Artists have long been leveraging the possibilities of 3D/4D printing but the newest avenues it has provided is biomimicry. While technology is great for design in general, it has allowed artists to take massive inspiration from nature. Designer Nicole Hone has now used the technology to create an immersive experience using aquatic plants. The printed sculptures use a multi-material printing technique to serve as intelligent 4D plants with multiple purposes.

The artist states that she has always been fascinated with nature and it inspires her design. During the early stages of test prints, she found that the materials performed smoother and more organically in water, as fragile parts were supported better. And that leads to the concept of futuristic aquatic plants –Hydrophytes. The hydrophytes provide an in-depth underwater experience and prove how diverse 4D printing can really be.

The plants can serve various functions depending on how the creators program them. For example, one of Hone’s Hydrophytes is the “Nomadic Cleaner”, which can clean pests off of corals. Then there’s the Imp Root, which hunts invasive species. This all comes down to their internal structure.

Hone developed the sculptures using CAD, and then she printed them at Victoria University of Wellington. Different software programs allowed her to 3D model the shape, surface texture and internal structures of each sculpture. These then became a single object using a variety of UV light-sensitive materials on a multi-material 3D printer. The light-sensitive polymer print process is only the beginning, however.

The designers then removed the jelly-like support material that encases the sculptures by soaking them in water. They followed this up by cleaning it out with a toothpick which can take multiple hours to complete. The internal tubes inside these artworks are intricate and require their own form of promising. Designers flush then out using water and animate them with the use of pneumatic air jets and LED lights. As a result, it produces an immersive experience for the viewer, looking at seemingly organically moving lifeforms. The biomimicry of the 4D plants can fully simulate real functions found in nature.

Source 3dprinting.com