Breath Vessels
Ceramic vessels 3D-printed from human breath.
Every breath is an exchange. What was inside you becomes environment; what was environment is integrated into your body, powering your cells. With every breath, the boundary between self and world dissolves — a practice in which we participate about twenty thousand times a day, almost never noticing.
In this interactive installation, a visitor exhales into a small shell-shaped device. As they breathe, a virtual 3D model grows in real time: the strength and speed of the breath at each moment determines the width of the vessel, so its silhouette becomes a direct record of that exhalation's rhythm. The resulting form is then 3D-printed in ceramic or PLA.
The cosmology of breath
Many languages that have thought seriously about the animating principle of life reach for breath as their metaphor:
- In Greek, pneuma (πνεῦμα) names both the air we breathe and the divine breath that animates the soul.
- The Latin root spiritus persists in spirit and inspiration. In ancient Roman literature, the word afflātus referred to the divine breath said to inhabit poets at the moment of composition — literally a breath from the gods.
- In Hebrew, ruach (רוּחַ) is breath, wind, and spirit at once — the same word that hovers over the waters in Genesis.
- In Sanskrit, prāṇa (प्राण) is the vital life-force, moving through the body on the breath — the concept underlying the yogic practice of prāṇāyāma, the deliberate cultivation of breath.
- In classical Chinese thought, qi (氣) is the animating energy of all living things, and breath is one of its manifestations.
Technical details
The custom software is not simply a visualization; it literally builds the 3D model in real time, exported as an STL using Karsten Schmidt's Toxiclibs library, alongside a captured image. Breath intensity is measured through an Arduino equipped with an accelerometer and Modern Device's Rev C Wind Sensor.
| Year | 2015–16 |
|---|---|
| Materials | Slipcast ceramic; 3D-printed PLA; generative software; Arduino; exhalation |