The third industrial revolution is upon us, and Joshua Harker is one of its leaders.

In his TEDx talk, “Making the Unmakeable: The Journey into the 3rd Industrial Revolution,” Harker spoke about his long history in the creation of 3D printing technology. His art serves as an example of the capabilities of 3D printing, stretching the medium to its limits. First invented in 1986, 3D printing can create physical objects based on computer code, just as a paper printer takes computer code (such as the code that forms this very page) and manifests it in two dimensions. Only in recent years has 3D printing technology become sufficiently advanced enough for popular use. One major issue is finding the right type of material to support 3D objects, usually some kind of plastic.

One of Harker’s early 3D sculpture projects was “Tangles,” a series of complex and curving lines and shapes. According to Harker, the complexity of those shapes made it difficult to make the art in different media, such as stone or wood. To make money, Harker used 3D printers to make action figures. Eventually, he had enough money to open his own studio, which quickly became very successful, pulling in millions of dollars per year after a few years.

Around this time — sometime in the 1990s — Harker started developing mesh textures with animation programs. During that phase of exploration, he tested different types of material, trying to find the one that best suited the kind of artwork he wanted to create. Some of the plastics and metals he tried burned during the printing process, weren’t strong enough or were so brittle that the models made from them were transient. Finally, Harker made a breakthrough with a bronze sculpture, printed by a company in Germany.

While testing different materials, Harker recognized that the type of sculptures he was trying to develop challenged the art of sculpting itself — he was working to “bridge traditional technologies with the medium.” He knew that he was ahead of the curve, but still admits that 3D printing technology is moving at such a rapid pace that he isn’t entirely sure what the future might hold for the medium.

“It changes so fast that we can hardly predict what will happen in a couple of years,” Harker said.

For whatever reason, 3D printing didn’t immediately catch on with the world at large, so to show the more practical uses of the technology, Harker worked reconstructing mummies for museums with 3D printing. He believes doing this work will help educate the public and the world about its possibilities.

But for Harker, his artwork is most important, and he loves the way social media has latched on to the idea of 3D sculptures. One of his sculptures, in the shape of a complexly carved skull, is the most-funded sculpture project in Kickstarter history. He believes that social media ultimately helps art because it can become more visible and reach a wider range of people than if it was confined to a mere private gallery. With digital distribution, though, there are new legal issued to work out. Since with 3D printing physical objects are tied to computer code, “piracy” of objects has become possible. Just as people download music or movies online, downloading the code to create 3D objects with a printer is possible as well.

“There’s a whole big ball of wax there that needs to be worked though,” Harker said.

 Q&A

Pipe Dream: Could you tell me a bit about how involved you are in the engineering of the artwork you do?

Joshua Harker: One-hundred percent involved in it – I don’t do any generative or algorithmic-based sculpting. I’m not letting the computer really do anything. I’m using it as a tool to make forms that I’m directly in control of the shape of. It’s very much a traditional approach to sculpting but just using the computer and tool sets within it. I don’t make the 3D printing machines, you know, I’m not doing any of the engineering on that. I simply use them as a tool and as a medium to print out my finished parts.

PD: In what way do you think your work effects 3D printing or 3D technology as a whole?

JH: What’s become clear is that these shapes – and I started drawing them in the 80s – these shapes that I make have basically broken what was considered the design and manufacturing threshold. They are a clear representation – something that couldn’t be made before this technology came around. It being a physical manifestation of that accomplishment – of what 3D printing can do, and what computer software can do, and what an artist’s vision can do – I think that’s what it brings to it. It brings this realization of what can be done now.

PD: How, specifically, has your art changed with the advent of 3D technology?

JH: The art came first, I was drawing them two-dimensionally for years and they were too complex to make with any traditional method – I tried everything. So I happened to working in the industry and working with 3D printers since the early 90s and just kept trying to put the puzzle together, so to speak. So it’s not that the art changed, but it allowed me to definitely move to three dimensions with it. It really liberated that aspect of it, because that dimension wasn’t available before the advent of the technology and that software.

PD: Why is it that you can do certain things with 3D printing that you can’t do with other forms of sculpture like, say, woodwork or stone?

JH: Well, the series that I really jumped on 3D printing as a medium with was this “tangle” series that I do. It was just too intricate, complex internally. You couldn’t carve inside there. You needed to remove stuff if you’re going to use the subtractive method. And I tried, you know, wood and stone and I tried those methods. And then it’s also got varying dimensions as far as thick and thin parts so I couldn’t just take one long piece of wire or wax and just bend it around and make it right, because it varied in diameter throughout. And there’s symmetry issues… there’s just a lot of things that played into it that you just couldn’t execute manually and just put it together.

PD: As I understand it, with 3D printing technology, you have code which is pit into a machine, and then an object comes out. How do you think that will effect copyright law when such physical objects are tied to a digital format used to create them?

JH: I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to effect it – it is going to effect it, though, huge. If there’s going to be any kind of protections, things are going to have to be rewritten and technology will have to keep up. No matter what the law says, if technology enables it, it will just be circumvented, much in the way that music and movies have been shared across the internet. But that precedence is there – they’ve already started messing with it. But this idea of the idea being more important than the physical object and of people taking existing works and improving them is a good thing, too. There’s definitely a nice aspect to that. But that’s a huge concern for a lot of people, particularly the “intellectual property product”-type of people that are trying to run a business off of certain shapes. It doesn’t apply to me too much because mine are too difficult. You can’t scan them or replicate them easily just because the shapes are too complex. Maybe not forever, but…

PD: When lawmakers get involved into this kind of process, do you see yourself stepping into that arena and championing your kind of works and your digital rights? What’s your stance on that?

JH: There’s pros and cons to it – on either side – but certainly. Maybe it depends on what the law is really fundamentally supporting or going after. I don’t want anyone to take my ideas and just make money off them – and nobody wants that. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s beneficial, with how powerful the technology is, for us to suppress and to control all these things that people can use and make better things out of. I’m not just talking art, I’m talking design and manufacturing things. There’s great accomplishments that can be made by building upon existing works. Philosophically, I’d like that information to be out there for people to use. And I think a lot of people will put a lot of their things out there.