Here are notes about what I'm doing lately, and pointers to what's new on this site.
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July 1
A mixed bag of news this month:
The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, in Sonoma, CA has a fantastic show of puzzles and related fine objects, Puzzles As Art, up till August 16. It's curated by Nancy Mintz of the Museum, and George Miller, puzzle prototyper extraordinary. My esteemed colleague George Hart will speak August 11.
I've added some shots here of sculptures available by request, as well as photos of a commissioned bronze that's in Illinois.
Shapeways has posted an interview of me.
I'll be at the Bridges Banff conference in (you guessed it) Banff, July 27-29. It's a hoedown about math, science, visual and performing arts, education, and crossover in all directions – in other words, big fun!
Feb 9
The University of Illinois at Springfield Visual Arts Gallery has a show up until 2/18. This is my first solo show (aw!), and it's the largest collection of my work ever displayed, including many pieces not on this site.
Jan 9
Shapeways shops has now officially launched.
One thing I want to add: you can open your own store for 3D
objects. I wasn't sure until the launch whether everybody could
do that right away, but now I see you can.
Jan 6
The 3D printing service Shapeways has
opened a store where you can upload 3D files, have them printed in a
variety of plastics, and also order other designs
including some of mine. It's based in the Netherlands,
shipping is included in the prices.
I've put up 7 designs that aren't available on this site, old and
new. They're cheap – bigger than most of my large metals,
for the price of a mini – and I hope to add a bunch more stuff
here. Experiments, things that don't print well in metal, designs
that are interesting but not to every person. That I carry
inventory requires me to keep the metal catalog stocked with the classic
designs (as voted by your wallets), and I'm thrilled to have this
chance to bring you the lunatic fringe.
This is the most interesting opportunity for 3D printing art that I've yet seen. Now you don't have to buy inventory, deal with a service bureau, commit to a technology, or even set up a site: all you need is models. It's like Ponoko but with actual technology. (But seriously, Ponoko is awesome...just I've waited a long time for this.)
Let a thousand flowers bloom.
And before I forget, thanks for a great year in 2008. It was
smaller than 2007, but with the economy doing what it is, I'm grateful
we're all still here. 2009 is looking like a winner so
far. Things we may see include a new bronzier metal-printing
material, lower prices for metal(!), an expanding glass catalog, a new
lamp or two, maybe a toy design. And it's not even a week
in. Onwards and upwards!
Nov 26
It's not that I'm not doing anything, but it's a
secret until it's finished. Thanks for keeping me going during the long news drought.
This post is mainly to say that the blue light specials for this year are up, and there's a lot of metal there. There'll be a couple more coming, but this is most of 'em.
Update Nov 27: OK, there was a lot of metal. Y'all move fast. There's still some, and there'll be another piece or two posting in due course.
Aug 8
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I give you the Klein Bottle
Opener. |
July 25
At last the 600-Cell is
up! I apologize for math models being out of stock so
much. The new pieces are going over well, and sometimes it's
hard to keep up.
July 15
I have a new math model, the Seifert surface of the
Borromean Rings.
July 2
Despite rumors, I'm still here. Actually doing
a few things. New pieces are coming soon.
The legged robot has made progress:
and yesterday took its first steps:
Then it fell down. But I think I know how to fix it....
April 28
Events:
May 1 This Thursday 5 to 9 PM I'll be at the MIT Museum with a tableful of art, as part of the Art/Science Mixer, an event of the Cambridge Science Festival. This should be interesting. It's $7.50 to get in, free for the MIT community.
May 2 Friday will be the Somerville Open Studios kickoff bike ride. Launch is 8:00 at the Somerville Museum, we'll tour the city. I'll be there with my chopper. (I'm not actually showing in Somerville Open Studios.)
Beyond that, the Hyperwerk trip went well and I am once again getting organized on the East coast. Many projects in train, more news as it breaks.
Oh, and Time Magazine picked my Quin lamp as one of the year's 100 most influential design objects, in their Style & Design 100 feature. I'm always the last to hear about these things.
March 20
Next week I head for Switzerland, where I'll be
lecturing for a few days at the Hyperwerk
Institute for Post-Industrial Design. Oh, and I'm confirmed to show work at SIGGRAPH this year.
