Artist Jonty Hurwitz wanted to create the world’s smallest human form. And he did.
The question pondered by Hurwitz was, “Let’s study the whole idea of scale.” He set upon what turned out to be a ten month project to produce the amazing nano sculpture, called, “Trust”.
The project began by creating a highly detailed 3D model, which in this case was produced by 3D optical scanning of a human figure. A “perfect dome” of 250 Nikon cameras was used to capture the 3D model by processing the hundreds of images taken from unique perspectives.
It appears Hurwitz contacted the folks at Nanoscribe, a German firm specializing in nano-applications, including very small-scale 3D printing. Their technology uses highly focused lasers to solidify photo-curable materials at nano-scale.
In this case, the print was an astonishing 80 x 100 x 20 microns in size. That’s 0.080 x 0.100 x 0.020mm! And that’s not the resolution of the print’s layers – that’s the size of the ENTIRE OBJECT! Look closely here and you’ll barely see the print sitting in the eye of a needle.
In the image at top you can barely see the layering, but those diminutive layers are orders of magnitude smaller than what the print is positioned on: a human hair.
Hurwitz appears in a 22min video explaining the story of the project, which includes a number of extraordinary events. We won’t spoil it for you – just watch.
Could this be the genesis of a new artistic genre, nano-sculpture? Perhaps, but we suspect exhibitions will be challenging.
Via Jonty Hurwitz
