7,000 3D Printed Words Printed in Spain

By on March 2nd, 2015 in Design, Event

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An unusual art installation at the Colombian Embassy in Madrid is 3D printing 7,000 words. 

The project is a joint venture of TelefĆ³nica and the Colombian Embassy. The words being 3D printed are snippets from Colombian writer Gabriel GarcĆ­a MĆ”rquez, and were to be completed in only 20 days.

To get the job done, Ultra-Lab, a Madrid-based 3D print reseller, installed no less than 50 MakerBot Replicators, which together worked through the list of 7,000 words under supervision by Ultra-Lab staff. Technicians used open source software 3D modeling tool OpenSCAD to generate the 3D models for printing. 

But what of the installation itself? Matadero-Madrid explains (translated from Spanish):

When the visitor enters the room where TravesĆ­a por los estados de la palabra (Journey in the states of the word) is installed, he is submerged in a physical metaphor of creation process: 50 3D printers are printing words, and a huge sea of words, made of 7000 printed words from the writerā€™s books, appears as a casual and poetical discourse. Words out of their grammatical and semantical frameworks have bodies and voices and can interact with visitors.

Visitors will be able to enter in a literary work thanks to a highly concrete and surprising experience.

This type of exhibit was certainly not possible in the past; here we see the exhibit being generated at the site itself – all automatically with the magic technology of 3D printing. 

This deserves a visit, if you happen to be in Madrid anytime before March 3rd at Matadero Madrid. 

Via Matadero Madrid and travesia

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!