In other news, I successfully tested the leg linkage of my walking robot:
Eleven more legs, plus a few tweaks to the cam, and it'll be in business.
March 5
A group of metal
pieces will be at the Axiom Gallery in Boston, for the Math and
Art show from March 14 through April 27.
February 25
Just a quick note to say that I'll be at the BIL Conference in Monterey this Saturday and maybe Sunday. You could be, too.
For the last 6 weeks I've worked intensively on designing a legged walking robot. I built it in Solidworks, which was a peculiar sensation after 10 years working in Rhinoceros. I'm starting physical construction now; my goal is to make it as much as possible from waterjet-cut parts and stock hardware. What remains to be seen is whether it will work. I've designed a few mechanisms before, but nothing this complicated, and I don't actually know anything about mechanical engineering or robotics. It's a bit of a quixotic project.
It looks vaguely like this, with some additional springs and chains and sprockets that aren't shown here. Also it really has 12 legs rather than 4, but Solidworks has a nervous breakdown if I try to put any more into the simulation.
February 12
Long time no write. My work is making its way: the lamps have been showing up in some rather
impressive coffee-table books, and citations online are rife. For years I've
had a pretentious bit in the manifesto about "launching designs into
the noösphere", but it's still a surprise to see it happening.
I have on the way a new math piece, of a Seifert surface on the Borromean rings:
This was computed using (among other tools) SeifertView by Jarke van Wijk and Arjeh Cohen. I found this very enjoyable.
I have been putting a lot of time into designing some mechanisms; this is a labor-intensive process in that I have no particular training or experience in that area, but I think the projects are approaching fabrication. I hope to post pictures soon.
PS You can all stop sending me links to TopMod. Yes, it's nice.
November 26
Busy times for me, but mainly in
meatspace. I've established a beachhead on the East coast,
substantial but not permanent, near the Boston suburb I grew up
in. I've been making metal and keeping my ducks in a row as the
season approaches, and taking some downtime to build a chopper.
I'd like to belatedly welcome my administrative assistant Sandra Weinstein, who came aboard in February. She's been progressively taking over the paper-pushing side of the business, and we hope will become full-time in 2008. I regret a bit the passing of the one-man shop – the phone rings on her desk now – but now I don't wonder that I felt so pressed for time before she came: I really was holding down two jobs.
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Lastly, in case you got here from the RSS feed instead of the front page, there's a new polytope in metal, and in glass a redesign of the Quaternion Julia Set, which you shouldn't miss if you like fractals! |
October 8
I'm converting all of the Ora family (Metatron/ino and
Quintron/ino) to the larger size: going forward they'll be softballs
rather than baseballs. Baseballs will still be available on
request, but the lead time is fairly long.
A shout out to retailers ThinkGeek and Edmund Scientifics – I'm proud to be represented at both places. Does this mean I'm educational now?
Meanwhile, what am I doing? I contemplate legged robots. I am also thinking about these Möbius gears (scroll down a bit to see the animation).
September 25
I've made some larger instances of Ora and Metatrino, and I'm
very happy with the change: the interiors breathe more freely now.
August 23
I will be at Burning
Man this year, camping with Automatic Subconscious at 8:00 Esplanade.
July 30
Three new downloadable sculptures
are posted, from the Colorplanes
line. This line of work came and went several years ago – the most interesting thing to happen to it was that the TV show Numb3rs bought some of them for use in sets – but it has the advantage that it's very friendly to build: anything from lasercut steel to cardboard and Scotch tape will work.
The lack of recent news is due to my taking some much-needed vacation time this summer: I've needed a break to consider where the last 10 years have brought me.
May 6
Just a quick note that there's a new molecule available in glass: Insulin. As beautiful as it is useful.
May 9
The weekend of May 19-20 I'll have a table at the Maker Faire in San Mateo, with plenty of show and tell. This is a most excellent event — you should go too!
In other news, Paul Nylander has made a wonderful animation demonstrating that my pieces Quintron and Quintrino have the topology of a triacontahedron with punctured faces. Kudos!
