped.

However, even this process was not without its problems, as they were given a batch of bad 3D printer filament. ‘We used 10 x 1kg rolls of PLA for the project and when a distributor ran out and sent us an alternative, it was night and day how many prints failed 5 or 10 hours into a 20 hour piece (or group of pieces),’ the professor adds. All in all, their LuzBot Taz 5 3D printer worked around the clock for nearly a month to get everything finished. If you happen to be interested in recreating some of these gorgeous 3D printed buildings, you can find all downloadable files on Thingiverse here.

So how does it work? Well, the nine microphones embedded in the houses are of crucial importance. Hooked to a microcontroller and a central computer that is running an OpenFrameworks-made application, they set off 196 computer cooling fans via i2c and a series of relay boards. ‘An Arduino controls the DMX lighting in the room which cycles through the colors of a full day every 10 minutes. Two HD cameras positioned above the ceiling of fans feed real-time video to two monitors at each end of the room, providing another perspective of the evolving shape of the unclaimed space,’ they add. The result is a fantastic interactive experience.

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

 

 

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