This is cool – for The Lionheart Project, Shauna Richardson has made three giant hand-crocheted lions that will be displayed in a custom-built, mobile, glass case like a taxidermy case, and will travel around the East Midlands as part of the London Cultural Olympiad.  I like the studio photos showing the process, and the way the patterns in the crochet are used to emphasis the muscle shapes.

This is an origami shell sculpture I made a while ago for a special present. It’s folded from a large brown manila envelope, and measures 20cm both lengthwise and across the widest end. The ends are held in place with wires threaded with tiny beads.

(photo credit: David Gilford/complexify @ Flickr - thanks for the CC license)

This beautiful sculpture of the notorious albino sperm whale, Mocha Dick is by the artist Tristin Lowe, made in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. It’s huge! – 52 feet long and 10 feet tall – and made of industrial wool pieced over an inflatable vinyl understructure. The gallery at the Virginia Musuem of Fine Arts shows some other great images including a close-up the barnacles.

• Reproduce yourself with a 3D printer - the reporter’s head is scanned and printed as a small model. The printers he shows can print in paper, resin and plastic.
• bioprinting ears, skin, cartilege, tissue, bone, organs, teeth, ultrasound images
• chocolate, sugar and other food
• glass, ceramic, foam, concrete, plaster,  wood 
• metals, silver, titanium
• tools, shoes, musical instruments. models (what about guns - scary thought!)
• souvenirs of yourself
• clones  - the use of this for replica bridal dolls cracks me up!
• art, puppets
• Solar sinter project – printing sand into glass in the desert by Markus Kayser

Like other disruptive technology, 3D printing looks as if it will follow the path of offering the ability to decentralize and customise, and to make unique things cost effectively.

It’s interesting to consider what impact this is already having and going to have on artists and how they make things, as it becomes mainstream. Imagine, we can digitally sculpt or scan something in 3D (or photograph it, send the photos to somewhere like Photofly to get them stitched into a 3D scan), then send the files to a fabricator or perhaps even our own 3D printer , and there it is. There is the obvious debate between new and old, manufactured and handmade, and whether quality will be enhanced or compromised.  Most likely 3D printing will become an additional useful tool for some processes, components and items, and competency in these technologies will become more expected in the arts industry.  And, entirely handmade is likely to become rarer but more valuable.

This face is essentially calico over foam.

The following one is foam at the moment, but I am going to try a cracked surface on it.

Here are a few photos of how my tissue paper shell came out of the mould.

(photo credits and thanks: zetavares)

This fabulous giant Pinóquio puppet premiered last weekend at the Imaginarious Festival in Santa Maria da Feira in a street theatre production called The fantastic history of a child called Pinóquio by the theatre company Trigo Limpo ACERT. They come from Tondela, a small town in the centre of Portugal.

The choice of Pinocchio, the classic tale of a wooden boy who wants to become human, is particularly pleasing, because it reflects the puppeteers’ conceit of being able to bring inanimate things to life. And he looks beautifully articulated – I really like the way his leg and foot can turn and rest in his signature stance.

Zetavares has a great Flicker photoset of the 7 metre marionette, and has kindly let me post some of his photos here. He also has interesting sets of the making of the puppet, and the rehearsing the manipulation.

The character was sculpted by Carles of Madrid and Nico Nubiola  of Taller de escultura De la Madrid & Nubiola, both of whom were involved with the production of the opening ceremony for the Barcelona Olympics. They have a cool video of  how they made Pinóquio:

Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora were involved with the manipulation of the puppet. I first saw pictures of Pinoquio on their blog Espaço das Marionet@s, which I have been following for a while now.

Trigo Limpo ACERT have previously made some other great street theatre pieces, two of them large versions of traditional wooden push-along children’s toys. Memoriar na rotunda had a man pedalling a bicycle, (making photos here) and Golpe d’Asa, a bird whose wings flap as its wheel base rotates.

I always meant to do a post on the Institute of Figuring when I first came across it a few years ago, but now you can just watch Margaret Wertheim herself  explaining the beautiful maths of coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry in this great talk at TED.