April 23
This week's MathTrek column of Science News is about my work.
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SLART Magazine, a journal of art in Second Life, has an interview with me. At left, one of my avatars. (The spheroid, not the humanoids!) |
April 2
What's going on? Still struggling to outsource business functions and get back to the studio. Below, a tesselated gyroid (not real, just a render). The surface is tiled with green squares meeting six-at-a-vertex on one side, and blue hexes meeting four-at-a-vertex on the other side. |
It's also confirmed that in May I will be at this year's Maker Faire in San Mateo. It'll be big fun, you should go! |
February 13
| The Virtual|Tangible exhibition, of jewelry and housewares by high-tech artists, is at the Velvet Da Vinci gallery in San Francisco through March 4. A couple of my lamps are there, along with some metal work, as well as many excellent works. Phil Carrizzi's bracelets alone are worth a trip, if you're in the neighborhood!
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In other news, a
December 12
| I'm mainly busy surviving the shopping season at present: orders will ship through December 19, then I go on vacation for three weeks.
An article in the December 2006 issue of Today's Machining World magazine interviews the CEO of Ex One, the company whose steel sintering technology makes my metal sculpture possible. This is breakthrough technology, and it's nice to see it finally get some press! The direct link to the issue PDF is here, the Ex One article is "3-D Thinking". My work also shows up in the Holiday Gift Ideas column. |
November 20
I've been away for a few days installing this bronze at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As this picture shows its axes of symmetry align perfectly with the building, which is itself oriented to the compass points, so everything falls into place as it should. The sculpture is a bronze casting 28" tall, mounted on a four-foot steel base (the black parts are powder coated). The design is based on my earlier piece Flow, which has been out of production for some time as it cannot be made by metal printing. The large bronze was funded by Bruce Wonnacott, a man of good faith and great generosity. It was cast by Steve Reinmuth of Reinmuth Bronze Studio, whose skills with mathematical sculpture are without peer. The Beckman Institute has one of the most significant collections of mathematical sculpture that I know of, including works by Brent Collins and Helaman Ferguson. It's an institution in the tradition of Fermilab: a great center for science that is fully aware of aesthetic and humanistic ideals. I'm both proud and humbled to have my work represented there. |
November 20
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The grapevine tells me that my DNA piece appeared last Monday on the TV show Heroes. Hunting up a screenshot....found one! Right after the credits. As in the ongoing Numb3rs appearances, it's office furniture for a professor – this time a rather fetching geneticist. |
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November 8
Two new Science Crystals are up. The DNA Polymerase shows a polymerase complexed with DNA and – at no extra charge – an incoming nucleotide. And the Kepler's Inner Planets model is a 3D rendition of one of the most famous scientific illustrations of history.
The metal supply continues steady: I hope to be able to meet demand, although it won't be possible to roll out new pieces until the new year. Which I'm a bit sorry about, as I have a 600-cell model set to go.
October 9
Things are looking up on the metal supply front,
and I have reasonable hopes now of not running out of everything over
Christmas. I've been able to stock up on the
larger pieces, and now will be working on minis.
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A nice lamp photo ran in the New York Times Style section last Sunday – with my name spelled right! |
August 28
The road continues rocky: there is still not enough metal. I'm working on it, also on some ID projects and business consolidation. I designed some knobs, suitable for drawer pulls or cabinet pulls:
These are renders only so far; I'm looking for the right manufacturer....
I've also been thinking about a larger lamp.
July 19
I've run into an unexpected problem: thanks to all of you, the need
for sculpture has begun to stretch the metal printing capacity that's
available. As some of you know all too well, I've had difficulty
getting enough pieces in the last six months.
Partly it's just that I've needed a lot of them: nobody expected that art would be a large and fast-growing application for 3D metal printing, but between me and a few other artists working in this medium, it's become just that. This is a big surprise to everyone from me to top management at the metal printers, and it's taking time to adjust.
A lightning strike at the printing facility didn't help: a few months ago that took out one of only two sintering furnaces, and we've just recovered from that. The thing about cutting-edge technology is that there's not much backup – in another medium there would be different facilities to take over production, but with 3D metal printing there aren't very many options.
