Amanda J Barlow

For my final project, I proposed using 3D scanning and printing to create a tactile experience, specifically in relation to fashion exhibitions like the Brooklyn Museum’s current Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion, in order to improve the visitor experience for blind and partially sighted visitors as well as for other visitors with or without disabilities. Touch tours most often provide the opportunity to handle rigid objects like sculptures, but it is more difficult to provide a touch experience for fashion exhibitions because historical clothing materials are generally delicate and require minimal handling for proper conservation. While the Brooklyn Museum provided a fabric swatch tactile guide for the Pierre Cardin show, they could take it one step further by 3D scanning and printing small scale versions of the unusual shapes of the exhibition’s clothing, hats, and shoes. I believe that by adding initiatives like this, the Brooklyn Museum could improve their inclusivity by creating multisensory experiences for diverse museum goers using modern technology.

While museums today are often places that focus primarily on the visual experience and strongly forbid touching objects, they haven’t always been that way. Early museums in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which began as mainly private collections, commonly encouraged visitors to touch objects to acquire information about them (Bacci and Pavani 17). Furthermore, recent research has revealed that, although we once thought that the brain processed sensory inputs in separate unisensory streams, we now know that certain regions of the brain that were once thought to be solely for visual reception are actually also stimulated by equivalent tactile or haptic efforts (Lacey and Sathian 3). In Chapter 1 of The Multisensory Museum, Lacey and Sathian conclude that “multisensory approaches could encourage a deeper public engagement with history,” and “may lead to more elaborative processing, thus enabling better understanding and improved recall of the museum experience and its intellectual content” (12). Incorporating touch into the Brooklyn Museum’s fashion exhibitions would clearly increase engagement with the historical clothing being displayed, while also including blind and partially sighted visitors who would otherwise be excluded. 

3D printing is a relatively new technology that creates a three-dimensional object from a digital file, or a computer-aided design (CAD) model. It is also referred to as “additive manufacturing,” as an object is built by adding material layer on layer. There are many different types of 3D printing processes, however the process that I used in this project (because it is what the Makerbot Replicator+ uses), is called “fused deposition modeling,” in which the printer uses an “extruder” similar to a hot glue gun to melt filament material and extrude it from a nozzle to create the layers of the 3D print. 3D scanning is the process of analyzing something from the real world to collect data about its shape and appearance in order to mock up a digital 3D model. This model can then be used in conjunction with a 3D printer to create a printed reproduction.

While 3D printing has many applications ranging from medical devices to food manufacturing to automotive components, it is also being used in museum settings to create replicas of historical objects for research, repatriation, restoration, and in exhibitions (Wilson et al. 447). In a study carried out at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, researchers evaluated what museum visitors thought of the introduction of touchable, 3D-printed replicas into museums. They found that the majority of people responded positively to the idea and that most interviewees believed that using this approach would “enhance their museum experience” and even encourage them to visit museums more frequently (Wilson et al. 461). 3D printing is unquestionably an educational tool that is welcome and useful in the modern museum environment.         

In order to create a proof of concept for my proposed initiative, I utilized the Faculty Research Center at the Fashion Institute of Technology where I work, using an Occipital Structure 3D scanner in conjunction with the itSeez3D app and a MakerBot Replicator+ 3D printer to create a rigid, small scale version of a hat similar to what can be found at the Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion exhibition. I purchased the hat from a vintage shop on Etsy based on its unusual shape and similarity to the style of the hats in the Pierre Cardin exhibit, but also due to its somewhat complicated structure to test the capabilities of the 3D scanner. The cloche hat is black, has a number of small, round white plastic buttons protruding from a ribbon that is wrapped around it, and it is made of a dense, but still somewhat transparent straw. 

