AIC Studio Day 67, Yesterday I premiered my new 3D printed book, "Folium" at Medium Cool. "Folium" is the product of my Artist in Residence at the Art Institute of Chicago and features nine bas relief pieces from the museums collection.
The pages, bolts, nuts and spine 3D printed in silver and white rigid PLA plastic. The "leaves" from which the name "folium" is derived are made from "Ninjaflex" a flexible 3D printable thermoelastic polymer. This flexible binding allows the pages to articulate like a traditional book. Each page is attached to the leaves via three hooks that sit snugly inside pre-printed holes in each leaf. There are eleven pages, 9 scans, plus a front cover and a back cover that doubles as a list of works. All eleven pages are connected to the spine by two 3D printed bolts held in place by two accompanying nuts. The nuts and bolts are based on a design by Thingiverse user "aubenc"
In selecting works to include in "Folium" my assistant, Yasmine Afshar, and I started by 3D scanning bas relief works from the AIC collection. We tried to select a good cross section of works from the museums collection, spanning different cultures and a wide chronology. We sought out works that would scan well and represent detail nicely at a significantly reduced scale. We used Autodesk's Recap photogrammetry application to process the photos we captured, and Netfabb Pro to do the boolean operations to create both positive and negative forms. As with my first 3D printed book "Orihon" the pages, hooks, spine and leaves were all designed in Autodesk's free browser based 3D modeling app Tinkercad. I used Rhino to produce the decorative elements of the "leaves" before doing the final subtractions in Tinkercad.
Based on feedback from visitors at Medium Cool yesterday and the time constraints to prepare it for yesterdays event there are a couple more iterations that need to take place before I publish the files to the net. The list of works page will be edited to include braille descriptions for all the pieces and the regular text will be enlarged a touch. The front cover needs to include an open hardware license and acknowledgements. Finally the leaves are to be extended to allow for increased degrees of movement.
Finally i want to thank Yasmine Afshar, Patcharida Smittinet, Surabhi Kanga, Caitlin Deutsch, Susan Kuliak, Mary Erbach, Meghan McLaren and Holly for their contributions to this project.
