Before the year ends I wanted to write about some of the events I was able to be a part of this year with the Scan-A-Rama 3D Portrait Studio. I had a spectacular year of making 3D portraits for thousands of people at a slew of events that included talks as well as scanning events at the Innovation Loft, Midwest Reprap Festival, Newark New Jersey, Westport Conneticut, Bay Area and New York Maker Faires, at Pepsico’s Executive World Summit, and Theatre Bizarre. I also spent the year on an artist fellowship at Wheaton Arts’ Creative Glass Center of America in which I innovated and explored methods of glass casting from digitally designed objects. Stay tuned for more on this- I will be posting the findings from this fellowship in January (I am just wrapping up there now). Finally, I went out to Seattle and set up a bot lab at the Pilchuck Glass School, where I will be teaching a class TaDDDaa!! in June of 2016. The class will cover techniques of glass casting from a digital workflow that includes 3D sculpting, scanning, printing, and CNC carving. If this list isn’t impressive enough for you, I also had two amazing corporate gigs in November that I’ve been meaning to write up- The first being at Google of their internal user experience conference; Google UXU, and the second for Pfizer at their Excelerate innovation conference!
Google’s UXU is an internal conference for the company’s entire UX ladder to meet up, compare notes on best practices, hone skills and get inspired to create some of the world’s best digital products. I was honored to be invited to come out to the Googleplex and deliver the conference’s opening keynote address, one expanded from my talk at Bay Area Maker Faire about the History of Technology as Entertainment that included my work on recreating Luna Park with 3D printing, and ended with some conjectures about 3D printing and what will happen when hot rod culture gets a hold of self driving cars. Was the talk well received? Here’s what one attendee said:
November was busy! I had barely returned from the Googleplex when Pfizer’s Excelerate conference began and I spent two days making 3D portraits of some of the movers and shakers of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. I even made a portrait of the CEO, Ian Read!
2015 was an amazing year for me. I can’t say I got rich, but as the first year out on my own doing what I love without working for someone else, I think I did pretty well for myself. Just writing it up now, I realize that Fredini Enterprises has done some great work… and there’s a lot more where that came from! I have a lot of exciting things in the pipes for 2016 – new products, artwork, inventions and more, so stay tuned.
Happy New Year Everyone!
Frederick G. Kahl 