Revelers at the recent music festival Extrema Outdoors had the privilege of soaking in visuals courtesy of 3DP that accompanied pulsating beats. 3dChef and Stv visuals collaborated for the effects displayed behind DJs at the dance music event. Combining high-resolution camera work with 3D printed sugar blocks spelling out the performer’s name and dousing the object with various elements provided stunning backdrops for each set.
Fire blazed around the prints and water cascaded over them, as two of the elements thrown at the sugar names, manufactured using 3dChef’s own inkjet sugar printer (previously covered on 3DPI). The chemical and physical reactions took less than two seconds, but the camera capturing the effects caught the scene at 2000 frames per second. The resulting film played forward and in reverse to the delight of onlookers.
What each person saw, much to the satisfaction of the producers, was a profound transformation from solid to liquid and back. By using the high-speed camera, the 3D prints illustrated the fluidity of matter, the melting and solidifying manifestations wrought under an envelope of nature’s elements. Surely akin to the transubstantiation experienced by the crowd lost in the music, the 3D prints melted and regenerated as time slowed in the moment sublime. The sugar prints, positively ephemeral, took fire and water and acted(to quote Sagan), “Like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever”.
