LivePrinter: Live 3D printing

LivePrinter is the start of an open, interactively programmed 3D printing system for live computational making. Automated manufacturing can be a collaborative process rather than replace human craftspeople. The works shown here were all done with LivePrinter to show that new forms of collaborative improvisation and human/computer intuition are possible with digital manufacturing. One work uses digital "agents" that are guided by the coder/maker to create overlaying paths of plastic in grids of different sizes. The other explores more manual ways of filling space, here using livecoded Hilbert curves with different properties. Each experiment was a combined automated and manual process where the maker manipulated the material in the 3D printer and interactively ran and edited the code over the making session. The code for each session in recorded and displayed here along with the artefacts.