3D printing memories

3D printing – the ability to think of a shape and have a a physical representation of that shape. It’s fast, becoming cheap and as technology improves – able to print with incredible detail and textures.

This then starts to make you think about what you could design either from a functional or aesthetic point of view.

Then from a personal point of view – what artifacts and objects do I have that I would never want to lose. Could I make a copy of an object – in essence save it’s memory. If you copied a family heirloom – a vase for example. Does this still pass on the memories associated with that object.

Could that object even be alive?

How I arrived at this point was when I saw the following image via the shapeways blog. It is an artistic exercise by a dutch design studio wieke somers to look at how products can be made with human ash.

If we put aside the notion of rapid protyping with human ash and use conventional materials – Can we copy objects and use it ‘ash or even ‘stone” as a texture to recreate that object.

Could handheld scanning be so cheap that you can scan anything?

Handheld scanning could soon be so mainstream that you could scan your cute puppy.

Image via flickr

And immortalise it forever…

Image via flickr

Is there a business model there? Unethical? Nonsensical? One people would use?

What if you could send the ‘data’ of your objects to someone as a gift and they take this into a the 3D printing equivalent of snappy snaps – 1hr later they have an object.

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