14 DAY TRIAL // The web has spoiled us, and people now expect to be able to enjoy and consume everything they want, any time they want. But the "real" world doesn't work that way. Sure, you can see photos of a great van Gogh painting on your phone every time you want, but it's not exactly the same as seeing the real thing.
It's worse for sculptures or historical artifacts. Even if you go to a museum to the one place on Earth where you can find a particular object, you'll still only be able to see it from a distance, through protective glass.
But touch is just as important as sight to most of us, which is why Museofabber is working on the great idea of 3D printing museum objects and historical artifacts, so that more people can get to view them and, more importantly, actually touch them.
The idea is simple. There are plenty of museum pieces that have already been digitized for research and preservation. Getting those 3D models and creating realistic replicas from them could be a great boon to culture but also, more importantly, would create a new revenue stream for museums.
The program was one of the winners of the EU @diversity Ideas Competition, which should result in greater exposure and more resources.
"There is a huge cauldron that just sits -- 3D digitisation is part of the process of the professionals anyway, either for documentation reasons or for research," Nikolaos Maniatis, who is behind the project, told Wired.
"A lot of money has gone in, especially public money, so it's finding a way to try and monetise this cauldron that already sits there and is not giving as much as it could, because what you can get from 3D is the 3D – if it's still on a computer screen it remains 2D in a reality. But the feeling of touching, that's how you appreciate more the material culture," he added.