What Happens When Things Go Wrong? A Look at 'Digital Entropy'
My recent work with AI and 3D printing led to an experiment I’m calling 'Digital Entropy.' The project began with a simple question: what would an AI dream up if I asked it to create a person from its own internal data?
I didn't provide it with any reference photos, but simply prompted it to generate a 3D model. The result was unsettling and compelling—a kind of hollow, ghostly figure that looked human, but also completely alien. I knew immediately that I wanted to use it as the subject for an experiment.
The plan was to pull this "digital ghost" into the physical world using my 3D printer. However, instead of trying to achieve a perfect print, my goal was to witness what would happen if I simply let the machine struggle with the flawed and unusual file.
I sent the exact same file to the printer four times, using the same settings for each attempt. My only intervention was to clean the print bed and press 'print' again. Each of the four prints failed in a unique way, becoming a document of that failure.
The First Attempt: This print is the most successful of the four. The figure is almost fully realized, but one arm is missing, lost when a support structure failed. This became the baseline—the closest the system could get to perfection under these conditions, and it was still incomplete.
The Nozzle Clog: On the second attempt, the printer's nozzle clogged about halfway through the process. The machine continued its programmed path, but with the flow of plastic stopped, it left this headless, half-finished form.
The Collapse: The third figure printed for hours and seemed to be forming correctly. But a layer shift early in the process created a fatal instability in the foundation. Eventually, the structure collapsed under its own accumulating weight, creating a tragic ruin.
The "Spaghetti": This is perhaps the most visceral result. After a similar early collapse, the printer, blind to the failure below, continued to extrude molten plastic into thin air. In 3D printing, this chaotic nest of filament is often called "spaghetti."
The Meaning in the Failure
For me, this project became a way to visualize how information degrades. You begin with the infinitely complex idea of a person, which gets translated by an AI, then into machine code, and finally into a physical object. At every step, the idea is corrupted. These figures are what that decay looks like.
It also shifted my role as the artist. I wasn't dictating the outcome, but merely setting the stage for a process to unfold between two machines—the AI and the printer. These objects are artifacts of their miscommunication.
On a more human level, the process reminds me of how fragile things are. These were born from a perfect digital idea, but the physical world broke them. That feels more honest and interesting to me than a flawless copy ever could.
