Prototyping

How 3D Printing is Being Used to Create Art

  • Posted by Dienamics
  • December 9, 2013

3D printing has often been described as opening up a new field for manufacturing and industry. However, 3D printing has already made in impact in the art world. Louis Pratt is an award-winning Australian artist who has successfully used 3D printing to create new and exciting artworks.

Pratt recently won the prestigious $100,000 Mt Buller sculpture award for his works, which feature sculptures made from full 3D scans of Pratt’s own body.

Pratt’s use of 3D technology expresses his interest in the immersion of humans into technology and the digitisation of human life, reported Tech Life.

One of the ways he has expressed this interest is by using real data, which is the scanned data from human bodies, to create his sculptures. In the process, he digitises his models or subjects, alters their dimension in the digital world and then creates the to-scale models.

For example, one of his sculptures is a hooded man who has a sine wave shaped spine, while other human figurines are missing square chunks. Pratt uses mathematics to create the ‘deformities’ on these figures.