The Occipital Structure 3D scanner is an iPad attachment sensor that allows you to capture scale accurate 3D models of people, objects, and places. At a price point of roughly $400, it’s a pretty affordable option for those looking to casually create 3D scans, especially if you already own an iPad. It works with a number of apps, including itSeez3D, a free iOS app (which only works with the Occipital Structure scanner) that allows you to capture structure and color information and process it into realistic 3D models. It also uploads your models to Sketchfab.com to share, which is a platform for publishing and sharing 3D, VR, and AR content. Sketchfab is a convenient and popular platform, but it is also another potential expense related to this process. If you want to upload more than one model a month, it will cost you anywhere from $7-$15 as an individual with 10-30 monthly uploads, or $79-$249 a month for 200-500 uploads as a business. The MakerBot software accesses the uploaded model directly from Sketchfab and gives you the opportunity to fine tune and size the model before printing it in a material of your choice. 

I printed my model in a PLA (polylactic acid) material, which is corn-based plastic that is renewable, recyclable and generally considered to be biodegradable, although there is some debate as to how long it takes to break down. A large spool of PLA costs about $48 when purchasing it from Makerbot, however there are many different types of printable materials, and numerous resources from which one can buy them. While the MakerBot Replicator+ currently costs about $2000 for a full package (printer, software, and printer material), there are many other less expensive printer package options that could work for a project like this in the $200-$1000 range. However, the lower in price you go, the more you compromise the speed and accuracy of your print in addition to the size of the object you are able to create.  

The itSeez3D app has three different modes of scanning, which are as an object, a bust, or a full body scan. I chose to first try to scan the hat in object mode, which had some mixed results. The lab tech said that occasionally the 3D scanner has difficulty capturing certain shapes in object mode and also mentioned that the transparency of the straw hat material might be making it more difficult. When I asked her what the most successful types of scans were in her experience, she said that scanning clothing on a mannequin as a bust usually worked best. When I then scanned the hat in bust mode, it improved greatly but still technically had some imperfections. We tried one more scan of the hat on a foam mannequin head in bust mode, and while this seemed like the most accurate out of all of them, I chose to print the second scan. I felt that it was important to print the hat as an independent object in order to accurately represent its shape as a replica intended for a tactile experience. The printing process took about one and a half to two hours to print a model that is roughly one and a half inches in size.

I found the use of these tools to be fairly straightforward, but I was fortunate to have help from an experienced lab assistant as well as some background in technology. I could certainly see this process being a bit more challenging for someone in a museum setting with less know-how. If the Brooklyn Museum did not have someone from their staff with 3D printing experience, I would most likely recommend partnering with an educational institution or design firm to not only help them with the initial difficulty of the process, but also to keep the cost low as this would presumably be a trial endeavor. There are a number of 3D printing services online and locally in New York City, and upon reviewing their pricing, I found that it would be considerably less expensive for the museum to print their initial objects in this manner. 

The implementation of this project would not be complete without an outreach strategy to include blind and partially sighted communities in the planning and realization of this initiative. Starting with including members of these communities in the planning process, the Brooklyn Museum could host a discussion about what would enhance their experience at the museum and follow it with a discussion about their thoughts regarding touch tours and any experience they’ve had with the 3D printing process or 3D printed objects. The museum would also benefit from reaching out to blind and partially sighted patrons through their regular marketing channels and from targeting specific groups and organizations to communicate the new initiative once it has been completed. 

While I have only scratched the surface of what might actually go into implementing an initiative like this during the course of this project, I think that using new technology to innovate ways to create multisensory experiences in museums could be an important way to improve disability exclusion. Museums can no longer be ocularcentric repositories of artifacts where curators and administration have the final say about what’s important and how it’s displayed. As technology advances and costs for things like 3D printing continue to decrease, it will become easier than ever to develop new ways to create engaging and transformative experiences for any museum visitor. 

Works Cited

Bacci, Francesca and Pavani, Francesco. “‘First Hand’ not ‘First Eye’ Knowledge.” Eds. Levent, N., and A. Pascual-Leone. The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Smell, Sound, Memory, and Space. Lanham: Rowmany & Littlefield, 2014.

Lacey, Simon and Sathian, K. “Please DO Touch the Exhibits!” Eds. Levent, N., and A. Pascual-Leone. The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Smell, Sound, Memory, and Space. Lanham: Rowmany & Littlefield, 2014. 

Wilson, Paul F. et al. “Evaluation of Touchable 3D-Printed Replicas in Museums.” Curator: The Museum Journal, Oct. 2017, pp. 445-465