The Biomorphic Form

With affordable 3D printers bursting on the scene, many artists' and designers' response is to utilize the replicating shape creating streams and chains that build on one another into more complex shapes, much the way the DNA molecule helixes itself into proteins that make up organisms.

One is Skylar Tibbits an artist, architect and scientist from the MIT Media lab and winner of the Ars Electronica Next Wave prize. He's the talk of the town with his inclusion in other shows, notably the one I saw at The New School's Gallery on Fifth Avenue.

Mr. Tibbits works with the forms and shapes making up his sculptures as building units; they strongly evoke biological forms, at first appearing haphazard and chaotic, but in fact, creating an order in which their irregularities make them more amenable, understandable and approachable. Suspending the works adds to their surreal quality; allowing the viewer to walk through their arrangement envelops them as if they are in a journey through themselves.

In February he presented his development of a self-building lab at a TED Talk in which the process to make his work goes one step further: works themselves are programmed at the material's structure level, and programming extends to the sculptures erecting themselves. The designer (or artist, if you will) programs the path of construction to achieve the shape or function by supplying a simple energy source. I venture to say the animation itself could be part of the art form.

The 3D lab recently unveiled at the school where I teach, The New York City College of Technology (City Tech), showed off their latest creations from the architecture school in a small but thorough exhibition in the lobby of Voorhees Hall at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. Simple shapes, programmed to replicate and arrange themselves, achieve structures approaching protein arrangements and shell patterns, some suspended as if in a primordial soup of their own, calling back to the TWA Building at JFK.

One of the entryways to the main
lobby of the TWA Terminal, de-
signed by Eero Saarinen in 1956. He
surely didn't have a 3D printer, though
3D printers are being developed for
building construction.

Not using the 3D printer but utilizing enormous spaces and sometimes self-engineered machines, Tim Hawkinson creates suspended environments for viewers to walk through intestines (presumably his own, since much of his work is self-confronting). I've seen his shows at the Ace Gallery and the Whitney throughout the years; and like Mr. Tibbets, Hawkinson concerns himself with the creation process--calling it production is not appropriate here--going so far to design and build the machines that make his art.

Among my many favorites is a piece that employs a studded phonograph turntable that jolts the arm into writing his signature. A conveyor pulls the paper through a scissor set to a timer, shearing the slips of paper, landing in a pile, shown below. What's endearing is the use of analog components, kluged to make the machine/contraption/sculpture. It dissolves any glimmer of manufacture. Magnificent.

And while we haven't heard much of him here as yet, Jang Yong Son has created a collection of blissfully organic pieces from small steel tubular components welded together until large, intricate forms reminiscent of microscopic images of bacteria (referred to by the art blogging site ThisIsColossal.com as an amoeba) are formed.

The sculptor does not employ the 3D printer, crafting the scultures by hand. However, the precision--and size--of the work make it breathtaking, as do the irregularities that give it credence and affability. He too, suspends some of his sculptures, much to the delight of the viewer.

Bathsheba Grossman, an early 3D printer artist is a mathematician turned artist. Saying of herself that she explores the world between math and art, she takes inspiration from nature such as pollen, viruses, jelly fish. These seem to be the evocative shapes at the moment; but an argument awakens about the programming of the printer and production of the sculptures.

Tusk, by Bethsheba
Grossman

When a machine can be programmed to sculpt an image, is it a craft or an art? Does perfect symmetry turn the object into a mathematical rendering? Or, going further, is programming an irregularity part of the creating process rather than building or manufacturing process? Can art be a product? Of course. The persistent discussion of art and philosophy of the 20th Century was precisely where do we draw the line between the sacred art piece and its replication--and, is its value the ability to reach the masses?

Clones of the image are manufactured all time, as with photography, and the original item retains its status as art while multiples are editions. But when the originals themselves are created using programmable, predictable means, are the pieces art or objects and is their multiplication called prints or units? What's the difference between an item coming off a litho press, a Heidelberg or a MakerBot?

Hawkinson's autograph machine.

A stinging observation was made by Otto Rank in Art and Artist in 1932: I paraphrase: the difference between a craftsman and an artist is that a craftsman knows what the finished piece will look like before he or she begins the work; whereas the artist who has brought a vision to the work, is also motivated by an exploration stemming from the self.  This caveat lays a path away from the original vision of the finished piece during the process, thus creating an art piece, not making one.