So I apologize for being out of stock in so many pieces. For some I've had to push back the availability dates, and I'm very embarrassed about that. Getting sculpture to you is the purpose of this site, and indeed of all my art efforts, and I'm doing everything I can to make it happen. I hope that by November these supply hitches will be but a memory.
Meanwhile, I thank you all for your patience. We're seeing the birth of a new art medium here, the most exciting thing to happen to metal since casting was invented, and it's your enthusiasm and support that are driving it. Considering how fast and unexpected it's all been, I suppose some rough spots are inevitable.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I'm aware of the situation, I'm working to fix it, and I hope and expect that the supply will soon be smooth again. I'm also trying to keep the stock notices up to date, and to advise everyone whose order is delayed. If you're concerned about a particular piece or order, don't hesitate to write.
Thanks again.
June 22
Make
Magazine posted a podcast of an interview with me at the Maker Faire
last March.
June 12
At right, I've been working on a commission for the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois. To make this piece, I dissected it into moldable modules, and had masters for each module built as ZCorp models by Roundstone Digital. Reinmuth Bronze will take it from there, duplicating the masters in wax and casting them in bronze. Below is a sketch for a multi-material design to be fabricated quite large in 3D-printed components. Whether it will be built remains open to question.
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May 11
The Mini Schwartz D-Surface is up. It is the cutest mini ever. |
May 10
A Menger sponge model is now available for download. |
May 4
There's a new sculpture up, MG. I am woefully behind in getting new work up on the site. The Maker Faire last month was fabulous, you should go next year if you get a chance. |
April 14
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Time Compression Technologies magazine ran a feature about me, with the downloadable object Spikyball on the cover. There hasn't been much news lately because I'm working hard on several projects that are confidential until finished. Hope to have more for you soon. Visit me at the Maker Faire this coming weekend in San Mateo! It's sure to be fun. |
March 23
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Here's another glass piece, a 3D fractal known as a quaternion Julia set. |
March 11
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A new crystal is up: a section of a Calabi-Yau manifold. I don't understand superstrings any more than the next math/artist, but I can report that it's a lovely, complex surface. Andrew Hanson at Indiana University provided the model. |
March 6
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February 28
An astute comparison of laser glass and Lichtenberg figures.
I can also report that the Schwartz D-surface printed well.
February 23
I'll be exhibiting at the Maker Faire, April 22-23 in San Mateo.
In other news, this piece is in printing now:
February 21
There was a nice writeup in the book Makers: All
Kinds of People Making Amazing Things in Their Backyard, Basement, and
Garage (this is the link at the publisher, O'Reilly, but it's
cheaper on Amazon). This book springs from Make Magazine, which is
more fun than a set of chrome-vanadium Torx wrenches!
This is a late announcement, but I didn't realize it was actually news until I heard my name on GeekSpeak. (The February 18th show, a little more than 1/4 of the way through, just before the guy who trained his cat to operate a computer-controlled cat-flap.)
February 13
I'm trying a new math model, Schwartz' D surface:
It remains to be seen whether the metal print will succeed.
In other news, a charming interpretive snow sculpture from Michigan.
In yet other news, the hyperbolic project is somewhat stalled. I've succeeded in generating the right dodecahedral tiling in the Poincaré ball, but so far an aesthetic outcome is lacking.
January 25
Thank you all for a tremendous shopping
season! For the last month I've been recovering and thinking
hard about the future of Bathsheba.com: it's grown too big for me to
run by myself, and in the next few months I'll be looking to hire a
business manager.
Starting to break out of a creative near-standstill, I'm working on some new directions. Hope to have some images here for you shortly; among other things I'm beginning to think about minimal surfaces in hyperbolic space. (Do you happen to know about tesselation in H3? I'd love to chat.)
Meanwhile, I've added downloads and instructions for building Little Star
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December 15 |
November 26
This year's sale page is up –
there's some glass, galaxy bases, and lots of mini metal. There will be some pendants coming.
November 11
DNA keychains are
back – I scored a batch made of blue glass at half
price, and passed on the savings.
