Neri Oxman has the perfect muse for her 3D-printed fabrications – experimental pop-changeling Björk.
When Björk wanted a mask of her own face to wear while she performed her recent single, "Quicksand", she got in touch with Neri Oxman, head of MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter research group. Björk came across her when she saw Wanderers, Oxman's 2014 series of 3D-printed wearables designed for "interplanetary pilgrims". The pair began a collaboration. "We wanted to create a whole that is broken, a face without a skin," says Oxman. "A vulnerable Björk, a self-healing Björk."
The series of masks, called Rottlace ("skinless" in Icelandic), were based on a 3D scan of Björk's face, and printed by San Francisco-based Stratasys, using its multimaterial 3D printer. In June, Björk wore two of them for the opening performance of "Quicksand" at the Tokyo Miraikan Museum.
Oxman, 40, who calls the result "muscle textile", is working on more masks for a show at London's relocated Design Museum. The exhibition, she says, will showcase the "digital fabrication of multifunctional skins, printed in high resolution that matches and ultimately transcends the scales of nature".
Oxman founded the Mediated Matter research unit in 2010. Her team includes experts in computational design, architecture, marine science and molecular biology. For Oxman, who studied architecture in London then design computation at MIT, the future of architecture lies in design that incorporates the systems and materials of nature.
She has worked with chitin, the biopolymer that covers crustaceans, developing a 3D printer that can print chitosan, or de-acetylated chitin. She has also been making 3D-printed glass.
So when will she move from the speculative to the scalable? The glass printer, she says, has "significant potential applications", as does a fibre-winding technique she's developed. Although she is working on demonstrations of the technology, she disputes that one should have to choose between imagination and function: "Choice is a form of compromise, no? So why choose, if you can have both? I believe in the balance between dreaming and building."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
