This week’s selection is “Manual”, a 3D printed book by Hyperpress.
A 3D printed book? You might think that there are plenty of 3D printing books, and there are. But this isn’t one of them. It is a book, cover, pages and spine, that is entirely 3D printed. No paper was sacrificed to produce this book, entitled, “Manual”.
Hyperpress explains the concept:
“Manual traces this shared trajectory between self-replicating systems and digital books by proposing the electronically transmissible and printable book object. Unlike the e-book, where only textual content is transmissible, this Replicable Book (r-book) enables the replication of both content and physical form. This process can also be understood as a form of ‘3D fax’: if the fax machine reproduced only the scanned surfaces of documents, the 3D printer enables the complete reconstruction of a fully functional book object. While the r-book can assume the form of any type of book, Manual consists solely of machine-readable code, positioning itself as addressed primarily to machines, not human readers.”
The text of the book is the GCODE that can produce … the book! Well, actually, they have included only 2.5% of the entire set of GCODE instructions, as they wanted to limit the physical size of the book. But you get the point by their demonstration: the book is the instructions to replicate itself.
This is a very curious, ingenious and entirely impractical 3D print that will no doubt be printed by many as a curiosity that will generate many thoughtful discussions.
Hyperpress does offer the ability obtain the full 3D model for printing via their Patreon subscription.
Via Hyperpress