November 8
Steel asteroid models are now available. If I'd known how nice these would be, I'd have made more! |
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October 26
I've added a new model for download, so now everyone can stop asking me for a Möbius strip.
October 24
Mini Vorocubes are in.
October 12
Continuing to rework designs that didn't print well earlier this year. It's one of the less fun parts of the creative process: revising things as many times as it takes to make them work. Meanwhile, more TV: another steel piece appears on CBS show Numb3rs. At right with Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz), demonstrating the show's trademark hair.
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September 29
In the gallery, I've added pictures of a snow sculpture which I worked on in 2002.
September 28
I finally made a larger DNA molecule. If I do say so, it is a stunner.
This month's Symmetry magazine, a publication of SLAC and Fermilab, has a nice article about me.
September 26
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As seen on TV! My piece Sun Star appeared on the season premiere of the CBS series Numb3rs. At left, with crime-solving mathematician Charlie (David Krumholtz). Check it out on Fridays at 10PM Eastern – there's no guarantee the sculpture will be back, but the show is fine.
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I'm working on a design like Romanesco broccoli. It's proving a chewy problem. |
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September 21
Another piece which has been knocking around has finally made it to the site, the four-part tensegrity construction Holly.
September 20
At last, a new piece! The Voronoi-network structure finished out beautifully.
I've also added a page of links to places I've been mentioned, online and occasionally in print.
September 16
Continuing to tune up the new site. I've finally added the Mini Metatron piece, and updated the page on 3D printing.
September 14
There's a new page in the Gallery for some lamps I've designed.
September 13
Had a dull week overhauling the site. I've added two models for download, and a couple of shots in the gallery of a one-off piece.
I put in the two pieces below for printing (along with plenty of art for the end-of-year season), and I'm told that the Sept. 7 piece has printed successfully in metal. That's a relief – it's always good to break a losing streak.
September 7
Hope springs eternal: I'm 0 for 3 with this year's designs, but here's something new to try.
It probably won't levitate in real life, or be made out of purple diamond either, but one must make do.
August 22
Last month's piece ran into trouble on the metal printing side...looks like I'm starting to hit the limits of this process. This is what I've been working on now:
It's a streamlined morph of the piece with the little purple balls which I had my eye on in May, a few pictures down from here. I made one instance of that, and although the result was good, it took too many hours to produce. And I think this is better, anyway.
July 7
I'm working on a new piece, this is a rough render:
I hope it's closing in. Lately I've been trying to spend more time on art and less on 'art-related program activities', but of course it's hard to streamline a growing business. It's true about being self-employed that you can't be fired, but the flip side is that it's not so easy to get flex-time, either.
May 31
Here's another Maxwell render. To make this model I started with a group of points arranged around a snub cube, then used Qhull to find their Voronoi cells. I wrote some little programs in Perl to give thickness to the Voronoi lattice, then used ZBrush and Surface Evolver to subdivide and smooth the thickened mesh. I don't know what I'll ever do with this model other than render it, but it was such an odd grab bag of tools that I thought the process deserved a note.
May 27
A rendering of that new piece I was working on, in what I hope will be its final form:
This image was made in Maxwell, a new renderer in alpha testing. Sure wish I could really get those perfectly smooth metal parts in reality, not to mention the precision-ground amethyst spheres.
April 26
Now I can finally talk about this project! Two lampshade designs were unveiled last week at the Salone del Mobile 2005 in Milan, as part of the Materialise MGX collection. I didn't get to go, but here's how the MGX pavilion looked:
And these lamps were my contribution. There's also a hemispherical sconce made from the round design, but I don't have a very good picture of it. I couldn't be happier with Materialise's execution of these, they are beautiful. I hope to have these available for sale in the next couple of months, or at least to be able to refer you to a retailer.
April 14
This isn't really a work in progress since they're already done, but I won't be able to put them on the site until I can make some more, so I thought I'd tease you by putting them here. This is a second polytope, the 24-cell or 4-dimensional octahedron. I hope to have a 600-cell to add to these by the end of the year.
Something else coming up is a 30" version of Little Star, a fabricated steel piece. I hope to have these available by about June, in a durable powder-coat finish that should be suitable for outdoor use.
