Inflated Prints
A series of works that combine traditional glass blowing with 3D printing. Held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Taken out of the printer into the hot shop. Hand and breath finish what motor and servo started. Sections are locally heated and then inflated, altering texture and form. The product is a work that neither human nor machine could make alone.
A thread of molten glass falling onto a moving bed behaves like a rope of honey: when the nozzle moves slower than the glass falls, the thread loops on itself. Brun et al. wrote down the physics in 2017 — nozzle speed against fall speed selects the pattern. These sections stop that motion mid-thought and cut it open.
Printed on G3DP2 — the redesigned MIT platform: the sections hold the deposit exactly as the machine and gravity left it.