Crowdsourced, 3D-Printed Sculptures Are the Knitting Circles of the Future

A Canadian multimedia artist and a 3D printing startup have teamed up on a tech-meets-art project that's never been tried before, and it's got plenty of 21st century technology buzzwords to prove it: the first-ever crowdsourced, collaborative, open-source, 3D-printed sculpture.

The crowdsourced sculpture is the brainchild of artist Jeff de Boer, and he's working with PrintToPeer on the project, which just won $1,000 in funding from The Awesome Foundation. The sculpture's called "Linked," to represent the intersection of engineering and art, as well as the more literal interpretation, since the medallions being physically linked together.

They're creating a living sculpture that will be made up of hundreds of 3D-printed medallions sent into the company from people around the world. Each piece has a a unique design printed on it, and they will all be linked together to form a hanging chainmail-like mosaic.

Many of the makers who've been mailing in their designs (the submission deadline is September 9) have tweeted a snapshot of the printed medallions to #3dcrowd. By browsing the submissions, you can start to image what the final product might look like.

The project may be at the cutting edge of technology, but collective creativity's not a new concept—"Linked" is basically the 3D-printed version of quilting, where each person sews a personal square and they're all patched together. The way De Boer sees it, 3D printers can provide a new medium for the artistic proletariat—like a three-dimensional canvas.

"The distance between art and technology is beginning to not just close; it is beginning to merge," De Boer wrote in a press release. "The emergence of the 3D printer has given individuals who would not normally consider themselves makers the power to create in three dimensions. Now that the masses can make anything, the big question will always be, what is worth making?”

In the case of "Linked," the point isn't what's being made, so much as how it's being made. The project is meant to capture the maker movement's open-source ethos. In an apt analogy, De Boer compares the 3D printer to a TV without content—but instead of the channels and shows being distributed by a centralized broadcast network, that content is free to be created by anyone.

Even when it's fully assembled, the sculpture will belong to the masses. The idea is, the pieces making up the mosaic will be a variety of different colors—like pixels in a photograph—and can be rearranged over and over by different artists to form a different overall image. In a way, it frees the art sculpture from its static, 1.0 restrictions, and makes it a living thing.

In another way, it's basically free advertising for 3D printing upstarts. Contributors are encouraged to show off their logo, and basically show off their maker chops. When you sign up to contribute a piece to the sculpture, you're either given a customized medallion that you can modify with an image, or, for the pros, a plain medallion you can customize yourself.

"Linked" will be assembled later this month at Beakerhead, an art and engineering festival in Calgary. The finished sculpture is set to be displayed at the Calgary Maker Faire on September 14.