March 26
Working on a new piece which will use rare-earth magnets and glass, along with printed metal. As you see it's taking quite a while to settle down.
March 8
Wolfram Research is pleased with an etching of the Feigenbaum Function which they commissioned as a present for Dr. Feigenbaum's birthday. (Scroll down in the Mathworld page to see pictures of it.)
In other news, here are some shots of a giant galaxy etching which I worked on last winter for the University of Syracuse, in collaboration with Nottingham astronomer Michael Merrifield. (Check out his excellent model of the sun!) This is the glass blank still in the shipping crate. It's 26" square by 4" deep, that black thing on top of it is a pen. It weighs well over 100 pounds.
Below, the laser etching machine at work. The job was done at Lazart, the size was no problem for their large-format setup.
The finished piece hasn't yet been installed; unveiling is scheduled for April 23.
February 25
The news this week: Team Minnesota is starting to plan a 12-foot snow sculpture of the gyroid for 2006. It takes a lot of work to get these off the ground, but I'm excited to be doing it again.
In case you were wondering where I get my ideas, I've put up some shots of my studio sheds.
February 16
This is as far as I've gotten with the Voronoi polyhedra. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with this, but it might turn out to be good for something.
In other news, I'm working through the tutorials for ZBrush, an organic mesh-based modeler. People seem to mostly use it for sculpting alien heads, but I'm hoping it will interface with Rhino and enable some different modeling techniques from those I've been using. I'm finding the learning curve rather steep, but it was time for a change.
Something else I'm working on is jewelry: a couple of years ago I had
a line of it, but I got into trouble manufacturing it. Now the
technology has advanced, I'd like to come back to the format.
January 28
Finally! After weeks of fussing, I nailed the new model for the gyroid. If the metal printing for this works, somebody should give Extrude Hone a medal. Of course, if it doesn't work I'll be "sucking the mop", as the proverb goes. (Update: it worked fine. Go Prometal!)
I have been working on some software to manipulate foamlike structures made from Voronoi polyhedra, using Qhull to generate them. It's turning out to be rather a tough nut.
Also I'm pleased to report that the piece at right in the previous
entry has printed successfully in metal. I think I'll title it
Lazy Eight, on the grounds that 1) it's sort of 8-shaped, and 2) it
took as much work as any design I've ever made. People talk as
though art-making is all fun, but no fooling, it can be like pulling
teeth.
January 12, 2005
Well, the hologram didn't pan out. I may try a lenticular instead, but overall it's time to move on.
In other news, I
finally succeeded in assembling the first instance of my "Holly"
piece, at left below. It is rather difficult to hold the first 8
ball-bearings in place while getting the 9th one in – I used many
rubber bands and sweated a lot. This structure appeared in my 2004 postcard image, so I'm gratified to
find that it works in reality. That's two out of four tested so
far.
And on the right, yet another try at this piece is in printing.
This has been an inordinate amount of work, but no question it looks
better than before.
October 30, 2004
Working on a hologram, something I've never tried before.
August 16
August 5
Keeping busy on several projects: a very large galaxy for a museum exhibit to open this fall, some lampshades, new science crystals, as well as trying to get some of my own work done.
I had the parts for this puzzle printed back in May, but when they arrived I couldn't put it together. I thought I had misunderstood things and it wasn't a stable equilibrium, but actually I was just doing the assembly wrong. So after I finally got the piece together I took this shot quickly, in case I couldn't do it twice. But I think it's going to be all right: after a few more tries it assembles reliably and stays together quite well. Now to get rid of the rust spots and put a proper patina on it!
This piece has finally come together and is in printing:
July 9
Working on something...
May 19
Two puzzles: they may work or they may not. I won't know until I have the 3D prints in hand.
March 1
This piece has been a bear to finish, and now it's finally ready to print. Above is a rendering of how it would look carved out of sea-green Corian, with perfectly reflective spheres, suspended by antigravity in a universe that consists upwardly of an endless red-on-white grid, and downwardly of a similar white-on-red grid. Making computer graphics is like playing tennis without a net.
February 6, 2004
Peeling apart the single surface of Squares reveals this form, holding 24 spheres.