Interactive 3D Prints

One of the first interactive 3D prints we’ve seen is an interactive 3D printed vest by artist Behnaz Farahi. It’s an incredible blend of technology and fashion, this interactive 3D prints changes shape based on eye movement across the piece with a little help from a motion sensing camera.

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Up close of this interactive 3D prints porcupine quill like material. | Image via Wired.com

This interactive 3D prints is our design inspiration topic for this week, although you probably should call it artistic inspiration as well. It is wearable art that is interactive and 3D printed. It is an interactive vest, for lack of a better word – maybe capelet will do better to describe it. It is made from 3D printed spikes or porcupine pieces. There are quills sticking out all over. There is also light in there and a camera that tracks the motion of the viewer. As you view it, it moves under your gaze. It tracks where your eyes are pointing to and it reacts to it. It is a little creepy but also is very cool.

The artist is Behnaz Farahi. She is an architecture and fashion interactive design artist. She also specializes in added manufacturing in robotic technologies. She has been featured in Wired and Frame Magazine. She has received an amazing grant from MAD WORKSHOP. She is doing some really cool things in incorporating additive technology. I am amazed with the things she has done. They are all really big artistic installments, but they are really pushing the envelope of how it is done.

It is a perfect application of 3D printing. It is very hard to manufacture the individual components of this because there are a lot of variations to them and that’s where 3D printing comes into play to make those iterations. She is very cool because she is techy and also an artist. She worked on two NASA funded research projects doing robotic fabrication technology. How cool is that? She has also worked with the Autodesk 3D Systems. That sounds like so much fun. She is really pushing the edge. Recently, she was an artist in residence at Autodesk Pier 9.

Motion sensing isn’t all that these interactive 3D prints can do – it can sense gender as well. | Image via Farahi’s website.

Back to this interactive 3D prints, the other thing that was very cool but also disconcerting at the same time is that the camera not just senses where your eyes are looking, but it also senses your gender. There are a whole lot of issues with that. It senses your gender and it reacts a certain way based on that. I want to know how it knows your gender. As they show it on their website, the guy has long hair and that is not one of those gender typical things that you are tracking. Maybe it is tracking the fact that there is an Adam’s apple. Who knows what it is?

I really like the name that they gave to this project on the site, Caress Of the Gaze; the fact that this is meant to be beautiful and flowing, all these subtleties. This interactive 3D prints experiments on how you view something and how it is going to react to you. It is not just on how you are going to react to it, emotionally. There is this interplay.

This is not printed in multiple pieces, its printed in one piece. This was printed on an Objet500 Connex. It allows multi material 3D printing. It can do it in a single print run. Now, I am even more impressed. This has the flexible scan itself. It fits the body and it has that quill thing that is going on. Nonetheless, it is very cool.

This is very PG stuff even though it is a garment and there is a model wearing it. It is very tasteful clip of how the interactive 3D prints work. But any of you who are teachers out there, not only helping your students with curriculum, but I think at high school level to show them something like this to open up their minds as to the different kinds of things that can be done. It is nice to be practical when you are working on your curriculum and how students are learning to use 3D printing. You need to open their minds to the possibilities so they can really push themselves to try to achieve more and different things.

They won’t have access to this kind of high end 3D printer. So what? It still opens their mind. That does not mean they can’t do it in a different way and do it in pieces. I think this one is amazing. I am really impressed by this interactive 3D prints. This to me is when 3D printing has transcended, when you wouldn’t know it was 3D printed unless someone told you it was. We have been told by people at high level places in the industry that they have complete expectations that the technology is moving fast enough that in 10 years, we are literally going to be able to 3D print clothing that is flexible, wearable, and friendly to your body. We heard that two years ago.

People are going to be 3D printing a lot more products that can be printed today. Clothing is one. People think it is crazy, but I have seen how yarn is made. It is not really different than 3D printing. It is just in a finer level than what we think of 3D printing today. A lot of that will change, and things are already happening. The speed is getting faster and faster every day. The technology that is in research right now paves the way for it. If this happens in the next decade, then that will be very amazing. That is transformative and revolutionary for an industry.

Motion sensing camera embedded in the interactive 3D prints. | Image via Farahi’s website.

The face of retail will change so much in the reminder of our careers here. Maybe we are only halfway through, but we will see it change so much. Retail will not ever be an early adopter for something. They are going to drag along kicking and screaming. They are going to struggle really hard when as they become less relevant. Eventually, they are going to get it and realize that this is what they have to do to survive and eventually to thrive. I think that it will happen. It is just going to take some time. The need has to develop along with the technology. It is going to happen.

This type of a project excites me because it is pushing the edge to me. It is doing something totally different. This is real, and this is here and now even though the future is still coming. To me, this is “wow.” Send us a comment below of any other wow-projects you’ve seen with 3D printing.

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Interactive 3D Prints – Design Inspiration

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