In 1994, Jim Bredt (Ph.D. MIT engineering) and friend artist / inventor, Tim Anderson put some sugar in their printer and invented the concept of using non-toxic powders with a standard ink jet printer to create rapid prototypes. A year later, the two friends and some partners founded Z Corporation, a Somerville Massachusetts Company that manufactures printing machines and sells them to colleges, service bureaus and industry. Their 3-D printer, named the Z402 Rapid Prototyping System is able to produce objects as large as 8” x 10” x 8” in layers of one-seven-thousandths of an inch in just a few hours from an .STL file. The material of the finished product is a cellulose non-toxic carbohydrate powder which binds together as it is built up in layers.

Jim Bredt used a full body scan to create 5Jimthing, 1999, which resembles a postmodern, five-headed and multi-limbed Indian deity. Composed of five 6 1/2” Zcorp Zprints of the kneeling nude artist, they form a complex and intricate design in raspberry colored cellulose. Glued together at their heads with arms and legs entwined, this merging, twisting and multiplying of the 3-D human form demonstrates what the technology can do. According to Bredt, “The concept that I have is kind of a third-millennium version of playing with the office copier.” 5Jimthing is also an expression of the alchemy involved in its creation, starting with the transformation of flesh into data, the data into construct, and construct into symbol. “In alchemy,” says Jim, “there is the concept of multiplication, abstractly represented in the piece and concretely manifested in technology.”

In JimAtlas, 1999, the artist/engineer presents a self-portrait nude image holding up a tiny Zcorp Zprint model of a truck engine. This single kneeling human being holds up the symbolic world of technology. Like Atlas, the Titan who held up the pillars of the universe, Jimatlas holds up his product, an RP industrial model. (M>M)