Who's behind this

I'm Rudolf. I've spent ten years as a creative director, mostly making other people's ideas work. This one is mine.

I live in Lisbon, where I run a small farm of 3D printers in a room that is also an office, a studio, a gym and a playroom. We moved here not long ago, so you can probably picture it. Every object on this site is printed there, to order, by me.

It's art, so there's a statement

Art is an idea, not an object. The idea comes first; making it is a formality. In this I follow Sol LeWitt and the conceptualists — what they wrote in 1967 still describes how I work.

What has changed since then is who executes the idea. For most of that history, conceptual works were realised by museum staff, assistants and enthusiasts following the artist's instructions. Technology has opened that up. LeWitt wrote that the idea becomes a machine that makes the art — with AI, APIs, the Web and 3D printers, that is now literally true. The idea can run on its own.

This project is one of those ideas, running.

Like any conceptual work, it comes with instructions:

  1. Photograph your gum
  2. Choose a colour
  3. Choose a placement
  4. Stick it


Why gum?

  • Because it may be our last unconscious creative act. You shape it without thinking and the result is a unique abstract form (fresh breath is a side effect).
  • Gum is already permanent, and nobody meant it to be. It is barely recycled anywhere yet, which means it outlasts almost everything else we make.
  • Because at 1:100 it reshapes the space around it.

Art, easy as ABC.