TranslatTranslaAndy Huntington and Drew Allan
Cylinder (Series), 2003
3D Printed Plastic
20-40 cm
Huntington and Allan developed software that translates sound into STL files to be 3D printed. With this technology, they were able to map the auditory complexity of spaces, music and moments into visual and tactile objects. What is not apparent in this body of work is how scale comes into play. The small size of the objects suggests that the designers were limited by the size of their printers and that because of this, the scale that the sounds are printed at differs. The project “grew out of a desire to create truly complex objects which hint at the overwhelming detail present in nature,” and it is safe to say that the designers did succeed in producing complex objects but perhaps not ones that reflect nature. Some of the moments that they recorded like a breath, a Saturday market in Italy or Martin Luther King’s “free at last” are representative and provide a visual and tactile map of moments in the human experience. Not only can these objects help to illustrate the energy of a sound or a room but they serve as artifacts that can help us map out these moments that have passed.
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What are the bottom two images representative of? I have trouble with sound output to sculpture because the original is lost entirely and somehow there is this assertion made by the authors that it remains by pointing and saying “the data is there in the file” and so somehow it must be true or something. Just curious to know how you feel because while they are interesting to look at I have trouble reconciling what I’m told it is vs. how hard it appears to be. maybe because there is a lack in options for output material in this stage of the technology?