In an exploration of prosthesis, this piece was created with the inspiration of bio-printing, a relatively new scientific process in which 3D printing technology is used to create functioning organs. In a layer-by-layer disposition, human cells and tissue samples are laid on top of one another to assemble the organ, much like traditional 3D printing. Built artificially, and yet, by human intervention, the potential for this technology presents a medical alternative of being both naturally occurring and truly at home within the patient’s body. While this technology is certainly promising in it’s current state, succeeding to the point of creating a functioning liver, it has yet to reach a point of complexity in terms of creating human lungs. With this anticipation in mind, our intent was to create a futuristic embodiment for the potentiality for this organ and it’s technological potentiality.

Established with this concept of layering in mind, the organ’s height, width, and depth were recreated to match the scale of an average pair of an adult human’s lungs. The fabrication of the images on each panel, were created initially, through careful alignment of cross-sectioned clay sculptures, which were then photographed and further manipulated to reach their final point of realization. Divided into halftone registrations of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, the images were then screen-printed onto acrylic plates to mimic the steady layer of human cells within the process of bio-printing. Then assembled in relative distance from on another, the piece was backlit to aid in the wonderment of it’s juxtaposition between digital and handcrafted measures.