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Watch a fake flower blossom thanks to flexible 3D-printed materials (video)

Richard Clarkson, a student at New York's School of Visual Arts, has used a combination of pneumatics and 3D-printed flexible-materials to create an artificial flower that "blooms," and the result is pretty neat. When air fills a cavity in the rubbery petals, they expand and push outward against the harder center bulb, replicating how a real flower blossoms. Clarkson said he chose a flower for this experiment because he wanted to model something organic from an entirely non-organic process. Words really don't do the art project justice however, which is why we've embedded a video of the installation after the break -- check it out.


Blossom from Richard Clarkson on Vimeo.