Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times
Fred
Kahl, known to some as the Great Fredini, is making replicas of
sideshow performers with a 3D printer, hoping to recreate in miniature a
Coney Island of the early 1900s.
During his years as a member of the Coney
Island Circus Sideshow, Fred Kahl, 48, performed as a magician, a
sword-swallower, a stuntman who could hammer nails into his skull and
light up lightbulbs with his bare hands, and an impresario who helped
found the Burlesque at the Beach. That was when he acquired another
name: the Great Fredini.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Kahl took the
train from Midtown Manhattan, where he works as an interactive designer,
to an unused fortune teller’s cubbyhole on Surf Avenue, near the Coney
Island Boardwalk. Above the door is a sign proclaiming his latest
venture: Scan-A-Rama, a 3D scanning-and-printing studio where he
produces miniature plastic statuettes of visitors with a Microsoft
Kinect sensor-turned-scanner and a 3D printer about the size of a
microwave oven.
“This stuff is like magic,” he said. “It’s one of the principles of magic — transmutation.”
“Coney Island’s always been the place,” he continued, “where cutting
edge technology and entertainment intersect: the rides, the light bulb.”
Mr. Kahl’s dream is to re-create Luna Park,
one of Coney Island’s first amusement parks, as it stood in 1914 at the
height of its glory, with its ersatz pagodas, Hindu temples, Japanese
gardens and Venetian canal. (The current version of Luna Park opened in
2010; a housing project sits on the original site.) His model will go
to the Coney Island Museum.
“I used to think, when I retire, I’ll make it
out of matchsticks or something,” he said. Then he discovered 3D
printers, which recently became available commercially. He built
printers from kits before acquiring a used printer, and spent six months
staying up late, tweaking his scanning process. Now he hopes to raise
enough money,
through Kickstarter, to buy more printers for the project, which is part of a program for Coney Island U.S.A., a nonprofit arts center.
The model will be populated by dozens of
printed figurines, portraits of Coney Island’s present-day characters in
off-white plastic. He already had dozens, piled in cardboard boxes: a
sword-swallower, clutching her sword; a teenager, the outline of a cell
phone just visible in her back pocket; two sea nymphs from this year’s
Mermaid Parade. Several were friends from the sideshow: the
ventriloquist with his dummy; the hangman; the man with shrunken
flipper-like arms with his wife, a burlesque showgirl, both naked.
This particular afternoon, Mr. Kahl was
worrying about a hammer. Specifically, it was the hammer used by Ray
Valenz, the sideshow’s current Human Blockhead, to drive nails into his
skull. It was too delicate to print. “I’ll definitely come back through
on Saturday with a bigger hammer,” Mr. Valenz said. “Or, I got some
machetes.” Mr. Kahl thought the machetes would be too thin; they settled
on some flaming torches.
Some relatives stopped by, and he posed three
children on the lazy Susan-like wooden platform, which is made out of
wood, a bike tire, part of a car tire and a rotisserie motor plundered
from a grill. “It’s very rubber bands and glue, literally,” he said.
Because 3D printers work by producing
infinitesimal layers of hot plastic, there are certain constraints on
poses. Limbs or objects that jut out into space, unsupported, confuse
the modeling program. Chins, especially bearded ones, can be tricky to
print because they jut into
space unsupported; it is best to pose looking up, bringing the chin in line with the rest of the body.
“We try to get everybody looking up
optimistically into the future,” said Mr. Kahl, tilting the children’s
chins upward. They stayed still as they rotated beneath the Kinect’s
gaze, their eyes wide, looking as though they had been frozen in the act
of spotting an alien spaceship.
Within seconds, they appeared on a screen.
“Oh my God, you guys look scary,” interjected Peter Lanfranca, 33,
peering into the studio. He contemplated being scanned. “You want to get
rid of this?” Mr. Lanfranca asked, patting his belly, then flexing.
Since 3D printing became more widely
available, discussions of its impact have mostly focused on useful
objects that consumers could print at home, obviating the need to go to
Home Depot to buy, say, a shower head (estimated print time, in one
study: two hours, 16 minutes), or a pierogi mold (39 minutes). There was
also a flap this summer when firearm enthusiasts designed and printed
the first 3D guns.
For Mr. Kahl, however, a 3D printer is an
artistic tool. “The question I’ve been thinking about is, is it
photography?” he said. Behind him, the printer was busily forming a pair
of legs. “I think it could be argued it is photography.” As in
photography, after all, his portraits are made by aiming rays at his
subject. But because it shows mass and posture, he argued, “It captures
who we are in a way that photography doesn’t.”
Mr. Kahl’s first wife was the fire-eater in
the sideshow; his second runs a gift shop in Coney Island. His daughter
is helping him with the Scan-A-Rama, and some of his test models were
produced by the two of them scanning each other. But the only model of
himself in the cardboard box that day was by someone else.
“It’s a bad scan of me,” he said, inspecting
it. His smaller self wore a suit, and looked down. (This was before he
discovered it was best to look up.) Its nose and cheek were somewhat
eroded.
“If I was a millionaire, I’d have my shop in
Times Square, next to Madame Tussaud’s,” he said, smiling slightly.
“I’ve got kids in college, though.” Behind him, the printer, having
produced a four inch-high woman, emitted a small, triumphant tinkle.
