This just mysteriously appeared on the table at SDCC booth #5336 (where MakerBot and @Toy_Tokyo have been jamming for the past few days). It comes from the man who’s been killing it on Thingiverse lately, and sparking some controversy, too.

There’s no mistaking this. This must have been the work of Cosmo Wenman, whose own photo of the piece is really stirring.

This piece is titled “The Replication of Venus”¹ . It’s a brilliant mashup of his cosmonaut figure and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, emerging from The Replicator. In Cosmo’s words:

Archetype meets Renaissance meets 1920′s futurism meets bleeding-edge pop culture. She’s getting closer and closer to stepping out into the real world.

If you haven’t been following it, there has been a discussion about Cosmo’s most recent project on Thingiverse, which so far involves requesting high quality scans of some pretty challenging targets: Oscar Wilde’s tomb, Richard Branson’s beard, the vocalists from Die Antwoord (yes, the actual people), any shape from the floor of the deepest known part of the Earth’s ocean, Challenger Deep, and a single square meter surface section from an asteroid. In case you think he’s talking about a meteorite here on Earth, he’s clarified:

Location: Space

Maybe these requests themselves are an art project, or maybe Cosmo’s trying to make a point about the responsibility we each bear to digitize the world. Or maybe he’s just trying to tell the rest of us to use photos and other resources that are available to turn these things and everything else into 3D models. What do you think? What would you request of the rest of the community to scan if it could be anything?

1. whose face do we think that is in the glasses? [↩]

As if San Diego Comic-Con and HOPE Number 9 weren’t enough events to be at in one weekend, MakerBot will also have a presence at the Robot Film Festival this Saturday July 14th at Three Legged Dog theater in lower Manhattan!

The doors to the 2nd Annual Robot Film Festival open at 10:30am and the day begins with a screening of ROBOT & FRANK, starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon and Liv Tyler. R.Maker, the MakerBot mascot, will be making a big-screen debut during the short film section of the festival which begins at 2:30pm. And MakerBot’s very own Joshua Friedman, who creates the R.Maker Adventures, will be there to introduce R.Maker to the masses and to show folks how he uses a Replicator to create things for his stop-motion sets.

The evening will wrap up with the Botskers, an official awards ceremony hosted by Reggie Watts, Heather Knight, Josh Ventura and Data the Robot, honoring the winners from throughout the day. And the adorable Botsker trophies were printed here at MakerBot HQ!

Tickets are available here. Don’t miss this opportunity to see a Replicator in action, to see R.Maker on the big screen, to meet our all-star animator and to get your year’s fill of ROBOT FILMS!

Next Friday night, MakerBot will host a very special MUGNY (MakerBot User Group NYC) meeting at the beautiful Marymount School Fifth Avenue Campus right across from the Met Museum. Marymount is an an independent, Catholic all-girls day school that actually has a rocking fab lab full of MakerBots — so this is a special pleasure for us. What’s more, this venue allows us to host a special RSVP only (grab tickets quick here!) opportunity to do a walking tour through the Met Museum so that a number of the artists can share about their derivative works right in front of the originals!

At 6:30pm, MakerBot Operators, Thingiverse Makers, and the curious public will cross the street and join us at the Marymount School for refreshments, snacks, the latest community show-and-tell, and inspiring keynote talks featuring the Met MakerBot Hackathon and the Capture Your Town project that emerged: a chance for all of our community to dive in and digitize buildings, artwork, and other objects that they want to share with the world about where they live.

MakerBot User Group meetings are monthly meet ups for members of our world-wide community to get together locally to share what they have been up to with their MakerBots. The events typically include a featured guest or keynote arranged beforehand, and tend to attract a large crowd of those from the general public as well as those actively involved with MakerBot and Thingiverse — all are welcome!

Check back early next week for further details about the Hackathon artists, digital archivists, and MakerBot community members who will be speaking — and reserve your “5:00pm Pre-Event Demo and Art Talk at the Met Museum” and “MUGNY Event @ Marymount School” RSVP tickets so that you can receive instructions for attending this very special evening.

Thanks again to inspiring maker and educator Jaymes Dec for connecting us with the Marymount School.