‘Fahz’ — Your Face in a 3D Printed Vase — To Launch on Kickstarter Soon

If you took a basic art class way back when, your attention was probably captured by a project involving negative space. It causes you to reverse your way of looking at something — something that you don’t see at first, as it is the space around and between an image.

Looking into negative space requires some focus and deliberation. Used quite effectively by many artists in compositions, they are able to get your attention as you stop and watch something transform before your eyes like magic.

Wait, could that be your own face you are seeing? In a vase? How, and why? If you’d like to see this become a reality, all it takes is a pledge for the Kickstarter campaign soon to be launched by Desbiens Design Research, owned by Nick and Martha Desbians of Brooklyn, NY, and founded as “an incubator for new ideas.”

Nicholas Desbiens AIA, LEED AP is an architect and computational designer in Brooklyn, New York

Nick, an architect and computational designer was challenged last Mother’s Day to think of an amazing gift for his wife. Setting the bar very high for all the other husbands, Nick came up with a unique and elegant gift with a built-in surprise. Not only was the gift itself a lovely white 3D printed vase, but as he presented it to his wife and she gazed at it further, within the negative space she magically saw the faces of her children, herself, and her husband.

“My first thought when I received the vase was that this was really beautiful, but as I started to turn around the vase I realized there was something more going on. I could see faces in the vase. And not just anyone’s faces. I could see my children’s faces, my face, and Nick’s face too,” said Martha.

We’re talking major points here — after attaining your own Fahz to give to a loved one as a gift — and keeping one for yourself certainly isn’t a bad idea either.

But how did Nick come up with this idea? While challenged with the Mother’s Day gift idea, he used his preference for systems, and rather than just giving Martha one gift, he systematically built the entire family’s faces into the vase by starting with photos of the children’s profiles, then outlines, and then he generated ‘vector geometry’ which visualized and then brought the profiles to life in negative space, morphing and squeezing them together into the vase shape. He had the design 3D printed and not only received a great response from his family, but also many others.

Since Nick had the program written to make the outlines and produce them as 3D printed vases, and friends and family were clamoring for their own, they decided to work on a Kickstarter program that will begin soon so that anyone so inclined can have their own customized sculpture in the form of the Fahz.

They plan to use funds from their Kickstarter campaign to purchase a 3D printer for production purposes, and then Nick may also be able to pursue a new design website centered around the program, a mobile app, as well as working on new designs just waiting to spring forth from his sketchpad.

Is this a kickstarter campaign you would have interest in contributing to? Have you thought about creating anything like this with your own 3D printer? Tell us about it in the Fahz forum over at 3DPB.com. Check out a video describing the Fahz below.