On display at the Super Bien! greenhouse for contemporary art (yes, that’s a thing) in Berlin is the sculpture Portrait of a Birch by artist Martin Binder. What’s special about this particular piece isn’t that it’s on display in a structure designed to grow vegetables — no, it’s that it is entirely drawn by hand using a 3D printing pen. Some 4 meters of hand drawn woodfill sculpture.
To make a point about digital media consumption, identity and originality as well as the difference between what’s real and what’s not, Martin Binder set about 3D printing a tree.
The project took 250 hours and was completed using a 3D printing pen and wood-plastic composite filament. The result is a 4-meter long sculpture which, when behind glass, looks completely realistic.
However, when you get up close, you can see the filament lines and that it’s only an imitation of a real tree after all. The sculpture is now being exhibited at Super Bien! Greenhouse for contemporary art in Berlin.
“I spend a lot of time on instagram, where I consume images behind a glass screen. This work is a three-dimensional equivalent to digital media consumption. A fragment of a tree can be visually experienced behind the glass walls of the unconventional exhibition space,” Binder explains.
Eyes for a 3D Scanner, Hands for a 3D Printer
While researching his design, Binder spent hours studying birch trees. He explains: “My eyes were the 3D scanner and my hands were the 3D printer.”
His design isn’t perfect and has broken branches and imperfections to make it look like a real tree, frozen still and conserved in time. But, when you look up close, the 3D print is extremely impressive and clearly meticulously created.
If you get the chance to see the birch, consider the questions Binder is asking, such as; what is real, what do we perceive, why do we perceive something?
The public can visit the design 24 hours a day at the greenhouse located at Schwedter Strasse 232, 10435 Berlin. The Portrait of a Birch appears to be floating in the exhibition space and will remain there until March 8th, 2018.
Want to know more about Binder and his work? He studied product design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. He also completed a degree in Art in Context at the University of the Arts, Berlin. Visit his website for more insight into his projects.
Source: Design Boom
All images: Asaf Oren, via DesignBoom
Website: LINK
