When you go on vacation to a city or resort you usually come back with some cheesy photos, maybe a tan, and the compulsory tacky souvenirs. These are part of the unwritten rules of vacationing, you’re just compelled to do them. Also written in the “I’m A Tourist” handbook is the requisite gawking at landmarks and street performers, because somehow these urban mainstays always seem more charming in someone else’s city. A new installation/intervention from blablabLAB, a Barcelona art collective, brings all these varied components of a holiday together into an experiment in materializing memories.The group has cleverly combined the dynamics and elements of a busy stretch of street in central Barcelona, Spain—the famed La Rambla—where streams of tourists shuffle along, stopping to watch the statuesque street performers or buy goods or portraits from the craftsmen and caricature artists. The installation, entitled Be Your Own Souvenir, invites the crowds of tourists and locals to have a go at being a human statue, holding a pose while they are scanned volumetricaly using three Kinect cameras. The data is captured using custom software created using openFrameworks and openKinect, adapted in real-time using a MIDI controller, processed by Meshlab, fed into a Rapman 3.1 3D printer and printed right before the individual’s eyes in what amounts to a modern-age hybrid of the street performance and souvenir portrait experience.blablabLAB say it “mimics the informal artistic context of this popular street, human sculptures and craftsmen, bringing diverse realities and enabling greater empathy between the agents that cohabit in the public space.”In a city famed for its culture and artistic heritage—from being the birthplace of Joan Miró, as well as home to Antoni Gaudí’s ornately decorative buildings, the Picasso Museum and the medieval Gothic Quarter—blablabLAB are carrying on the tradition of creativity and innovation while also adding a 21st century artistic spin. The experience they’ve created is firmly rooted in the traditions and activities of the tourist hot spot of La Rambla, but by using the Kinect’s depth mapping capabilities and 3D printing technologies, their interpretation has a decidedly modern feel. By taking these tools to the streets, they’re bringing new technology into unfamiliar territory and showing how rapid printing can be immediate and accessible, even in the relative chaos of a city’s streets. We’d like to see those tacky old coin stamping machines replaced with these “mini-me” sculptures in cities the world over.Photo courtesy blablabLAB’s Flickr
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Barcelona Street Installation Lets You Print A Mini-Me In 3D
blablabLAB combine the holiday photo with street performance to create a 21st century art souvenir.