WHO ARE WE?
MiméticasLab is an open and collaborative working group that investigates new ways of making the artistic heritage more accessible to people with visual disabilities of any kind.
Our operation centre is the FabLab in Medialab-Prado (Madrid), where we explore the possibilities of creative prototyping, 3D printing and other digital manufacturing techniques to create tactile and/or multisensory reproductions of existing works of art. By using these techniques, we are ensuring that what we are only allowed to see can also be understood through other senses.
We are a nonprofit organization and all of our projects are license-free.
ACCESSIBLE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
In teaching subjects related to art and history, most of the resources used are visual: photographs, plans, drawings and maps. One of the objectives of this project is to try to replace them with tactile diagrams and models fabricated through license-free and low cost manufacturing (3D printing). These resources can be used as an accessible didactic material that any school, institute or university can print in their own facilities.
The concept of mimesis (imitation) comes from Ancient Greece. For the philosophers of the time, art had to be a faithful imitation of nature. MiméticasLab reappropriates the concept and gives it a twist: the artist’s studio becomes a laboratory of collective experimentation in which technology and art come together to imitate art itself.